The political ghost of New Jersey’s most tarnished past has rattled its chains and won a temporary stay, as disgraced former Governor Jim McGreevey, despite being resoundingly rejected by three out of four Jersey City voters, has clawed his way into a December runoff.
Trailing progressive City Councilman James Solomon by more than 2,500 votes, McGreevey’s second-place finish in a crowded field ensures that the city, New Jersey’s second-largest, must now endure another month of a campaign that feels less like a political contest and more like an exhumation.
McGreevey’s attempted resurrection, staged over two decades after he orchestrated one of the most spectacular political flameouts in state history, is built upon a foundation of breathtaking audacity.
Having resigned in 2004 not merely for being a “gay American,” but for placing his unqualified male lover in a critical—and patently fraudulent—homeland security role at a $110,000 salary, McGreevey now asks voters to overlook the myriad corruption scandals he so masterfully rebranded as a personal awakening.
Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea ran TV and digital ads calling McGreevey a corrupt, disgraced politician.
“Before we choose our next Mayor, Jersey City voters deserve to meet the real Jim McGreevey and to understand the full breadth of his long history of fiscal mismanagement, tax increases and gaming the system for his own benefit,” said O’Dea. “McGreevey can try to rewrite history all he wants, but the facts are the facts and the more Jersey City voters learn about his record, the more committed they are to making sure that he’s not our next Mayor.”
O’Dea’s campaign also slammed the former governor over his top donor, Charles Kushner, who pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to McGreevey’s campaigns, witness tampering, and filing false tax returns. Kushner—who is the father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law—was recently named ambassador to France.
McGreevey’s PR miracle made his resignation about something other than standard-issue political corruption, but he barely made an effort to hide it.
Gerald McCann, a former mayor who served two non-consecutive terms before being convicted of fraud in a savings-and-loan scheme, acted as an advisor to McGreevey.
Kushner and his wife also maxed out to McGreevey’s mayoral campaign, an investment that appears to represent diminishing returns as O’Dea and other contenders are likely to line up behind Solomon.
McGreevey raised approximately $2.6 million for his mayoral campaign, mainly from institutional and developer donors, while Solomon managed to collect about half that amount.
Solomon’s campaign operated with the precision of a startup. His message, centered on anti-corruption, independence from developer influence, and reform, resonated across downtown and some working-class neighborhoods.
His 25.1 percent share of the vote is a stark repudiation of that request, a clear signal that a majority of Jersey City residents remember the stench of pay-to-play politics that defined his gubernatorial tenure, a culture where official power was bartered for personal and political gain.
While McGreevey postures as a reformed man of the people, his campaign rhetoric rings with a hollow, practiced cynicism.
He attacks Solomon’s eight-year council record on affordability, a bold strategy for a man whose own most lasting legacy is a resignation speech.
Solomon, in turn, has drawn the battle lines with surgical precision, labeling McGreevey “the living embodiment of the corrupt, failed, politicians of the past.”
Heading into the runoff on December 2, Solomon said he wants six debates with Jim McGreevey, at least two of them televised.
McGreevey skipped the last two debates before the November election, but he now claims to “welcome the opportunity to debate Councilman Solomon in every ward, neighborhood, and corner of Jersey City.”
This runoff is not merely a choice between two candidates, but a referendum on whether a city grappling with a severe affordability crisis, underperforming schools, and quality-of-life concerns will trust its future to a man who so profoundly betrayed the public’s trust in his last major office.
The stage is now set for a four-week sprint to see if McGreevey, the 68-year-old former seminarian and current non-profit executive, can to convince a skeptical electorate that his long absence from elected office is a virtue, not a consequence.
But the numbers tell a different story: 18,339 voters chose a forward-looking vision, while 15,760 opted for a ghost.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop criticized the city’s election process and advocated for adopting ranked-choice voting instead of a runoff.
“Jersey City’s mayoral race is tightening + almost certainly headed to a December runoff,” Fulop said on social media. “In hindsight, the runoff system will [probably] be viewed as a mistake. A non-partisan, ranked-choice election in November would be the best model.”
The question for Jersey City is whether it will allow a figure defined by disgrace to rewrite his final chapter in the mayor’s office, or if it will finally close the book on the McGreevey era for good.