This week, we start with Steve Fulop and end with Huey Long
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is one of three candidates seeking to become New Jersey’s first Jewish governor, but his opposition to legislation that would codify an exact definition of antisemitism into state law has met some resistance among Jewish voters. It’s also led to two Team Fulop Assembly candidates, Tamar Warburg and Daniel Park, to distance themselves from Fulop; for example, Warburg/Park lawn signs have been spotted in the 37th district that leave Fulop off.
Fulop seems fine with the gamesmanship.
“I trust Tamar and Dan,” he said. “We have a plan for the district, and I believe we will be more than competitive there. I’m in the loop on all of this.”
There is a complicated mosaic going on here.
The 37th is heavily Jewish, and Warburg, the general counsel to the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey – and a Teaneck Democratic leader – is considered one of Fulop’s top recruits. Warburg and Park, a Tenafly councilman, are challenging two-term incumbents Shama Haider (D-Tenafly), the only Muslim woman in the legislature, and Ellen Park (D-Englewood Cliffs), the only Korean American in the legislature; both have endorsed Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) for governor – and he supports them.
There are two other candidates: Yitz Stern, a former Teaneck deputy mayor and, like Warburg, an Orthodox Jew; and Rosemary Hernandez Carroll, a Latina businesswoman from Hackensack in a district that is 25% Hispanic and 38% White. Warburg and Stern might split the Jewish vote – at least the Orthodox vote – and some more cynical observers suggest that that might be the impetus to the candidacy of Stern, who has a county job.
Warburg has straddled the line in a district that Gottheimer will likely carry.
“The overwhelming number of people I speak to locally do not understand why Josh is running for governor and think he should stay in Congress, but are afraid to publicly back his opponent because he is their congresswoman,” Warburg explained. She needs to navigate her politics since Gottheimer’s support among Jewish Democrats in Bergen County is undeniably strong.
A spokesman for Gottheimer, Peter Opitz, criticized Warburg’s willingness to run with Fulop.
“We are just surprised that Warburg would ever want to be on the same ticket as Steve Fulop, who has refused to back legislation that would codify the IHRA definition and protect Jewish communities from the historic rise in antisemitism they are facing across the state,” Opitz stated.
The Bergen County district includes Englewood and Tenafly and had been represented by Jewish legislators – Matthew Feldman, Byron Baer, Albert Burstein, Bennett Mazur, and Loretta Weinberg — from 1972 until 2022.
FULOP’S BIG MOVE: As promised, Steve Fulop will announce at noon that South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum, a staunch progressive with considerable policy chops, will be his running mate – and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor if he wins the primary. New Jersey began electing lieutenant governors in 2009, and Fulop is the first to announce his choice in advance of the primary. None of the other five Democratic candidates responded to an email asking if they planned to follow Fulop’s lead; The Watcher doesn’t have to await a response, since it’s clear they won’t. As one campaign person put it: “Why would we limit our choices now? We don’t know what the landscape will look like after primary day.” Gubernatorial nominees have until July 28 to pick their running mate.
OTHER STATES: New Jersey is one of 26 states where the governor and lieutenant governor run as a winner-take-all team; in seven of those states, the two offices have separate primaries, with the winner becoming running mates – sometimes undesirably so. Seventeen states have separate elections for governor and LG, so each party could win one. When New Jersey prepared a constitutional office to create the new post in the early 2000s, there was never any real consideration of a plan other than the one adopted.
I’M NOT ENDORSING, EXCEPT FOR THE GUYS I’M ENDORSING: After saying that he wasn’t taking sides in Democratic primaries across Hudson County this year, Rep. Robert J. Menendez was forced to modify his public statement after video emerged of him endorsing Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis for sheriff against incumbent Frank Schillari, and two candidates for State Assembly in the 31st district: incumbent Gabe Rodriguez (D-West New York) and North Bergen businessman Larry Wainstein. Menendez, not wanting to offend Union City Mayor/State Sen./GOTV King Brian P. Stack, backtracked and acknowledged that he had endorsed the three Stack-backed candidates just last weekend. That won’t please Stack’s rival, North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco. The two-term congressman says he’s still staying out of the governor’s race – even though the North Bergen campaign headquarters he was at brandishes Mikie Sherrill’s name on it – and hasn’t made endorsements in the 31st and 32nd districts. The Watcher understands that Menendez isn’t out of the woods and could face a primary fight next year.
MURPHY FOR SENATE, AGAIN: Former Tabernacle Mayor Justin Michael Murphy is preparing to challenge Democrat Cory Booker in the 2026 U.S. Senate race. He finished third in a four-way GOP Senate primary with 11% of the vote last year and lost Republican congressional primaries in New Jersey’s 3rd district in 2008 and 2010.
ASTERISK TO HISTORY: After Melinda Kane resigned her Camden County Commissioner post to take her seat in the State Assembly in January, Democrats selected Rhonda Wardlow Hartley as her interim replacement. Now, two months later, Wardlow Hartley is resigning, and Camden Dems are expected to install Jennifer Fleisher, the wife of the mayor of Cherry Hill, to replace her. She is unopposed in the Democratic primary for an unexpired term, and her move to county government will give Fleisher an early start in a county that hasn’t elected a Republican since 1990.
LOOKING TO NOVEMBER: The Green Party will hold its annual convention on Saturday and is expected to pick its candidates for Governor and State Assembly; former presidential candidate Jill Stein is their keynote speaker. The expected Green Party gubernatorial candidate is Stephen Zielinski, a food manufacturer who could be the first chicken farmer to run for governor since Elmer Wene, a former congressman who ran close races for U.S. Senate and Governor in the 1940s and 1950s.
THANKS, MVC: The Natural Law Party has been defunct since 2004, but its membership in New Jersey increased by seven voters in March 2025. The state has 5,154 voters who have opted to register as members of the NLP, even though it doesn’t exist. The party had 396 voters in June 2020, and that number jumped to 7,019 in 2020. The best explanation is that motor voters – New Jerseyans who conduct voter registration business at the Motor Vehicles Commission – are accidentally checking the wrong box. Shockingly, MVC Director Latrecia Littles Floyd hasn’t fixed a computer glitch that was identified when the multi-talented Sue Fulton had her job.
INTERNAL POLLS: For those who worry that internal polls paint an inaccurate picture of a political campaign, the results of a special congressional election in Florida won’t do anything to dissuade you of that. A late March survey by Donald Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, showed Democrat Josh Weil ahead of Republican Randy Fine by three points, 44%-41%. Fine won yesterday’s special election by fourteen points, 57%-43%.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? U.S. Navy veteran Josh Welle, who got crushed by Republican Rep. Christopher Smith, 55%-43%, in the 2018 wave election, started a new job in November as vice president and global head of the cybersecurity portfolio at Capgemini, a French information technology company. Stephanie Schmid, a former Obama State Department employee who ran a shady campaign plagued with misrepresentations of facts and campaign finance after moving to New Jersey to run against Smith in 2020, lost, 60%-38%. She never got a job offer to join the Biden administration, and later moved to Annapolis and runs a travel company that leads wine-oriented tours in Europe.
TRIVIA: Louisiana politics can’t really compete with Jersey, but they still have a rich history. After Huey Long was assassinated in 1936, his widow, Rose, was appointed to fill his 11-month unexpired term in the U.S. Senate. The full term was one by a Long loyalist, Allen Ellender, the State House Speaker. Ellender spent nearly 36 years in the Senate; an opponent of Civil Rights, he chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee and served as President Pro-Tempore. At age 81, he was seeking a seventh term but died of a heart attack 23 days before the Democratic primary; most Louisianans opted not to vote for a dead man, and J. Bennett Johnston, who was wasn’t supposed to win, spent 24 years in the U.S. Senate. He retired in 1996 and died last week at age 92.
SAY IT ISN’T SO: It’s possible that some people in New Jersey politics are young enough to have never heard of Huey Long; if you haven’t, you may want to read Kingfish. And if you haven’t seen All The King’s Men – the original 1949 film, never the 2006 remake – then you’ve missed one of the best political movies ever made. (The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, based on Long, is also worth your time.)
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