The Closing: Steven Fulop

Steven Fulop’s predecessor once made headlines for being photographed naked on his front porch after a night of drinking. Jersey City’s current mayor has taken a different approach, one that he describes as prioritizing professionalism.

So you will not get bizarre stories from Fulop — unless you think choosing to run is strange. He was an Ironman triathlete, which seems punishing even by New Jersey politics standards.

Fulop began his political career in decidedly Jersey fashion: by wading into a local feud. In 2004, another former mayor, Glenn Cunningham, persuaded Fulop to run for Congress against a formidable political rival, then-Rep. Bob Menendez. Fulop, a former Goldman trader who was fresh out of the Marine Corps, was pummeled in the primary. He still has a framed picture in his office that captures this overly ambitious time, posing and smiling with Cunningham.

“I look like a little boy,” he said during a recent interview.

The experience, however, gave him a taste for politics and enough name recognition to mount a successful City Council campaign. Nearly a decade later, Fulop became Jersey City’s 49th mayor.

Now a bridge over Newark Avenue, one of Jersey City’s major thoroughfares, invites visitors to “MAKE IT YOURS.”

The slogan has drawn ire as a magnet for gentrifiers, but Fulop, its chief instigator, defends it as part of his transformation of the Garden State’s second-biggest city.

“The city’s been here for a couple hundred years, and it never experienced this renaissance,” he said. “It did in the last 10 years, largely because of the policies that we put in place.”

Fulop has overseen an explosion of development in Jersey City, which between 2010 and 2021 permitted about three times as many homes per capita as New York City. In the process, Fulop has lured some of the Big Apple’s biggest developers, including Silverstein Properties, Tishman Speyer and Related Companies, across the Hudson.

Massive towers have sprung up along the waterfront and in a rejuvenated Journal Square, where the Loew’s Jersey Theater, a nearly century-old Baroque movie palace, is undergoing a $110 million renovation that will create a performance venue with 3,000-plus seats. A revamped pedestrian plaza lined with bars and restaurants stretches a third of a mile through downtown.

Fulop is congenial — relatable, in fact. At his office in City Hall, he tells a reporter from The Real Deal with a visible eye injury that he too recently scratched his cornea, on a Christmas tree. He gets a little rankled by the mention of surfers in Rhode Island, with whom he reportedly clashed in 2021. Coverage of the feud was “grossly distorted,” he says, and he likes the surfers just fine, thank you very much.

He’s diplomatic when asked about his standoff with Charlie Kushner, and he often begins sentences with “look,” giving the impression of frankness but delivering measured and not particularly revealing answers. He is a politician, after all, who is eying a run for governor.

Born: February 28, 1977
Hometown: Edison, New Jersey
Lives: Jersey City, New Jersey
Family: Married, two children

What were you like as a kid?

I come from a family of Holocaust survivors. My father had a deli in Newark, and my mom had an immigration services business next door. A Jewish education was important to my parents. I was an average student and was super-engaged in soccer and athletics. But it was a typical immigrant family.

What do you remember about working at your dad’s deli?

We would get there at 4 a.m. because the newspapers would arrive. If he wasn’t there to pick them up, they were often stolen. It was a long day. I appreciated the hard work and the commitment. They came here very much for that American dream, which I think has been part of the reason that I’ve been involved in service for most of my life. I view the military as a partial payment for citizenship, and I continue to serve because I think that when you grow up in that type of immigrant family, you feel a deep appreciation for the things that you have here.

Your older brother, Daniel, died in 2018. How did that affect you?

He and I were very close. We shared a room growing up. He worked for Related, was responsible for the pensions and some of the foreign investment for Hudson Yards. He was overseas, had a heart attack. It was very abrupt. You realize that there are things that are more important than titles, politics, government, these short things that you put on a pedestal. 

I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. I try to be more present with them. When I look back at myself 10 years ago, I was more focused on my professional development. This is a stop on a journey, being mayor. We’ll see where government and politics take me long-term, but it’s not the most important thing in my life by far. 

How did you meet your wife?

During the 2013 campaign for mayor. She has a chain of physical therapy clinics, and one of my Council candidates, who was running on my ticket, was a patient. He convinced her to do a meet-and-greet, invite some of their patients over and meet the candidates. They didn’t do a good job at the meet-and-greet. Nobody showed up. I met her, it was great.

How would you describe yourself as a father?

I became a dad a little bit later than a lot of my friends. I have a perspective from them about how quickly it goes. I try to enjoy it a little more. I’m fortunate in the fact that maybe I have a little bit more financial security, more flexibility than some of them had when they started their families at a younger age.

Is there anything about your experience as a Marine that informs your work now?

I was right near the towers when they were hit on 9/11. It changed my life, and I enlisted in the Marine Corps. It was, in hindsight, probably one of the best decisions of my life. I got to work with and experience a whole different type of person, understanding their priorities, where they come from. 

Some mayors in Hudson County have been in office for decades. Do you think there should be term limits?

This will be my last term. For me, I think two or three terms is enough time to have an impact and get your policy priorities moving forward. I never viewed this as the type of job that [I’ll] be here for 20 or 30 years. It just doesn’t fit who I am. The next chapter will be potentially running for governor or going back to the private sector. Either of those, I’m totally comfortable with.

In New York there’s pressure on politicians to distance themselves from real estate. Many have sworn off donations from the industry.

We haven’t sworn off donations because we view it as any other industry. A healthy city is a growing city. The only way to keep taxes relatively stable is by finding new people who want to move here and invest in the city. That’s a byproduct of having clear policies that people feel comfortable with, that they could invest in Jersey City and have certainty that those policies won’t change. 

We restructured the tax abatement policy. We took the politics out of it so you didn’t have to feel like you were hiring a certain consultant or lawyer in order to get access to a certain type of incentive. We’ve attracted, for the first time in the last 10 years, developers that were largely across the river: Tishman Speyer, Related, Silverstein, some of the larger players that for the first time felt comfortable investing large dollars here and looking for more projects. 

What could New York City learn from Jersey City in terms of encouraging new housing?

You have to build more market-rate in order to keep overall rent-stabilized. Because New York hasn’t been building at the same rate as we have per capita, it’s put a lot of pressure on the entire region. I think that New York, at times, is a victim of this NIMBY attitude. The process where you have local community boards and borough presidents, lots of layers that have a veto ability over any specific project, it takes a long period of time with a lot of layers that can have a project ultimately derailed. 

Jersey City and Kushner Companies were trading lawsuits a few years ago, with Charlie Kushner claiming that your opposition to a property tax break at One Journal Square was political retaliation for his connection to Donald Trump. How is your relationship with the Kushners now?

That relationship is mended. I’m appreciative that Charlie and the team are investing in Journal Square at the rate that they are. That project is a very, very significant and special project that will transform Jersey City. 

You try to be straightforward and articulate policies that you believe in, and sometimes you have disagreements with people. That was the case with Charlie, and it ended up being litigated, and it’s resolved now. But I feel like we’ve always operated with a clear set of rules with regards to tax abatements.

Today, at Journal Square, you have thousands of units under construction. You have some of the biggest developers in New York and New Jersey invested there: Spitzer, Silverstein, KRE, Namdar. The need for the tax abatements and incentives at that time just wasn’t there.

How do you build relationships with people you disagree with?

I think that I wasn’t that great at it when I came in. I was 36 years old. Going through the last 10 years, I’ve had some personal trials where I’ve lost family members. I’ve gotten married, I’ve had kids. I’ve grown up a little bit, and I understand a little bit more about relationships and cooperation and getting along with people. When I first came in, I think I was more of “my way is always the right way.”  There were probably some maturity issues there. 

Jersey City’s “Make It Yours” campaign received some backlash for encouraging a gentrifier mentality. How do you think about gentrification and displacement, and to what extent do you feel personally responsible for countering those forces as you encourage growth?

I said to the development community, “Let’s try a really concerted effort around branding,” and not how politicians typically do this where they put themselves into these commercials. I said, “Let’s do it in a way that really shines the best light on the city, and the city will match the dollars that you guys put in.” Then we started a targeted effort in the outer boroughs in New York and the other counties in North Jersey to attract business development and residents. It worked. 

“Make It Yours” was because we were targeting people that weren’t living here. Of course there was backlash from some people that were here that were saying, “I’m already here. I’d like to see it be mine.” You could make the city better for existing residents, which I think we have, and at the same time be inviting in residents from outside. I don’t think those are mutually exclusive. 

I think that it is our responsibility to deal with affordability and gentrification. We have a very aggressive inclusionary zoning ordinance in place now. We are doing what we can to encourage affordable housing, but at the same time, recognizing that market-rate housing is part of the equation.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

On Election Day, there was an individual, fairly prominent, who told me what I consider to be terrible advice in hindsight. I think it was typical of New Jersey, and how people perceive politics. But his advice to me was: If you want to get reelected, do nothing controversial, and pretty much do nothing because nobody will be mad at you. 

I wanted to be consequential and do big things here. It stuck with me because it embodied what New Jersey and most politicians are perceived as, which is what I did not want to be, and I don’t think I’ve been, in the last 10 years.

Every person from New Jersey thinks they are a bagel or breakfast sandwich aficionado. Do you feel like working in a deli has made you particularly discerning?

People in New Jersey have strong opinions about everything, let alone breakfast sandwiches. My favorite delis here are Vito’s in Hoboken or Andrea’s in the Heights. 

I know you are a runner, but do you have any other hobbies?

My New Year’s resolution last year, which I failed at, was to finish the “Moonlight Sonata” third movement, which is a very, very difficult piece. I played once with [Blues Traveler’s] John Popper. It’s the only time I ever played outside of my home. He was doing a fundraiser at a medium-sized venue here, maybe three years ago. We had a mutual friend, and we were hanging out for a little bit. 

Then he says to me, “I understand that you play piano.” I said, “Yeah. Kind of.” I mean, what am I going to say? He says, “Why don’t you come out tonight with the band and play with us?” I said, “Listen, I have never played with really any other instruments because I’m super self-conscious.” He says to me, “Look, I am a professional. I will make sure that you look good.”

What do you think about Jersey City being called the “sixth borough?”

I don’t like it. I think that we very much have our own identity. The blue collar and immigrant history of this city has been very, very unique. We don’t view ourselves as an appendage of New York. Our economies are certainly tied, I think all of northern New Jersey is tied to the success and failure of the city. But we have our own personality, our own successes.