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Republican Is Their Shepherd In Jersey City
A white, Bible-quoting GOP mayor is tryig to lead this Democratic bastion through a valley of urban woes.
Originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 7/27/96
JERSEY CITY, N.J.
By any yardstick, he was an odd
choice: a Republican in a
Democratic bastion; a white in a city
that is 65% minority; a Harvard
sociology major and millionaire Wall
Streeter in a city where two-thirds
of high school students do not
graduate and per capita annual
income is $10,000; a squeaky-clean,
Bible-quoting idealist in a county that
had sent 14 of its mayors off to jail
over 20 years.
"A lot of people in Jersey City
had been abused by the corrupt
urban machine for so long, they still
refuse to believe anybody in
government is anything but a crook,"
Schundler, 37, said recently. "So I
have to deal with the prejudice that I
am a crook too. Then there are
people who think because I am a
Republican I am going to be
heartless."
Schundler, a former Democrat who
ran Gary Hart's 1984 New Jersey
campaign, won a special election in
1992 after Mayor Gerald McCann
was forced from office after
conviction on mail-fraud and
income-tax-evasion charges.
For Republicans, stung by the
perception that theirs is a party of
white suburbia with little compassion
for the problems of the inner city,
Schundler became an overnight
GOP star as he raced through his
first six months in office, cutting
property taxes, slashing spending,
putting more cops on the beat and
setting up "neighborhood
improvement districts" where
residents made decisions usually reserved for city hall bureaucrats.
Perhaps most important,
Schundler dismantled the
patronage system, battled the
powerful municipal unions and
reached out to every segment of
one of America's most ethnically
diverse cities.
The City Council slate he put
together for the regular election in
1993 -- he won with a record
68% of the vote, including 40%
of the black vote --included two
African-Americans, two Latinos
and three women.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-Ga.) called him one of the
most exciting Republicans in the
country. Time magazine included
him in its 1994 list of 50 future
leaders younger than 40. The Wall
Street Journal lauded him and his
Jack Kemp-style economic
policies. He was proof,
supporters said, that
empowerment, not entitlement,
was the key to rescuing the
nation's troubled cities.
"You don't want government to
make itself strong," Schundler
says. "You want government to
make the weak strong."
Now Schundler is facing his
most difficult challenge. Although
housing starts are up and poverty,
according to one study, has
dropped substantially, Jersey
City faces a $20-million shortfall
this year. Property taxes have
crept back up in the wake of a
court order that Jersey City pay
back $102 million in taxes
collected illegally by the previous
administration. And the schools,
where only 16% of ninth-graders
can pass proficiency tests, remain
under state control.
His cherished program of
school vouchers, enabling parents
to choose what school their
children attend, appears unlikely
to win approval. It was
applauded by Republicans
nationally but drew limited
support at home.
"Schundler started very
strong," said Stephen Salmore, a
professor of political science at
Rutgers University's Eagleton
Institute of Politics.
"He took advantage of a split in
the Democratic Party, and he
came across as someone with
fresh ideas."
Undeniably, Schundler's
entrepreneurial approach to local
government is changing the
structure, and maybe the heart, of
a city long cited as a example Of
urban despair.
"In my 18 years here I don't
think another Jersey City mayor
has provided the kind of
opportunities Mayor Schundler
has," said Eleanor Watson,
president of the Hudson County
Urban League.
"In dealing with him, I find he's
relatively forthright as far as
politicians go. He says he can or
he can't."
Asked how he would rate his
"performance as mayor,
Schundler answers without a
blink, "A-plus."
Still, with the Democratic
machine reorganizing, he faces a
tough campaign for reelection in
May 1997. No Jersey City
mayor has been reelected and
served out his second term since
the days of Frank "I am the law"
Hague, who ruled from 1917 to
1949.
Hague put his opponents in jail
and kept a safe in his office
stuffed with bribe money. By
contrast, in Schundler's office is
the Bible and the Koran, the
Muslims' holy book.
When asked why he and his
wife, Lynn, an attorney, choose
to make Jersey City home when
most successful Wall Street
executives head off to places like
Greenwich, Conn., or
Westchester, N.Y., Schundler
replies with the same combination
of pragmatism and idealism he
brings to his job.
First, he says, Jersey City was
so convenient to Manhattan, just
10 minutes away by subway
under the Hudson. And second,
"my sense as a Christian was
simply that one of the great charges Jesus has for us is that you are supposed to serve the poor and feed the hungry."
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