Bret Schundler - Mayor of Jersey City

Mayor of Jersey City

His first run for elective office was an unsuccessful campaign for the New Jersey Senate in 1991, where despite the partisan nature of the election and the overwhelmingly Democratic composition of the district (only 6% of voters were registered Republicans), Schundler lost to incumbent Edward T. O'Connor, Jr. by only a 55.1% to 44.9% margin. The next year, Gerald McCann was removed as mayor of Jersey City because of a criminal conviction unrelated to his public duties, and Schundler entered the special election to finish the remaining eight months of McCann's term. He won the election with 17 percent of the vote in a crowded field of 19 candidates. Jersey City holds nonpartisan elections for municipal offices, and Schundler never billed himself as a Republican on his campaign literature or ads. However, Schundler was known to be a Republican based on his run for the State Senate a year earlier, and he is thus reckoned as the first Republican to hold the post since 1917. Contributing to his victory was the fact that two African American candidates split the Black vote, and two siblings (Lou and Allen Manzo), also split a large number of votes.

Once in office, Schundler developed a reputation as a politician who could not be "bought off." This strongly resonated in a city with a long legacy of corruption dating to the Frank Hague era. He subsequently won a full term in 1993 with 69% of the vote—the largest margin of victory since Jersey City returned to the Mayor-Council form of government in 1961, and according to some sources, in the city's entire history. He won a second full term in 1997, winning a run-off election by a substantial margin.

During his tenure as mayor, Schundler reduced crime, lowered property taxes, increased the city's tax collection rate and property values, instituted medical savings accounts for city employees and privatized the management of the city's water utility. He also led the fight to pass New Jersey's charter school legislation. Moreover, according to a Harvard University study, during his tenure Jersey City led the 100 largest cities in America in job growth and poverty reduction.

Schundler attracted considerable national attention because he was the Republican mayor of an overwhelmingly Democratic city. During his tenure, Jersey City remained a Democratic stronghold, as it has been for over a century. Indeed, on the same night as Schundler's special election win, Bill Clinton carried Hudson County (which includes Jersey City) by an overwhelming margin, which was enough to swing New Jersey into the Democratic column for the first time since 1964. Clinton carried Hudson County by an even larger margin in 1996. Additionally, no Republican has represented a significant portion of Jersey City in Congress in over a century, and Schundler was succeeded by a Democrat, Glenn Cunningham, in 2001.