In an interview yesterday with CBS’s Marcia Kramer, former Gov. Jim McGreevey confirmed that he is in fact interested in running for mayor of Jersey City in 2025, a campaign that neighboring Union City Mayor/State Sen. Brian Stack has been heavily encouraging.
“Senator Stack is my dear friend, and he’s a force of nature, so he’s strongly encouraging me,” McGreevey said. “I love what I do in [the New Jersey Reentry Corporation], but I also love Jersey City. It was where my grandparents came from Ireland – my dad was in Lafayette, my mother was in Greenville… In many ways, it’s coming home. It’s tempting.”
More than two decades ago, McGreevey was the mayor of a different large municipality: Woodbridge, a suburb in Middlesex County. After serving simultaneously as mayor and state senator for four years, McGreevey unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1997, then came back and won the governor’s office in 2001 (before resigning in 2004 after an extramarital affair).
More recently, McGreevey has been the executive director of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, a nonprofit aimed at helping formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into civilian life.
The Jersey City mayor’s office will be open in 2025, with three-term incumbent Mayor Steve Fulop running for governor instead. If McGreevey ran – which the New Jersey Globe has confirmed he is seriously considering doing – he would be unlikely to get Fulop’s backing; when prompted by Kramer, McGreevey declined to directly comment on Fulop’s tenure as mayor.
“I would like to look to the future,” McGreevey said. “My focus would be, where is Jersey City going as a community – to be a mayor for the entire city and engage people.”
Two strong Fulop allies, Council President Joyce Watterman and County Commissioner Bill O’Dea, are both weighing potential runs for mayor. So too is Councilman James Solomon, Fulop’s top foe on the Jersey City Council.
And several other potential candidates, among them U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, County Commissioner Jerry Walker, Councilman Frank Gilmore, and former Board of Education President Mussab Ali, could enter the race as well.
For most of those politicians, becoming mayor of New Jersey’s second-largest city would be the next step of a steady political ascent. McGreevey, however, said that his prospective mayoral campaign could instead be something of a capstone.
“There’s an opportunity, perhaps, to look at this as a last final act, if you will,” he told Kramer.
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