In a wide-ranging interview with Pipe Dream, Steven Fulop ’99, the Democratic mayor of Jersey City, discussed his candidacy and his life on campus, including a run for Stuent Association president around 25 years ago.
By Brandon Ng –
In the late 1990s, an ambitious junior ran for Student Association president with a coalition of athletes and members of Greek life behind him. Though he lost that election, his first, nearly three decades ago, it’s the one he’s running in now that could reverberate across the tri-state area.
Steven Fulop ‘99, who serves as the mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey’s second-most populous city, is running for governor in a crowded field that includes two U.S. representatives, another big-city mayor, a former State Senate president and the president of the state’s largest teacher’s union. He spoke with Pipe Dream last month about his candidacy and college years.
Born in Edison, New Jersey, Fulop was recruited to play soccer and described the University as “a good mix between athletic, academic and price.” During his underclassman years, Fulop lived in College-in-the-Woods’ Oneida and Seneca Halls before moving to Washington Street in Downtown Binghamton.
After two years on the soccer team, he pledged a fraternity, Tau Epsilon Phi, then studied abroad and became involved in student government, first serving as a representative in the SA Congress. From there, he ran for SA president.
“I had this theory that I would run for SA president, and I had a really interesting network of friends because I wasn’t the typical person that was involved in student government,” Fulop said. “I obviously had a big network in Greek life, and I had a big network in athletics.”
“I thought I could get them involved, and we could see if that can change student government, and so I ran without knowing anything, and we ran with making it a joke because what we tried to do at the time — really funny literature, things the way we approached it — was more from an entertainment standpoint.”
Fulop recalled the day of the election as sunny and warm with many of his classmates outside. His base of support was easy to find, and he found himself in a runoff election. That subsequent election was held on a day that Fulop said had terrible weather, and with hard-to-motivate voters, he lost.
Though he said his experience in college did not represent a calling to elected office, the parallels between that election and his bid to lead a state of over 9.5 million are undeniable.
“If I was going to build a campaign that wasn’t relying on the political machine, I had to do it grassroots and that takes time,” Fulop said of his decision to launch his bid for governor in April 2023, making him the first Democrat to announce. “I wanted to be really substantive on policy, like really detailed on what we’re going to change in New Jersey.”
The Garden State has experienced several political earthquakes since the rollout of Fulop’s campaign. Just over one year later, Andy Kim, then a congressman who ran to replace indicted U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, won his lawsuit in federal court against New Jersey’s unique primary ballot design, which gave political parties in 19 of the state’s 21 counties the power to design primary ballots organized by endorsement.
The design, commonly called the “county line,” gave a nearly insurmountable boost to candidates endorsed by the county parties, with congressional candidates receiving a 38-point advantage for being on the line, according to one oft-cited analysis by Julia Sass-Rubin, an associate professor and associate dean at Rutgers University.
“I have always been outside that system, same thing where I am today,” said Fulop, who graduated with a degree in political science before working at Goldman Sachs and joining the Marine Corps after the 9/11 attack.
In 2013, Fulop defeated an incumbent in his run for Jersey City mayor, a race in which his opponent was heavily favored and boasted endorsements from heavyweight politicians, including then-President Barack Obama. He told Pipe Dream that his opponents in the party machinery eventually tempered their opposition because of his electoral success.
He submitted a brief to the court overseeing the county line lawsuit in April 2024, saying its existence convinced him to forego a 2017 run for governor in a primary against Phil Murphy, now a term-limited incumbent, as he “determined that he did not have a path to the nomination without the support of the various county parties, i.e., the county line on their ballots, and would not get that support.”
However, before endorsing Kim, who won in 2024 to become the first Korean American U.S. senator, Fulop backed the establishment favorite, First Lady Tammy Murphy. He said that his initial endorsement was because of his unfamiliarity with Kim but that “as the campaign progressed, she showed that she wasn’t really an effective candidate with any sort of vision for what she would do in the Senate.”
Fulop said he supported congestion pricing, the toll that has bitterly divided Democrats in the region, because of its environmental benefits, contrasting Murphy, the incumbent governor who aggressively opposed it and previously sued New York in federal court.
Recently, President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary revoked federal approval for congestion pricing, and Marc Molinaro, the president’s pick to lead the Federal Transit Administration who represented Greater Binghamton in Congress for one term, has expressed strong opposition to the scheme.
Fulop said reforming the state’s political system would be a top priority if elected. He linked Democrats’ underperformance in New Jersey in the 2024 election — Trump lost by a mere six percentage points compared to a near-16 percent loss in 2020 — to a political system he hopes to rebuild.
“I think the political system in New Jersey creates apathy and a system that doesn’t grow the Democratic base because you have these political bosses that have monetized the position for their own self-interest, and I think the public sees that,” Fulop said.
He added that competitive primaries are healthy for democracy, holding up the lack of a contest in the Democratic Party after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last summer. Fulop is actively recruiting candidates he says have faced systemic barriers to run on his slate.
Despite his positioning as a reform candidate, Fulop has faced previous media scrutiny for his political past. A Politico feature published in June 2024 cited an NJ.com report when describing allegations that as he was considering a run for governor in 2017, Fulop awarded contracts to politically connected firms.
In response, Fulop said that he was among the most-scrutinized politicians in New Jersey, and NJ.com, which is owned by Advance Publications, covered Hudson County “differently than any other county in the state.” He said that he ran “a scandal-free administration,” and that “people throw stones and accusations all the time, and what time has shown is that even when they charge you with doing that, they don’t end up being true.”
“I was looking at running for governor in 2017, and in 2016 or ‘15 started to lay the groundwork for that,” he said. “Ultimately, I made a strategic mistake in the fact that I built the campaign with a lot of relationships around the traditional system in New Jersey that I didn’t feel comfortable with.”
“And that ultimately led to me not feeling comfortable with where our campaign message was and causing me not to run,” he added.
When describing why students should gravitate toward his campaign, Fulop touted his progressive-orientated approach as mayor, saying: “There is nobody that has a more extensive track record on health care reform or progressive policies, or criminal justice reform or environmental justice than I do in Jersey City.”
He framed his campaign as one that would help raise the University’s profile on the national stage, saying it has not matched its competitors — like Florida State University and Rutgers University — in creating “a narrative around being better academically.”
“I think the more prominent places that you have alumni from Binghamton, the better the school is, and the better the narrative is and the better the school’s narrative gets elevated,” Fulop said.
Trending
RECENT NEWS
alumni
Campus News
Community
Campus News
Campus News
