These days, it seems, everyone wants a piece of Bret Schundler.
With his stunning victory in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday, the outgoing Jersey City mayor can now count glad-handers, a media horde, and curiosity-seekers among a pack that now follows his every move – a far cry from four months ago, when he launched what was perceived as a quixotic run for governor.
At that February morning kickoff on the Trenton State House steps, the former high school linebacker addressed a smattering of supporters and members of the press. Scant few believed he had a shot, even after the challenger, Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco, bowed out over alleged ethics concerns and Bob Franks replaced him. That perception held true right up to the moment he scored a 14-point victory last week.
Schundler won’t crow now, and really, he hasn’t had much of a chance to.
“For the most part,” he said last week, “the last couple of days, I’ve been so busy.”
He’s also had little time to reflect on his eight-and-a-half years here, or for that matter, to pack his things from City Hall, the remainder of which he hoped to get out before Glenn Cunningham’s arrival today (Sunday, July 1.) Still, he admitted to feeling “a little teary eyed” as he traveled around the city for the past several months.
A look at his record
In an interview last week, Schundler, 42, said he felt successful at bringing jobs, people and a sense of pride back to the city.
In late 1992, Schundler beat out 18 other candidates in a special election that followed the conviction of Mayor Gerald McCann on a fraud charge. The conservative Schundler became an instant darling of both the media and the Republican Party. Iowans leafing through a copy of Reader’s Digest could read about the Harvard-educated, Wall Street whiz kid taking over the fading industrial Jersey town.
Newt Gingrich called him “exciting.”
But after all the hoopla, it was time for some governing.
Last week, the husband and father of two pointed to the use of city funds in poorer areas in the city as a major accomplishment. He also defended bonding, or borrowing, to fill city budget gaps, which caused the city’s debt to increase. Schundler said that without it, there would have been a hike in property taxes.
Schundler lamented the loss in the recent mayoral election of his endorsed candidate – outgoing Council President Tom DeGise, but said he believes Cunningham will do a good job.
Back to 1992
In the first year of his administration, Schundler scored an early success with the bundling of the city’s vast collection of tax-delinquent properties, which he sold on Wall Street. A stroke that was hailed for bringing $38 million into the city’s coffers, it resulted in a five-month tax holiday, not to mention thumbs up from the press. Since then, however, the sale has been scrutinized, and has resulted in several lawsuits and lost money. Some officials have charged that the sale should have handled better and that it should have brought in much more money.
Turning his eye toward crime, Schundler created a “community policing” division that would take a more aggressive tack and turn over well-paid desk jobs to civilians. The move raised the ire of police throughout Jersey City, and precinct lockers around town still sport “Schundler Lies” stickers. Still, crime has fallen some 40 percent since Schundler first took office, but sections of the city, particularly parts of the West Side and Bergen Hill, remain crime- and drug-plagued. A recently installed crime camera system had a bumpy beginning.
Mayor Glenn Cunningham made crime an issue in his campaign, saying that it doesn’t matter if crime is down if there are still drug dealers on the corner.
Last week, Schundler also pointed to the Martin Luther King Drive Hub redevelopment as a major accomplishment. That designated redevelopment area has lured a gleaming shopping plaza, market rate housing and a new post office.
Charter schools and budgets
Labelling it one of his major successes, Schundler was instrumental in bringing eight charter schools – publicly-funded alternatives to regular schools – to Jersey City. He also has vowed in his campaign for governor to revive a modified voucher plan, a tool he believes would be most effective at school reform. Critics of the plan believe allowing students use vouchers to leave their neighborhood public school will be detrimental to the school systems.
Schundler has also angered public schools with his complaints that a state-approved $12 billion school construction bond that passed this year should have been subject to a public vote, which it was not. Nearly $1 billion of that is slated to go to the Jersey City schools.
The finances of the city itself have spurred more debates in the last few years. The fiscal successes of the early Schundler administration did not continue when a gap in the municipal budget yawned wider. Two years ago, the city suffered with a $16 million budget gap, and had to struggle with the state to fill it. Two months ago, a state-ordered audit from the private Arthur Andersen consulting firm criticized the city’s spending practices, saying that Jersey City government “is suffering from a lack of comprehensive planning” and recommending $3.85 million in budget cuts. Schundler supporters questioned the timing of the report, which was released during the primary race.
The mayor has blamed cuts in state aid for the budget gap that opened up. By criticizing the state for its cuts in aid, Schundler managed to infuriate then-Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. A chicken-and-egg debate continues over the origins of this political rift, and whether it was responsible for future aid cuts.
Schundler said last week that people have told him, “I don’t know, maybe if you didn’t get the governor angry, you wouldn’t have gotten your funding cut.” But the mayor claims the state funding, which he argued most large New Jersey cities need to keep tax rates down, was slashed before he complained about it.
The cuts, he said, prompted the city to begin bonding, a move that many criticize. For his part, Schundler said the bonding was necessary to keep taxes down.
“We could have gone and increased property taxes,” he said. “That would have been a piece of cake. Or we could have laid off firefighters and police officers.”
The city’s municipal tax rate has risen from $17.04 per thousand dollars of property in 1992 to $20.24 per thousand in 2000. That means that the owner of a $150,000 home in 1992 would have paid $2,556 in city taxes (not counting county and school taxes) that year, and $3,036 in city taxes in 2000. The city’s municipal tax levy, or the actual total amount that taxpayers must contribute to the budget, has risen from $98.2 million in 1992 to 103.2 million in 2000.
Water and sewer rates overall are less than they were in 1993. They have still increased significantly in the past several years, from $3.56 per unit in 1997 to $4.53 per unit in 2000.
There were several other battles and setbacks as well as triumphs in Schundler’s eight years. Schundler managed to lure big Manhattan firms like Goldman Sachs, Chase Manhattan and Charles Schwab to the city’s waterfront. Some have said that he shouldn’t have used payment-in-lieu-of-tax (PILOT) agreements to do it. Those agreements set an amount ahead of time that the developer will be paying to the city each year instead of regular fluctuating property taxes. PILOTS do encourage development in blighted areas, but some feel that developers should pay the same taxes as everyone else.
Another battle during Schundler’s term was the recent fight over what to do with Liberty State Park. Schundler was hoping to increase revenues by installing a water park there, but park activists scuttled the plan.
National attention came to the city in the late 1990s during a court fight over a City Hall nativity scene. An evangelical Christian who often quotes Bible passages, Schundler wanted to keep the scene on public property and brushed aside critics who said the fight was a publicity stunt. The American Civil Liberties Union suit ended in victory in 1999 for the city.
And there are still potholes peppering the city.
But many believe that Jersey City is better off than it was eight years ago, when people who now live in waterfront complexes would have turned up their noses at the idea of living in a place that used to have such a reputation for corruption and crime.
He’ll miss it
The statewide bid has been tiring, Schundler said, compared with his mayoral runs. But there’s an upside.
“In Jersey City, you have shills screaming at you from the other side,” he said of the notorious rough-and-tumble elections here. It’s something that was missing in a Republican primary, he said.
But he’s got another challenge ahead: Pitting his conservative views against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim McGreevy in the fall.
While he gladly trades trundling up and down the Western Slope stumping for votes for a car ride around the area, he’ll miss being able to leave a debate in Greenville knowing he can be back in bed within a half hour. “The thing I’ll miss the most, most of all by far, is working on a day-to-day basis with people” in Jersey City, Schundler said.
Even his staunchest critics begrudgingly acknowledge that the city has improved, though it’s a matter of how much credit is due. Property values have increased, crime has gone down and more jobs have flowed to the city. “The city has moved forward under his tenure,” said former foe and outgoing councilwoman Melissa Holloway, who said she might stump for Schundler in the upcoming race. “You can’t deny him that. He leaves here with a great legacy.”
But gadfly Yvonne Balcer doesn’t agree.
“Schundler raised taxes,” she said the other night. “I want to carve up my TV when I see ads saying he didn’t.” Even Schundler couldn’t resist taking an unprovoked jab at Balcer in a recent interview.
“I feel good that Yvonne Balcer is living in a better neighborhood,” he said, “and that her property value has tripled.”
As Schundler makes his way through the summer and into November’s general election, he will once again be the underdog. But it would be wise not to count out the anti-abortion, gun lobby-endorsed Christian, who never seemed to have a shot at winning but somehow did.
And Schundler would like to reassure those who fret over his departure.
“I always like to tell people I’m not leaving Jersey City,” he said, “I’m just changing jobs.”
Not exactly your drinking buddy, but that’s OK
From those who laud him to those who deplore him, everyone has an opinion on the outgoing mayor.
“When we ran for mayor,” said Corporation Counsel Sean Connelly, Schundler’s campaign manager in 1992, ’93 and ’97, “it was me, him and Lynn [the mayor’s wife]. And everyone else was laughing.”
The former county Republican chairman and lifelong resident of the city speaks of the mayor in almost evangelical tones.
“There’s a certain – I don’t want to use ‘magic’ – but a spiritual approach to things,” he said.
Though he was a suburban kid who moved Downtown in the 1980s, Schundler overcame that political obstacle. “I was concerned that people would tag him as an outsider,” Connelly said. “And they did. But we won anyway.”
He’s won over people like Melissa Holloway, a bit of a maverick herself. The outgoing Ward F (Bergen-Lafayette) councilwoman, Holloway had led a week-long demonstration outside the mayor’s home several years ago.
“We got to understand each other’s personality,” said the former Jesse Jackson supporter. She credited the mayor with lending an ear to groups usually ignored.
“A lot of these ethnic groups have been disenfranchised,” she said. “He was able to make them feel special. He made them feel important. That’s all some of these ethnic groups want. They want an ear.”
Help from people like the African-American Holloway could go a long way in taking votes in the state’s big cities – ones that historically go to Democrats. “He’s going to go into Newark and Paterson,” she said, “and they’re gonna be like, ‘What the hell are they doing?'”
Others are not as awestruck by the outgoing conservative mayor as are Holloway and Connelly. Critic Yvonne Balcer said she will be watching Schundler’s statewide ads to see if he tells the truth about his record.
Schundler insisted that he would have stayed in Jersey City and not challenged the state government if the state had been willing to change its calculation of property taxes, school funding and aid to cities.
Yet, others believe it was time for him to move on.
“If he stayed here any longer,” said Council President Tom DeGise, “he was going to get bored.”
And, yes, Schundler did exude a confidence that oftentimes rubbed people the wrong way.
“Bret’s brash, if not arrogant,” said DeGise. “He figures he’s the smartest man in the room. In most cases, he’s right.”
As for the somewhat square image, the former mayoral candidate said Schundler has “loosened up considerably” which includes using the occasional obscenity.
“But he’s still pretty stiff,” DeGise said.
Schundler also learned the value of horse-trading and compromise during his tenure.
Concluded DeGise: “He’s not necessarily the guy you want to belly up to the bar and have a beer with, but that’s not bad.”