Steve Fulop

Daniel Levin, founder and past president of Civic JC, a citywide good government organization, announced today that he is a candidate for Jersey City mayor.

"I am running for mayor of Jersey City as a clear and distinct alternative to both the past administration and current candidates," said Levin, who is challenging Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy.

"I will bring the public back into the decision-making processes of Jersey City government, lead a more open, transparent, responsible government accountable to constituents, reduce conflicts of interest through campaign finance and ethical code reforms, advance an alternative economic vision for the city that will provide needed jobs for our inner-city residents, and make Jersey City a better employer through sound management practices," Levin added.

He said in the coming months, he intends to build a coalition of reform-minded council candidates and run with a full council slate.

Ostensibly, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy and Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop are engaged in a polite exchange of ideas. In reality, the two are enmeshed an early battle for political positioning before next year’s mayoral race, with mutual contempt lurking barely beneath the surface.

Healy yesterday proposed an amendment to Fulop’s anti-pay-to-play ballot initiative that would, in effect, take it off the ballot in November if passed. Healy wants candidates to file financial disclosures. If they have a net worth of $2 million or make over $500,000 a year, he thinks they should be exempt from a ban on taking contributions from vendors that do business with the city.

Although Jersey City Municipal Clerk Robert Byrne has sided with the city against one of Councilman Steve Fulop’s ballot initiatives, the signatures for his anti-pay-to-play intiative were certified today.

But that initiative might not make it on the ballot after all if Mayor Jerramiah Healy has his way, depriving Fulop of a chance to make his case directly to the voters of Jersey City.

Healy wrote a letter today to Byrne, members of the city council and Fulop’s legal team proposing an amendment to Fulop’s pay-to-play initiative.

In the battle of the ballot initiatives, Jersey City Municipal Clerk Robert Byrne ruled against Councilman Steve Fulop today, deciding that a petition for an ordinance he wanted to put before voters in November that would bar council members from accepting more than one public salary did not have enough signatures to get on the ballot.

Fulop said today that he intends to challenge the decision in front of a judge.

“We’re going to fight. We think we have a strong standing on this, and we’re going to go to court,” he said.

Last week, Jersey City Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis filed an 11th hour challenge to Councilman Steve Fulop’s signatures to put one of his two reform initiatives on the ballot.

Today, Fulop shot back with by presenting his side of the legal argument to Municipal Clerk Robert Byrne, written by attorney and Brian M. Nelson.  He also submitted an extra 600 signatures. 

Fulop, who’s considering a mayoral bid next May, has spent the greater part of the last year collecting signatures for two initiatives for November’s general election: one bars contractors that do business with the city from donating to public officials.  The other, which was challenged by Matsikoudis, would bar city council members from accepting more than one taxpayer-funded salary (Six of the nine council members hold more than one public job, while Councilman Steve Lipski runs a charter school). 

Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason: Politicker photo 

HOBOKEN - Taking a nod from Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop, freshman Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason intends to introduce an amendment that would ban city elected officials from receiving more than one public salary or pension.

"I am sure that Councilman Fulop recognizes, as do I, how difficult it is to create a more responsive and responsible government when the primary interest of many elected officials lies in perpetuating a cumbersome, costly bureaucracy that rewards the few, at the expense of the many," Mason said.

Elected last year to fill a vacant seat in the city’s second ward, Mason - like Fulop in Jersey City - is a likely 2009 mayoral candidate.

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop hasn’t announced his candidacy for mayor next year, but he’s already begun cobbling together a slate.

Former Hudson County Sheriff Joseph Cassidy today announced that he will join a ticket headed by the 31-year-old Fulop in next year’s election. Cassidy, 67, plans to run as a council candidate along with James Carroll, who hopes to run in Ward D.

Jersey City has nine council seats – six from different wards and three at-large. Cassidy has not yet determined whether he will run for an at-large seat or for the Ward A spot currently occupied by Michael Sottolano.

Things appear to be getting a little prickly between Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop and former Mayor Bret Schundler – two prospective candidates in next year’s mayoral election who share the same base of voters downtown.

At issue are the two ballot initiatives Fulop plans to put on the ballot in November – one which enacts a pay-to-play ban and another that bars city council members from accepting more than one public salary.

The initiatives also work as an organizing tool for Fulop, who’s used dozens of volunteers in the effort and hopes that it will increase his name recognition outside of his own Ward E.

After Fulop turned in enough signatures to get the initiatives on the ballot, Schundler came out wholeheartedly in support of them, and mentioned that he’d be willing to hold a joint press conference with Fulop in support of them.

Fulop, however, shot down that idea.

Former Jersey City mayor and two-time gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, who’s mulling a return to City Hall, said today that he supports the ballot initiatives championed by Steve Fulop, another prospective mayoral candidate, and would go as far to hold a press conference supporting it.  

“They very much follow in the footprints of the ethics reforms I proposed during my gubernatorial campaign in 2001,” wrote Schundler in an email to PolitickerNJ.

The initiatives, which are likely to be in the November general election ballot, ban city officials from accepting campaign contributions from vendors with business before the city within a year of the contract’s start date and force City Council members to accept only one taxpayer funded salary. 

Jersey City Heights businessman Michael Yun, a long time friend political ally of Bret Schundler, said that the former mayor and gubernatorial candidate will seek to reclaim the city's top office in 2009.

“He’s definitely going to run, yes, and we’re organizing,” Yun told PolitickerNJ in a phone interview this morning.

Schundler has spent the last couple weeks attending neighborhood meetings and asking local politicians for support, aided by Yun. He recently announced his mayoral intentions to a gathering of Hudson County Republicans at their reorganization meeting, though in less definite language.