Progressive Topples Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Mcgreevey In Jersey City Mayoral Runoff

James Solomon, a 41-year-old city councilmember elected with the support of anti-machine progressives, will be the next mayor of New Jersey’s second largest city.

Shortly after polls closed, Solomon was leading with 69 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press, which called the race.

Solomon won Tuesday’s runoff to lead Jersey City, besting disgraced former Gov. Jim McGreevey. Both men are Democrats but from different parts of the party.

"Tonight is a win for Jersey City against the corrupt political machine," Solomon said in a statement. "Together, we’re going to build a more affordable Jersey City, where everyone has a chance to thrive and where the people are put first, not developers and special interests. My promise to Jersey City is simple: I will be a mayor for you."

McGreevey, who announced his campaign an unheard-of two years before the election, had establishment backing that turned into baggage. He joins former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who last month lost his bid to become mayor of New York City, just across the Hudson River — as a politician who grasped for a second chance in public life that voters didn’t want to give them.

Solomon, meanwhile, forged an alliance of anti-machine figures, like Sen. Andy Kim, and even former rivals who didn’t make the runoff, including Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea and Mussab Ali, a TikTok-famous progressive.

Both McGreevey and Solomon campaigned on similar themes, like the high cost of housing in a city that’s known to some as New York City’s sixth borough — and has the rental prices to show for it. But Solomon campaigned against developers, while McGrevey campaigned with their donations.

Solomon came in first in a seven-way Nov. 4 general election, with 29 percent to McGreevey’s 25 percent, but that wasn’t enough to seal the deal and sent the race to the runoff.

It quickly became clear to most observers that McGreevey was toast, with establishment supporters backing away from him in the face of a seemingly inevitable defeat. But the candidates nonetheless held a series of debates, giving informed but undecided voters an unusual number of chances to watch and Solomon a chance to deploy sometimes devastating one-liners.

“You probably wish we defunded the police because you’ve been under investigation from so many different law-enforcement agencies,” Solomon said during one debate on a local CBS station, a reference to the swirl of scandals that surrounded McGreevey before he resigned in 2004.

McGreevey called the line “rubbish.”

While McGreevey resigned with a speech remembered for the line “I am a gay American,” and his fall is often tied solely to his sexual orientation in an era before more widespread acceptance, he was involved in several controversies at the time, most notably putting his lover on the state payroll as a homeland security adviser in the months after 9/11 without proper credentials.

Still, while McGreevey is unlikely to be back in elected office, he’s won widespread praise for working on a reentry program for people who have been imprisoned. That’s work even his foes, including Solomon, have applauded.

Now Solomon takes over a city — among the fastest growing in the region — amid an affordability crisis.

But at least one person is expected to leave: Solomon’s predecessor, Mayor Steven Fulop, who lost a bid earlier this year to become governor, is moving to New York to run that city’s preeminent business group.