Mussab Ali, the 27-year-old former president of the Jersey City Board of Education who was once the city’s youngest-ever elected official, announced today that he’s joining the increasingly crowded race for Jersey City mayor in 2025.
“Deciding to challenge the status quo and run for Mayor was no easy choice,” Ali said in a statement. “But seeing our city – the most diverse in America – struggle with issues like affordability and gentrification, and grappling with the shadows of machine politics, I knew I couldn’t stay on the sidelines.”
Ali joins three other prominent candidates in the race to succeed incumbent Mayor Steve Fulop, who is departing next year to run for governor: former Gov. Jim McGreevey, City Council President Joyce Watterman, and Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea. Several other candidates, including City Councilman James Solomon and Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker, may run as well.
Based on endorsements and fundraising, McGreevey may be the frontrunner; he’s already raised nearly $1.4 million and has the support of much of the Hudson County Democratic establishment, including County Executive Craig Guy and Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian Stack. But nonpartisan local elections can often obey different political gravity than other races, and there’s still a long way to go until November 2025.
Ali, who immigrated to the United States from Pakistan at a young age, was first elected to the Jersey City Board of Education in 2017, when he was 20 years old and still a student at Rutgers. He defeated David Miranda 9,388 votes 9,320 – a margin of just 68 votes, or 0.4% – to fill an unexpired board term, apparently becoming the youngest elected official in Jersey City history.
He ran for a full term in 2018 and easily won re-election, and was named board president in 2021. But after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, he declined to run for re-election in 2022; he has since gotten a law degree from Harvard Law School and worked to research housing displacement in Jersey City.
His nascent mayoral run – which, if successful, would make him Jersey City’s first Muslim mayor, and one of the few prominent Muslim elected officials anywhere in the state – first became public last week, when he filed campaign finance paperwork with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.
“Jersey City raised and educated me,” Ali said today. “When I became the youngest elected official in our city’s history, it was because you trusted me. Now, I’m ready to champion a Jersey City that works for all of us.”