Tris McCall Election Special
- Eye Level
- 1 day ago
- 25 min read
Impressions of the campaign and the six principal candidates for mayor of Jersey City
I have always considered it a monstrous act of arrogance to vote for candidates for office because they agreed with me. Who am I? I’m barely representative of anything. My political positions are exactly what you think they’d be given my background, my occupation, and my place on the globe. We wouldn’t want to be governed by people like me, and nobody knows that better than I do. I couldn’t tell you much about municipal finance, or the bond market, or the state of the sewer systems, or any of the other beastly things that a modern mayor has to mind. Everyone running for the top job in Jersey City has a plan for affordable housing; whose is the best? I have my opinion, and it’s exactly as good as yours.
Yours may be better. It certainly can’t be worse. Nevertheless, I do have a vote, and on Tuesday, I intend to exercise it. I’m going to participate in the rituals of electoral democracy, because the system only works if we do.
This time around, we don’t want to slip up. We’re changing horses in the middle of a flood. After thirteen years of Steven M. Fulop at 280 Grove Street, we’re going to be handing the reins to somebody else. How will he or she respond to the many challenges facing American cities in general and ours in particular? We don’t know. But it’s our responsibility to hazard some guesses and vote accordingly.
For the first time I can remember, I find all the options on the ballot appealing. If I’m not exactly optimistic about all of them, I am curious about how each of them would do. Selecting one candidate means foreclosing the other paths forward. Should we pick Mussab Ali on Tuesday, we will never know what a Watterman administration would have been like. But life is not a Choose Your Own Adventure book. We’re only allowed one outcome. After months of indecision, I’ll go to the booth tomorrow, make my choice, and then put my trust in the judgment of my neighbors.
And because I like to do my deliberation on the page, I’m going to lay out my thinking, right here, bare, exposed before my peers. I’m going to go through the candidates, one by one, and give you my impressions of them. If you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of their tax policies, that’s not what you’re going to get: I’m not writing this for Jersey City Times for several good reasons, and the main reason is that I’m not a hard news reporter. Nonetheless, I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, and nothing determines my vote more than character does. The new chief’s personality will eventually be inscribed on the landscape of the town. Remember always: we’re not picking a slate of policies. We’re picking a leader.
Okay, let’s get to it:
JAMES SOLOMON
Who is he: He’s the sitting City Councilman for Ward E. Though it has since been gerrymandered into a weird shape, Ward E was basically coterminous with the Jersey City Downtown at the time of Solomon’s ascension to office in 2017. In the first visible crack in the foundation of Mayor Fulop’s electoral invincibility, Solomon defeated Rebecca Symes, the favored candidate of City Hall. More importantly, he did it while being critical of the Mayor in a manner that other Jersey City politicians, fearing ostracism or career oblivion, didn’t have the guts to do back then.
On the Council, he’s remained outspoken, frequently throwing elbows on behalf of policies that the Administration doesn’t favor and criticizing policies that it does. Since Mayor Fulop has six Council votes that he can depend on, this has often put the Councilman in the minority — along with his colleague and ally Frank “Educational” Gilmore, currently running for re-election in Ward F on the Solomon ticket. It is fair to say that no elected official represents sustained dissent against the Fulop Administration more than James Solomon does.
Disposition: James Solomon is a man who furrows his brow. Furrow yours right now and see how you feel. You’ll probably experience flashes of concern, surprise, mild disapproval. Something is going on that’s not quite right. If we orient ourselves to the problem, our course can be corrected.
Solomon has often directed that furrowed-brow energy toward luxury development projects favored by the administration. He never exactly seems angry about them. He doesn’t deliver his requests for corrections with rancor, either; it has never felt like he’s had any personal beef with the Mayor or his political opponents. He’s been more like the worried fellow at a party that is getting out of hand. Maybe he’s turning down the music and diluting the punch.
When he speaks out, he does it with frankness that borders on artlessness. He is not a word-weaver and he isn’t given to games. For better or for worse, I could see him as a very ox-like mayor, head down, doing the work, tackling problems straight on rather than casting about for innovative solutions.
For the record: It can be hard for newcomers to town to understand. Eight years ago, there was no elected opposition to City Hall. Voices of dissent were forced to the margins. You were either with Mayor Fulop or you were on the outs. James Solomon’s ascension to the Council made the city feel like a different place. It wasn’t just politically significant. It was emotionally significant.
That doesn’t mean he should be the mayor. It does mean that his candidacy ought to be treated with the respect due to a guy unafraid to stand up to people more powerful than he was. He did not go along with the BMOC. I have learned how rare that is in all fields of endeavor. Most ambitious people are looking for a co-sign from successful people in their line of work. Opposition leaders win office and immediately begin cutting compromise deals. Solomon isn’t like that. He’s stuck to his furrowed-brow skepticism about developer-driven government from the outset. That attitude has continued to carry him through campaign ’25 as he seeks to replace a mayor who is, to put it mildly, favorably disposed towards tower-builders.
Opponents and nonbelievers have asked, reasonably, if Solomon’s antipathy toward developers outpaces his desire for affordable housing. His opposition to the 150 Bay Street project, objections to the proposed Albion Hotel on Newark Avenue, and general disinclination to back construction in Ward E have prompted some former supporters to call him a NIMBY. His closeness to the Downtown neighborhood associations reinforces that suspicion. Then there are his campaign priorities, all of which greet developers and property-holders with their punitive edge: thousand-dollar apartment leases, affordable unit quotas, aggressive tenant protections, government oversight of rent hikes. To a true believer in capitalist progress, it probably looks like James Solomon wants to throw cold water on our economic engine.
Maybe. And maybe developers will be just fine. One of the many irritating things about the Fulop years has been the constant short-selling of Jersey City — the administration’s willingness to provide financial enticements to luxury real estate companies that were always going to build here anyway. I don’t have numbers to run or a ledger to show you, but that seventy to ninety million dollar budget shortfall we’re facing didn’t come from nowhere. We’ve got smart, creative people here, access to mass transit, proximity to major markets, and a largely harmonious community. There are few other places in America that can boast the things we can boast. Building in Jersey City is an immense privilege. We can probably afford to leverage our comparative advantages and ask developers for more that what they’ve been giving.
Councilman Solomon has been blunt about all of this. Given how little he’s shape-shifted while in office, it’s a pretty solid bet that Mayor Solomon would be, too. Even as other candidates have questioned the feasibility and wisdom of his plans, he’s stubbornly defended his proposals, insisting that they’re both affordable and fair. We’ve rarely seen James Solomon pivot from one position to another. He does not lead with his flexibility. Once he digs in, he tends to stay put. The tone of his campaign has been sharp, and his negative ads have been some of the most scathing we’ve seen. I believe that a candidate’s campaign augurs how he will govern. I admit I’ve been concerned about James Solomon’s campaign.
Prognosis: I would not bet my life on it. I don’t think I’d even bet ten bucks on it. But when all of the dust has settled, and the runoff is over, and the tallies have been counted, I expect James Solomon to be the next Mayor of Jersey City. I think that his popular stewardship of the town’s biggest ward combined with the drift of urban politics toward younger candidates with records of tilting against the establishment will be too much for his opponents to overcome. Solomon-backed candidates like Katie Brennan pulled off upsets of their own in the Assembly primary races in June. Fulop’s poor local showing in the gubernatorial race suggests to me that Jersey City voters are ready for a new direction.
That said, it’s easy to see how it could all go sideways. Self-identified YIMBYs who understand the implications of Solomon’s approach and Solomon’s rhetoric have been abandoning the candidate for others: the Solomon-to-O’Dea pipeline is a real thing. Mussab Ali, younger and more adept with social media, might cut into his appeal to first-time voters. Jim McGreevey’s framing of Solomon and O’Dea as Jersey City political lifers may convince some voters who’d like to see a complete change. After thirteen exhausting years of governance by a former Ward E councilman, electing another Ward E councilman may feel like a bridge too far.
My bullishness on Solomon’s future is not shared by the most astute politics-watchers I know. Some of them don’t even think he’ll make the runoff. I can see where they’re coming from. But most of those experts have been around for awhile. Like me, they’re old-timers. Jersey City is a young town. It’s appropriate for us to have a young mayor.
BILL O’DEA
Who is he: He’s the eight-term Commissioner of Hudson County. He also runs the Development Company in Elizabeth. He’s been around for awhile, and everybody speaks well of his integrity and his work ethic. Like James Solomon, he’s unblemished by scandal; in fact, he’s kept his nose clean as long as any Garden State politician I can think of. Consider: when Bill O’Dea first won his City Council seat in the mid-eighties, Mussab Ali was more than decade away from being born.
Disposition: Of all the candidates for Jersey City mayor, Bill O’Dea strikes me as the most theatrical.
That is not at all the same as saying he is insincere. I believe he’s very sincere. What I mean is that he’s present to the full implications of his words and gestures in a way that his opponents aren’t. O’Dea seems aware that politics is a performance, and that it is the mayor’s responsibility to sustain that performance no matter what else he’s doing. Though he presents himself as a West Side everyman, his public persona is polished, and his words are pithy and quotable. During debates, Solomon could be prosaic, McGreevey circumlocutory, Ali excitable, and Watterman absent. O’Dea, by contrast, never missed a chance to consolidate his public image and project himself as a leader with clarity of vision. His campaign has been an exercise in earnest salesmanship, and a refreshing demonstration that persuasion via words and ideas still has a place in American politics.
For the record: Bill O’Dea comes prepared. He aims to impress with policy detail and command of legislative procedure, and he succeeds. His points about state grants that the City might access in order to fund crucial programs land like like gold medal gymnasts do. O’Dea is the sort of politician who makes you wonder: why haven’t we been taking advantage of all available opportunities? Why have we been wasting time?
And while you’re wondering, you might well begin to wonder about Bill O’Dea. During the Fulop years, he has been curiously silent. He has earned many positive headlines for his hard work, and the achievements he boasts about are 100% real. But he never made any strenuous attempt to redirect the city that he serves (when he isn’t serving Elizabeth) away from the same policies that he now questions. As a well-connected politician with many years of experience, he could have stepped into then-contemporary controversies on behalf of those who felt pushed out of the public conversation by Steven Fulop and his supporters. On the campaign trail, he has often sounded like a man who agrees with the Administration’s critics. Nothing prevented him from chasing the top job in 2017 or 2021. I would have loved to have voted for Bill O’Dea in those elections. I regret that he didn’t give me that opportunity. It pisses me off a little, frankly.
Bill O’Dea’s candidacy has been the inverse of James Solomon’s. Solomon has been uninspiring on the trail, but he’s got a long track record of standing up to the administration’s policies. O’Dea has been lucid, flexible, and funny, and seems to offer a fresh direction for the city grounded in intelligence and policy know-how. Yet he has functioned awfully well as a component piece in the same Hudson County government that he now argues is inadequate to the problems we face. O’Dea’s stated reason for demurring from the past few mayoral races is that he felt there were other worthy candidates on the ballot, and by that, I can only assume he means Steven M. Fulop. I’m left with a faint suspicion that O’Dea, for all his oratory to the contrary, is a continuity candidate.
Prognosis: I see a few paths to 280 Grove Street for the County Commissioner. Nobody has locked down the South Side of town. If O’Dea supplements his strong showing in Ward B with equally large tallies of votes in Wards A and F, I don’t think there’s any way he won’t be in the runoff. Once there, it’s virtually certain that he will out-debate, out-argue, and outfox his opponent. I’m not sure rhetorical skill is of much use once a candidate attains elected office, but it certainly helps a crafty politician get there.
O’Dea also has momentum among good-government activists in Jersey City. I can see why. In a place as scandal-plagued as Hudson County, O’Dea’s straight-shooting and accountability is noteworthy. He’s been up to his eyeballs in local politics since he was in his twenties, and he’s come away without a single stain on his blazer. The best Solomon could do in a desperate attack ad was point out that he’d praised Senator Menendez. The Bill O’Dea oppo file appears to be empty, and it’s a testament to his discipline and dedication that he’s managed to keep it that way for so long. It’s almost as if he’s an honest and trustworthy guy. Might it be a crime for us to jeopardize that spotless record by sending him to a place as sordid as City Hall?
Nevertheless, he clearly wants the job, and he’s gone after it with energy, attention to the finer points, and a flurry of thought-out proposals. No one has campaigned better. The sage Jeff Van Gundy once told us that eventually, you play as you practice. It’d be fascinating to put that theory to the test by making O’Dea mayor.
JIM MCGREEVEY
Who is he?: C’mon, you know this fella. He was the governor of the Garden State in 2002, backed at the time by power brokers Raymond Lesniak and John Lynch. In one of the many ironies of the James E. McGreevey story, his opponent in that race was Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, the last Republican to get political traction in Hudson County. By 2004, he was out. The scandal that drove him from office had a sexual dimension, but ultimately, it wasn’t about sex, or even sexuality.
Since then, McGreevey has slowly reconstructed himself. He worked with prisoners as the chairman of the New Jersey Reentry Corporation and scored himself a divinity degree from General Theological Seminary. Fall to Grace, a documentary about McGreevey’s highly singular coming out, religious faith, and rehabilitation, aired on HBO. In short, he’s busied himself about second chances, and if you were Jim McGreevey, you might do the same. Lately, we’ve all been swept up in his redemption arc. But this story only ends happily if he can convince Jersey City voters to give him a chance — and then go on to govern Jersey City better than he governed the State of New Jersey.
Disposition: Many politicians have no interior territory to map. Their personalities are completely outward-directed. They’re either malleable and drift like a weathervane or they seize upon a few rudimentary ideas and ride them as far as they can go. That’s not Jim McGreevey. He is no populist. He’s a psychologically multilayered person with an inner life and powerful unconscious motivations. In that way, he’s closer to a literary character than most of the people who ask for our votes and our trust.
Our preference for simpler people to lead us is probably based on self-preservation. We don’t want the king to be inscrutable; we don’t want him thinking and operating on many levels at once. We want to be able to read him and understand what he’s up to and why. It’s understandable, but it has really gotten us — and, with it, democracy — into hot water. If we are afraid to pull the lever for complicated people, that leaves us with white knights, monochromatic thinkers, and demagogues. There aren’t that many white knights around, and the demagogues and monochromatic thinkers have led us to an impasse. Throwing the dice with somebody colorful might not be such a bad idea.
For the record: Since the beginning of the race, McGreevey has had a gigantic target on his back. In a way, this is a compliment: it suggests that his competitors view him as the main threat. Because of all the baggage he’s been carrying, it was also inevitable.
Some of these attacks have struck me as silly. This lifelong Democrat is not a MAGA supporter and, given his personality, never could be. Temperamentally, he couldn’t be more different than arrogant old Andrew Cuomo. The Golan Cipel debacle and related scandals happened two decades ago in a different sociopolitical galaxy. Even McGreevey’s controversial donor list doesn’t bother me too much. Taking campaign money from unsavory people does not mean that those people are controlling the candidate. If there’s one thing we should have learned from the last nine months, it’s that contributors make compromises with the man in charge because they fear his power and want to stay on his good side. Donors believe that McGreevey is going to win. It’s hard to blame him for their faith in him, just as it’s futile to ask him to return the money. A money-returner he is not.
Yet behind the hyperbolic objections is a legitimate anxiety about Jim McGreevey. As we witnessed at the debates, his impulses dispose him toward coalition-building and colleague-gathering. He behaved like a CEO of a corporate board, praising the ideas of the candidates around him and citing them by name. (Bill O’Dea, in a move that, I felt, was quite beneath him, even used this magnanimity in an attack ad.) McGreevey acted like it was his responsibility to synthesize these solicitations and make a kind of coalition tapestry out of them. I do not believe this was phony. I think it’s intrinsic to who James E. McGreevey is. He’s not up there to fight with anybody. In a manner that might be called Clintonian, he’s looking to reach consensus and, smiling, usher everybody into the big tent.
And I simply don’t know if that’s where we are as a city or as a nation. Most of the other candidates have highlighted their pugnaciousness in one way or another; Solomon, in particular, is always implying that he’s ready to rumble. I, myself, am not much of a rumbler, and I admit that McGreevey’s diplomatic instincts are appealing to me. Or they would be if it was 1998 and the feeling in the air was that liberalism had triumphed and we were all moving, inevitably, toward a cosmopolitan society. That’s the world in which the politician James McGreevey came of age, and in many ways, he’s still there.
But that world is gone. The federal government is presently sending members of the national guard to cities over the objections of mayors and governors. Congress approved one hundred and seventy billion dollars for immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation. Jersey City is on a collision course with Washington in 2026. This is the awful reality that the next mayor must confront. We need a leader who recognizes the threat and knows who our adversaries are. He or she cannot be playing nice with those whose obvious intent is to roll us. We’ve seen how that ends. As dangerous as it would be to have a provocateur or a fire-starter in office, it’s worse to have a conciliator.
At the JSQCA debate that I moderated, I asked the candidates what they would do if the Trump Administration sent troops to make trouble on Grove Street. Solomon assured the crown that he’d push back as hard as he could. O’Dea did him one better, promising that if he had to go to jail in protest, he’d go to jail. When it was Jim McGreevey’s turn to speak, he did as he often does: he gave a point-by-point summary of the problem and talked, somewhat dispassionately, about possible legal remedies. It was articulate and thoughtful. It might even be effective. It was not what I wanted to hear.
Prognosis: Most professional handicappers have been assuming for months that Jim McGreevey will win this race. I’ve never seen it. He has name recognition and he’s out-raised his opponents, but not so much that either strength neutralizes the advantages of the men and women he is up against. He’s almost seventy years old, and he’s asking to govern a city where the average age is thirty-four. He’s never served on the City Council and he’s got no natural geographical base. Most importantly, there’s a huge faction of voters in Jersey City that will never vote for McGreevey no matter what he says or does. They associate him with scandal, and to be fair to us, we’re all pretty scandal-weary around here.
So I doubt we will ever find out what Mayor McGreevey would be like. The version of me that loves a good story regrets this, but I’ve promised myself that I’m not listening to that guy this year. For once, I’m trying to use my head and not my narrative imagination. But should McGreevey lose, as I expect him to, I do hope he’ll stick around. I hope there’s a place for him in an administration. He’s a character. If there’s no room for that here, are we even still Jersey?
MUSSAB ALI
Who is he: A young man making a place for himself among the aged and experienced. Mussab Ali won a seat on the Board of Education while he was still an undergrad at Rutgers-Newark, and later became its President. At the time of his victory, he was the youngest Muslim elected official in the United States. School board is a complicated job, but the step from Claremont Avenue to 280 Grove Street is a doozy. It must have taken a heck of a lot of audacity for Ali to throw his hat in the ring. We appreciate audacity.
Disposition: Eager, intense, energetic, precocious. Ali has spent the election season in a constant, frenetic state of arrival, speaking his mind at the debates, taking clever shots at the leaders, and making the most of the novelty of his candidacy. Because he’s not considered one of the major contenders, he’s escaped the relentless scrutiny and tearing-down that his older opponents have faced: you’ll find few attack mailers aimed at Mussab Ali in your box this morning. His opponents have been reluctant to mix it up with him, guessing, perhaps correctly, that a back-and-forth with Ali would make them look old and out of touch and only help raise his profile.
The irony is that Ali has been as aggressive and gone as negative as any candidate in the race. He’s done much of his damage through caffeinated clips on TikTok and other social media sites. Older voters might have missed it. But if you’re tuned in to social media at all, you’ve seen his relentless mockery of McGreevey, some of it fair, and some of it pretty puerile. He’s also turned his fire on Solomon’s contributions record, attacking the Councilman’s perceived strength. Solomon has become the latest reformer to learn that purity is an exhausting chase, and there’s always someone younger and less sullied by commerce and compromise than you are. Should Ali hang around Jersey politics for awhile — and all indications say he will — he’ll have some pup nipping at his own heels before long, barking that he’s missed one mark or another.
For the record: There’s another young Muslim politician making headlines in the region who you may have heard about. Ali is not dodging the comparison. His videos are the rougher, more indie version of Zohran Mamdani’s pop hits. Ali dresses and talks a little like Mamdani. He walks fast, directly at a moving camera, pats the air with his hands, talks about free buses, and evinces a similar mixture of bemusement and sincerity. You may feel like you’ve seen this movie before, or you might just be happy to find it playing on this side of the river. James Solomon, too, once claimed to be Zohran Mamdani’s Jersey analog. Mussab Ali seems to have dislodged him from that position, and recently, it feels like Solomon has been talking more about Boston and Mayor Wu than he has been about Mamdani and New York.
A funny thing is that Ali’s platform is more innovative, more sober, and less gimmicky than Mamdani’s is. Mamdani wants to put a dent in exclusionary zoning; Ali promises to take it a step further by changing property classifications to eliminate single-family zoning areas altogether and coupling the move with a community land bank designed to convert abandoned lots into low-rent developments. Since Ali hasn’t been in anybody’s crosshairs, I couldn’t tell you what the drawbacks of these plans are. It’s possible that there aren’t any.
Prognosis: Mussab Ali is not going to be the mayor of Jersey City — in 2026. I would not be surprised, however, if he outperforms expectations substantially on Election Night and sets himself up for a long run in civic life. The enthusiasm for his upstart campaign is real, and growing, and he’s mastered new communications in a manner that his opponents haven’t. If the future of Jersey City politics has a face, it’s probably Ali’s.
Yet even if he does well in this election and commands a healthy share of the electorate, I can’t see him becoming a consequential power broker in the December runoff. His hands are going to be tied, and it’s his own vehemence that’s responsible. He’s been so hard on Jim McGreevey that it would be astonishingly hypocritical for him to do anything else but endorse the former governor’s opponent. Likewise, should the contest come down to Solomon and O’Dea, Ali’s criticism of the Councilman’s campaign finances and vendor donations would seem to preclude an alliance. The only move on the board for a disqualified Ali is to back Bill O’Dea, or reluctantly get behind the Ward E Councilman in the event of a final matchup between Solomon and McGreevey.
I should note that Ali recently released an internal poll that put him in a runoff with McGreevey. Poll-starved as we are in Jersey City, these numbers were widely reported. As hot as Ali has been, I don’t think that’s realistic. My guess is that Mussab Ali isn’t fooling himself or overestimating his chances. He just knows how to play the news cycle. He’s definitely a man to keep an eye on.
JOYCE WATTERMAN
Who is she: The sitting President of the Jersey City City Council, and the first African American woman to hold the post. In 2021, she was the top vote-getter among all Council candidates; in 2017, she was second only to Rolando Lavarro. She’s been on the Council straight through the Fulop years, and she’s been a powerful Administration ally. She doesn’t always get the credit she deserves — or the blame, depending on how you look at things — for the present state of the city.
By many measures, she’s got the most impressive credentials of anybody on the ballot: she’s out-served Solomon, she wasn’t out of politics for years the way McGreevey was, and she never split time dedicating herself to a sister city as O’Dea has. It’s been all Jersey City for Watterman. Over the last thirteen years, she’s gotten tens of thousands of votes citywide, more than anybody but Fulop. Given her record of political success and the history she’s made, it would have been strange thing if she didn’t run for mayor.
Which is why I’ve been so surprised that… well, first, a vignette, and, one of the indelible moments of campaign ’25 for me:
Disposition: I will never forget watching Joyce Watterman on the floor at a fundraiser, dressed up and dancing to Stevie Wonder with a huge smile on her face. She looked like she wasn’t going to be cheated out of any of life’s pleasures. Yes, there were donors around, and yes, there was politicking to do, but a great song was on, she knew all the words and all the steps, she was surrounded by friends, and she was damn sure going to appreciate the moment. Watterman seemed at ease in a way that most politicians, restless and driven by the need for approval as they are, never get to be. Eventually the beats stopped and she returned to the business at hand, but not until her dance was finished. That night, in the midst of the campaign, I saw her claiming a little turf for herself. It seemed like a psychologically balanced thing to do. I left the banquet space feeling good about Joyce Watterman the human being, which is a rare thing for me. By the end of a personal interaction with a politician, I’m usually pretty worried about the state of that politician’s immortal soul.
I reckon her religious faith helps. Joyce Watterman and her husband James are pastors at the Continuous Flow Christian Center, right next to the George Floyd mural and Taylor’s Barber Shop, and just across the street from Moore’s Place. That stretch of Monticello Avenue has been one of the most vibrant parts of the city for the past ten years, and the Watterman church is right in the middle of it. This is more than just a metaphor. From the outset, the Fulop administration and his City Councils bet that the benefits of rapid growth would radiate to neighborhoods that often get overlooked. The efflorescence on Monticello is good supporting evidence for their argument.
Waterman’s cool-aunt demeanor feels like an expression of her enthusiasm for her surroundings. Sometimes I even see flashes of the joy that Christians are always talking about. When she sponsored Jersey City Fashion Week at Mana Contemporary, I teased her about it in the JC Times: Hudson County and haute couture, haha. But as I’ve come to realize during this run, it’s no joke to her. Just as she knows a great dance track when she hears one, she’s attuned to the genuine pleasures of nice clothing. Call me superficial, but after years of watching local politicians in sweaters and terrible ties, it’s nice to have a civic leader who cares about looking fresh. It reflects well on us.
For the record: Joyce Watterman began this campaign with a big strike against her. As the senior member of Steven Fulop’s six vote majority on the City Council, she’s associated with every municipal initiative and construction project the Administration has pushed over the past four years. That includes the infamous Pompidou, about which the Council President expressed Susan Collins-ish concerns before voting yes. Like everybody else running for mayor, Joyce Watterman is now against the Pompidou. The difference is that she could have stopped the museum last spring (or at least slowed it down to give the town more time to consider it) if she had been willing to stand up to the mayor. As has so often been true, it fell to James Solomon to lead the quixotic opposition to a costly plan.
At the Arts Debate, Watterman justified her vote to a skeptical crowd. She’d envisioned a public-serving institution that could provide opportunities for poor kids from the South Side of town. I believed her. I may have even forgiven her. I wish only that she’d been more assiduous about pressing her case. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, Watterman has not bothered to attend many of the neighborhood political forums and local debates that gave candidates an opportunity to mix it up and explain themselves to the high-propensity voters who decide elections. Yes, these events are a pain in the ass, but exhaustion is spread around evenly among the candidates. An enthusiastic dancer to Stevie Wonder ought to have the stamina to field questions from the likes of me.
When she has shown up, the quality of her responses and the intrinsic value of her perspective has made her demurral all the more frustrating. Her sign game has been very poor: even in areas of town where you’d expect Watterman to run strong, she’s conceded yardspace and wallspace to her opponents. Her direct mailing efforts have been just as weak. Thousands of people in Jersey City have voted for Joyce Watterman before, and they may well vote for Watterman again. But her campaign has been the strangest thing going: a run by a chief legislator and longtime insider that feels like a fringe effort.
It’s downright weird. She is the Council President. She should have been at every table. Instead, far too often, we’ve gotten an empty chair.
Prognosis: Though he says that the candidates have been asking for it, Steven Fulop has been conspicuously hesitant to pass the torch. Councilman Solomon has even said that he wouldn’t accept Fulop’s endorsement. Me, I am kinda shocked that the mayor wouldn’t simply give his blessing to Joyce Watterman after years of loyal support. He has never had a more reliable legislative ally. As he’s worked hard toward realizing his vision for the city, she’s given him a lot of help, even as it’s been pretty clear that she’s got other priorities. Coupled with Watterman’s relative absence on the campaign trail, Fulop’s refusal to return the favor makes me think there’s more to this story than what we know.
I’m hesitant to speculate. I will say that I’ll be very surprised if Joyce Watterman has a good Election Night. I’m hoping it isn’t an outright humiliation. I like her too much for that.
CHRISTINA FREEMAN
Who is she: A police officer and a student at New Jersey City University. Christina Freeman grew up on Dwight Street, deep in Greenville, much closer to Bayonne than to the luxury towers on the waterfront. She’s affiliated with Rising Tide Capital, an incubator for entrepreneurs, minority-owned businesses and nonprofits that has been active in Jersey City politics for two decades.
Disposition: Like many people who’ve served on the police force, Christina Freeman is surrounded by an aura of heaviness. It’s a tough job. No doubt she’s seen a lot that the rest of us would never want to see.
At debates, she’s held her own. She doesn’t have the immediate grasp of policy or facility for complicated explanation that the more experienced politicians do, but she knows what she believes in, and she’s been consistent about her values. She’s often demonstrated reticence unusual among those seeking office, most of whom are long-winded guys. When she doesn’t know the answer to a question, she does not attempt to fudge it. If Ali is the student at the edge of his seat with his hand up, begging to be given an opportunity to answer the question, Freeman is the quieter kid at the side of the class, taking notes, waiting patiently for her opportunity to speak. As engagements styles go, it’s a humble one, and if there’s one quality I’d like to cultivate in our next group of leaders, it’s humility.
For the Record: Officer Freeman has proposed a policy I really like. She wants to turn vacant houses into new homes offered on the cheap to people who’ve been in the community for years. In turn, those entrusted with the building have to commit to doing immediate renovations and staying here for a decade. As I see it, the Freeman Legacy Housing program demands and rewards initiative and loyalty. It also takes husks off of the block and gives them new life. Greenville is full of grand old buildings that could use a little love. Naturally, Freeman wants to give priority to people who might otherwise be priced out of town but who want to stay. As responses to the affordable housing crisis go, it certainly can’t hurt.
I’m not sure how much it helps, though. YIMBY conventional wisdom suggests that we need to flood the market with many more units, market-rate and otherwise, in order to increase the supply of options and drive prices down. Anything else is a paper towel over a crack in a sinking ship. Even as its implications depress me, I understand the argument. It’s the reason why a residential tower is going up on every block in Journal Square. That’s a model that would be tough to import to Greenville because there’s no train station to act as an anchor for a large-scale redevelopment. Maybe these block by block, human-scale interventions are the best way to go in the short term, and what we’ve really got to do is dig ourselves some new mass transit stations.
Prognosis: As an old reprobate, I’ve never been a big fan of agents of law enforcement, and I do not think that police captains tend to make good civilian leaders. But you’ll never hear me say ACAB. Many members of the Jersey City Police Department joined for the reason Freeman did: she’s dedicated to her neighborhood and her community and she wants to do something to help. Her methods might be more rules-driven than mine would be, but my frame of reference isn’t hers. She has ideas and initiative, and I’m glad she’s nudged her way into the conversation.
The void at the heart of the Watterman campaign has left the South Side of town wide open. Officer Freeman is working hard on a small budget, getting her name known, and building respect. I expect a decent return on her investment and an outcome that provides a nice foothold for a future run for a more attainable office.
Okay, thank you for reading. If you feel I am misguided, or that I belong in a home for wayward girls, or if you just think I deserve a cookie of some sort, please feel free to write me at trismccall@gmail.com. We’re all in the same gang here, and we all want the same thing: a Jersey City that’s a happy, exciting, affordable, survivable place for our personal stories to unfold. No matter what happens, there’ll be no sour grapes growing in these quarters. I wish only the best for the winners. Their success is our success.
Please read my last word on the outgoing mayor in this month’s edition of The Hudson Scholar. Thank you to Milan Zhu and the Scholar staff for printing my writing.
You might also like to read my interview with City Council candidate Meredith Burns, director of Art House Productions. Jersey City Times is trying to stay neutral, but I think it’s no secret that I’m enthusiastic about Meredith’s candidacy. It would be great to get an experienced arts leader on the City Council. When do we ever get the opportunity for that?
You might like to read my recap of the Jersey City Arts Debate.
Follow the election returns as they come in on Jersey City Times. I’ll be updating the site all night.
