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Schundler Finds Vindication In Jersey City Win
Originally appeared in the Star Leger
On
Thursday, May 13 1993.
Bret Schundler, Jersey City's first Republican mayor in 76 years, strode into a victory press conference at City Hall yesterday, rid at last of "the fluke" label Democrats had pasted on him during his re-election campaign.
Basking in his 68 percent majority, Schundler, 34, said he was confident that the voters had endorsed his reform program and repudiated Democratic machine politics by electing him to a four-year term over Hudson County Freeholder Louis Manzo, 38.
"I think more than anything else this victory represents the greater power of faith and hope over fear and hate," Schundler said.
That the winds of change blew through the city of 230,000 at hurricane force was acknowledged by Gov. Jim Florio in a phone call to the mayor.
Florio, a Democrat who is seeking a second term this year, suggested that the election was "a repudiation of the way government has worked in Hudson County in the past,"
Schundler reported.
However, the mayor, who switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP only three years ago, sought to play down such affiliations yesterday.
"The people of Jersey City showed label does not matter, he said.
It was Manzo who used party as a wedge in his campaign across a city where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans almost 10 to l.
The former city health inspector also portrayed Schundler's original win in a special election last November, which he took with 16 percent of the vote, as a "fluke," calling him the "mistake man." Manzo had placed second in the field of 19.
But with the vote in only one of the 176 election districts still outstanding, unofficial tallies made it
clear that voters liked what they saw during Schundler's six months in office.
In an election that drew about half the city's electorate, Schundler received 28,808 votes to Manzo's 12,109, while 1,033 votes were cast for Councilman Dan Waddleton, who represented the city's Heights section.
Democrats were hardly successful in efforts to capture the black vote by bringing in Jesse Jackson to campaign for Manzo and attempting to paint Schundler as pro-apartheid because has family's chemical business handled vermiculite. The loam-like material, used in potting soil and under swimming pool liners, is imported from South Africa.
The message brought a mixed reaction form the city's black electorate.
In the overwhelmingly black Bergen-Lafayette ward, Manzo and Schundler ran about 1,000 votes apart. The ward was the only one of six where there will be a runoff election for a council seat. Incumbent Dan Whey, who ran on Manzo's ticket, will face Schundler running mate Melissa Holloway on June 15.
Schundler running mates captured the seats in the other five wards and the three at-large seats, even ousting Anthony Cucci, a former mayor.
"The other side divided by class, color and income, and that just didn't work," said Schundler, a former Wall Street executive. "What the people are looking for, pure and simple, is a government working for them."
But Manzo attributed his defeat to a divided Democratic Party.
"We shouldn't have fought in November,'' he said, "What we sowed, we reaped."
Not in 20 years had Jersey City seen a mayoral race with so few candidates.
The last time was in 1973 when Mayor Paul Jordan was seeking reelection after filling the unexpired term of Thomas Whelan who had been convicted in the "Hudson Eight" federal construction kickback case.
In that election, reformer Jordan
was opposed by organization candidate Thomas (Buddy) Gangemi Jr. Gangemi's father had to leave the mayoralty in 1963 when it was learned that he was not an American citizen.
In a special election last November, Shundler was selected to fill the unexpired term of Mayor Gerald, McCann, who was forced from office in February 1992 after his conviction for mail fraud and income tax evasion.
But the future of the city concerns him most, Schundler said yesterday.
The mayor said he hoped that the
lame-duck council would act within a week on his program to sell tax liens, and he promised action on a voucher program that will give parents choice in selecting which school their children attend.
Schundler, the youngest of nine children, was born in Morristown and grew up in the Colonia section of Woodbridge.
After his graduation from Harvard University, he worked on the staff of Roy Dyson, a Democratic congressman from Maryland. In 1984, he was New Jersey coordinator for Democrat' Gary Hart's first presidential campaign.
In 1985, Schundler moved, to Jersey City and worked for Salamon Brothers and C.J. Lawrence, an economics research firm. In 1990, he became a self-employed financial manager.
He became involved in city affairs when he joined a community group. protesting a botched property tax revaluation during Cucci's mayoralty.
He then became a registered Republican and challenged Democrat Edward O'Connor (D-Hudson) in the 1991 state Senate race, polling 45 percent of the vote.
Schundler and his wife Lynn Greenfield, an attorney, have a 1-year-old daughter.
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