‘Dirty and Embarrassing’: Jim McGreevey Fights Street Safety in Jersey City Mayoral Run

Safety first — and McGreevey last.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, who left office two decades ago in extramarital and national security disgrace, has made his opposition to a street safety measure a central part of his campaign to be mayor of Jersey City, which heads to an increasingly bitter Dec. 2 runoff.

Supporters of front-runner James Solomon are accusing the former Garden State chief executive of waging a culture war to "politicize street safety" by first highlighting StreetsPAC NJ's support for Solomon and also lying about Solomon's position on a contested street revamp in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

"It's just a bad-faith attempt to tarnish or diminish James Solomon," said Councilman Frank "Educational" Gilmore, a supporter of Solomon's who represents Ward F on the south side of the city.

The municipal election is headed to a runoff after no candidate reached a 50-percent-plus-one majority on Nov. 4. During that campaign, McGreevey did not bother to respond to StreetsPAC NJ's candidate questionnaire.

Last week, McGreevey dramatically scaled up his attacks on both Solomon and street safety. First, he took out an ad in a local news outlet that cited Solomon's endorsement by StreetsPAC NJ as evidence that Solomon supports an unpopular project to convert two-way streets into one-way streets in the southern, more car-dependent parts of the city.

"StreetsPAC is raising money to support James Solomon in their united efforts to turn MLK Drive, Ocean Ave, and Bergen Ave into one way streets on the Southside," McGreevey's campaign wrote in the ad posted on social media last week.

But that smear traveled all around the world before the truth finally got on its boots: Solomon and other street safety advocates don't support the 11th-hour proposal by Mayor Steve Fulop, which they call rushed and badly planned. Solomon has, in fact, said the city should go back to the drawing board.

McGreevey resigned from the Garden State governorship 21 years ago after an affair with an aide whom McGreevey had installed as a homeland security adviser, prompting McGreevey's famed "I am a gay American" speech in November 2004. The aide, Golan Cipel, later accused McGreevey of sexual misconduct.

Nonetheless, after two decades in the political wilderness, McGreevey has nearly mounted a return — though it is built on what some Jersey advocates call the last gasps of politics of the past.

"He’s running a dirty campaign, he’s trying to divide people, and it’s really embarrassing more than anything, for him," said Kevin Bing the executive director of StreetsPAC NJ. "Jim’s campaign is the dying breath of the politics of yesteryear."

In addition to the local political ad, McGreevey threw gasoline on the culture war by shooting a campaign video on Martin Luther King Drive, one of the streets that Fulop wants to convert into a one-way.

The candidate also tapped into the racial and economic divides between the blue-collar neighborhood on the south side and wealthier transit-rich downtown Jersey City, which Solomon represents in the City Council.

"Here we are on MLK and we believe, you know, if you’re from downtown, you shouldn’t be telling all of Jersey City how to live," McGreevey said in the video, flanked by locals.

It's an effective ad, except for one thing: the area's representative on the Jersey City Council said it was nothing but a stunt to placate Black voters by adding flaming logs to a simmering issue.

"He’s trying to paint himself as someone who’s going to listen to the Black community," said Gilmore. "He’s trying to spin this divisive narrative."

The political maneuvers show street safety has become central to politics in the Garden State's second-largest city, according to Bing, who added that the recent controversy only raised the fledgling PAC's profile.

"Street safety is broadly popular," Bing said.

Conversion controversy

The mudslinging stems from a project Fulop announced on social media over the summer, before sending his agency officials to a heated public meeting without much information on the proposal.

The mayor said the city would turn four two-way roads into north-south one-way streets, while repurposing the extra space protected bike and bus lanes.

The one-way conversion on MLK ignited particular controversy at a public forum in August when neighbors blasted underprepared city officials for hours.

"It was very unproductive," said Emmanuelle Morgen, a resident of the area and a safe streets advocate who was at the heated feedback session.

Morgen supports providing better bus infrastructure in the car-dependent neighborhood, but said the city did not do enough planning and public outreach ahead of time to sway residents of the upsides of repurposing car space.

"One-ways are not going to be popular unless you provide concrete benefits," she said.

A spokesperson for Solomon's campaign declined to comment on McGreevey's attacks specifically, but pointed toward a Reddit AMA from a month ago:

"The city experts who presented to the community on this had no idea about this 'plan' before the mayor’s tweet went out, and were put in the impossible position of trying to create something post-hoc that roughly aligned with what he said," Solomon said in that ask-me-anything exchange.

"It does not help anyone for the mayor to approach this transit proposal in such a cavalier manner," Solomon continued. "When that happens, it only undermines support more broadly for serious transit proposals and ideas that actually have the evidence to show that they will benefit the community overall." 

Morgen was disappointed that McGreevey seized on the hot topic for political gain, rather than raise his vision for better transit and street safety in Jersey City.

"It’s a shame that the McGreevey campaign has chosen to politicize safe streets," Morgen said. "He could have chosen to advocate for transit and instead he chose to attack safe streets."

McGreevey's transportation platform calls for better transit and street safety improvements, but the candidate has not filled out StreetsPAC's questionnaire, which asked for detailed commitments to Vision Zero, opposing the New Jersey Turnpike widening, and backing automated speed camera enforcement and effective safety redesigns.

Solomon, meanwhile, earned the StreetsPAC NJ endorsement after filling out the survey and on the strength of his record of supporting projects in his downtown ward, including pedestrianizations, road diets and bike lanes.

"There is no one in this race who has more practical experience than I do in navigating the trade-offs with these projects and actually getting them done," he wrote on Reddit.

McGreevey did not respond to multiple requests for comment. We will update this story if we hear back.