Steven Fulop announces candidacy for New Jersey governor — an election more than two years away

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who’s led the booming waterfront city for 10 years, will run for New Jersey governor in 2025.

The 46-year-old third-term mayor will seek the Democratic nomination in what is expected to be a crowded field, though he’s so far the only candidate to formally announce his run to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

“From my time serving as a U.S. Marine to leading Jersey City as mayor, my career has always been guided by a strong desire to take on difficult challenges and find solutions that help improve peoples’ lives, and now I’m running for governor to bring those same values to Trenton,” Fulop, an Iraq veteran, said in a press release.

“I’m launching my campaign now because I believe that New Jersey can become an even better place for all of us, and I will be sharing my vision over the coming months for how we will make it happen," he added. "I’ve never backed down from a fight before, and I’m ready to work hard for all the people of our great state to deliver the results New Jersey deserves.”

An accompanying announcement  video opens with images of the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 and recounts how Fulop left his job as an analyst for Goldman Sachs to join the Marines, and it includes interviews with several veterans Fulop served with. It then highlights his policies in Jersey City, like paid sick leave requirements for many businesses and a $15 minimum wage for city workers.

Jersey City, which is directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, has seen a huge development boom under Fulop. Fulop boasted of helping attract major developments more inland from the city’s waterfront, which has seen periodic post-industrial building booms since the 1980s.

In his State of the City speech last month, Fulop highlighted the city’s efforts to make healthy food available in poor neighborhoods, a city program to resettle refugees, and deals that require developers to include affordable housing units in their projects. He’s also presided over an expansion of bike lanes.

Fulop’s candidacy itself is far from a surprise. He announced he would not seek reelection as mayor in January in what was widely viewed as a pre-gubernatorial announcement.

But it is a surprise that he announced his candidacy two years before the Democratic primary. Prospective candidates often hold off on formally announcing their candidacies because, if they accept public financing as most do, they’re be limited to $7.3 million ahead of the primary. However, a super PAC that’s run by his wife’s business partner called Coalition for Progress, which is all but officially considered Fulop's, has $6.2 million in the bank.

Fulop spokesperson Phil Swibinski said that he does plan to pursue public financing.

Fulop, who grew up in Edison and whose parents owned a deli in Newark, was on the precipice of running for governor in 2017. He traveled the state to meet with power brokers, but suddenly backed off in the fall of 2016 to endorse Murphy, who will not be able to seek reelection due to term limits.

Fulop had been considered a top-tier candidate, and his sudden withdrawal from the race alienated and mystified some political allies at the time while boxing out then-Senate President Steve Sweeney, who was also expected to run.

Other frequently-mentioned potential Democratic candidates for governor in 2025 include Sweeney, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer.

Former 2021 gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has also said he intends to run again, though he’s likely to face other Republicans for the nomination.

Fulop’s political career began as a no-hope candidate for Congress in the Democratic primary against then-U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, who at the time was feuding with then-Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham, who recruited Fulop. Though Fulop lost that race badly, he shocked the city’s political establishment in 2005 by winning a council seat in the city’s quickly-gentrifying Ward E.

Fulop became a critic of the city’s Democratic machine, annoying then-Mayor Jerramiah Healy and gaining some prominence as a critic of Hudson County’s all-too-frequent corruption scandals. But after defeating Healy in 2013, Fulop took the reins of the political machine and became the target of critics who questioned his ethics.

Coalition for Progress, which was founded ahead of Fulop’s expected 2017 gubernatorial run, faced several complaints from ethics watchdog groups over a $1 million donation it received from a Delaware trust that appeared designed to hide the donor’s identity. The trust was formed on December 23, 2015 and made the donation the following day.

Seven months later, in an amended campaign finance report, the super PAC revealed the donor to be Vivek Garipalli, the owner of the for-profit hospital chain CarePoint Health, which owns a hospital in Jersey City that Fulop once recommended for an ambulance contract.

In 2014, Fulop’s then-chief of staff, Muhammed Akil, was caught on tape in what sounded like an effort to try to steer a city energy consulting contract to a specific company, circumventing a public bidding process.

“What I don’t like about this, see, f---ing straight up this is the kind of s--- where motherf---ers go to jail,” Akil said on the recording, which POLITICO obtained in 2017. Fulop heard the recording, according to a deposition, but Akil remained his chief of staff for nearly a year after and even after it became public, Fulop did not completely cut ties with Akil.

Fulop’s future opponents will likely raise some of those controversies, but so far they’re not commenting.

“OK,” Sweeney, who frequently butted heads with Fulop in the lead-up to the 2017 gubernatorial election, said in a phone interview when asked about Fulop’s candidacy. “That’s not really a shock, is it?