Youthful Rebellion Edging Out Jaded Experience in Jersey City Race as Mamdani-Cuomo Contest Repeats Itself Across Hudson River

Tuesday’s runoff for the mayor’s seat in Jersey City will be the latest test of progressive vs. establishment Democratic politics as candidates push through a generational gap that looks eerily similar to the race that played out next door in New York City last month.The state’s former governor, Jim McGreevey, is looking for a second wind in politics against one of the city’s longtime councilmembers, James Solomon — 27 years his junior and who, like the victorious Zohran Mamdani in New York City, is targeting developers to pay for the high rental housing costs while coming from a wealthy family of his own.The latest poll conducted by the progressive polling firm, Impact Research, and obtained by a local media outlet, Hudson County View, shows Mr. Solomon with an ample lead, outpacing Mr. McGreevey, 58-29, among likely runoff voters. That’s a huge pickup of support from the November 4 race, where Mr. Solomon earned 29.1 percent of the vote to Mr. McGreevey’s 25.2. The flood of new support for Mr. Solomon comes from the backing of his former rivals in the seven-person race, including councilmember Bill O’Dea and the former board of education president, Mussab Ali. Mr. O’Dea’s supporters favor Mr. Solomon by 55 points, according to the November 13 poll while Mr. Ali’s supporters give Mr. Solomon a 63-point edge.Mr. O’Dea said he made a pact with Mr. Solomon to support one another if the other didn’t excel to the runoff or reach the 51-percent threshold. “At the end of the day it’s about moving the city forward and we both agreed that there was one person we had to make sure would not get elected and not move the city backward,” said Mr. O’Dea, alluding to Mr. McGreevey during a press conference last month with Mr. Ali and another failed mayoral candidate, Christina Freeman.While now considered the establishment, Mr. McGreevey was once considered a trailblazer, having closed the state’s $14 billion budget gap in his first two years and ushered in a massive school construction project for the state. His political career was derailed, however, after the married governor came out as gay in 2001 and said he had a consensual affair with a male advisor who then accused him of sexual harassment. Coming back in from the cold after writing a memoir and being featured in an HBO documentary about his fall from grace, the nonprofit executive is now backed by establishment Democrats, including the governor, Phil Murphy, Hudson County’s executive, Craig Guy, and Jersey City’s council president, Joyce Watterman, who also ran in the November 4 contest. Mr. McGreevey has attempted to benefit from the establishment’s traditional grip on Jersey City while at the same time casting Mr. Solomon as the insider. “For eight long years, the status quo has been James Solomon. And under his watch, Jersey City has seen the highest property tax increase in the state, some of the highest rent increases in the nation, and not a single unit of affordable housing built Downtown in that time,” he wrote in an op-ed in which he noted that Mr. Solomon is the grandson of a former Federal Reserve of New York president, Anthony M. Solomon, and son of a hedge fund manager, Adam M. Solomon, who passed away in 2008.Despite the charges, Mr. Solomon’s victory may be a foregone conclusion. With the support of Mr. O’Dea, Newark’s mayor, Ras Baraka, and Senator Andy Kim, Mr. Solomon has borrowed a progressive playbook that promises services paid for by an aristocratic class.Among those deliverables is housing affordability. Like Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Solomon says he wants a rent freeze and 20 percent of units to be capped at $1,500 per month. During debates and on the campaign trail, he has pledged to “turn the page on the corrupt politics of the past,” and target tax breaks awarded to developers building the housing units.Mr. McGreevey, who also wants to increase the stock of affordable units, says the tax implications will devastate the city. He warned that the $3 billion cost in property taxes is “fantasy thinking.”

Youthful Rebellion Edging Out Jaded Experience in Jersey City Race as Mamdani-Cuomo Contest Repeats Itself Across Hudson River

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