Sorry, McGreevey: 3 Former Jersey City Mayor Candidates Endorse Solomon In Runoff

JERSEY CITY, NJ — As the Jersey City mayoral runoff nears on Dec. 2, three of the former candidates have endorsed Councilman James Solomon rather than former Gov. James McGreevey.

County Commissioner Bill O'Dea, former school board member Mussab Ali, and Police Officer Christina Freeman all said they were endorsing Solomon in the past week.

The Solomon campaign said that U.S. Sen. Andy Kim and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka have also endorsed the downtown councilman.

Ali said Tuesday, "I’m proud to endorse James Solomon for Jersey City mayor in the run-off election. James has a clear plan for affordable rents, safer streets, better schools, and an accountable city government."

Solomon said, “Mussab Ali ran an inspiring issues-oriented campaign and I am so honored to have his endorsement. Mussab and I agree that we need to focus on affordability, building housing working people can afford and delivering better buses for everyone."

None of the mayoral candidates drew more than 50 percent of the vote total during Tuesday's elections, prompting the mayoral runoff.

Without all of the mail-in votes counted, Solomon had the most votes out of six candidates the day after the election, with 17,200. McGreevey had 15,042. The third-place candidate, County Commissioner Bill O'Dea, amassed 12,750 votes.

Solomon's campaign said Wednesday that council candidates Joel Brooks and Jake Ephros are also endorsing him, and that Tom Zuppa will join his slate for the Ward C runoff.

McGreevey Rallies

McGreevey's campaign held a press conference and rally on Thursday, saying Solomon was making accusations against him to distract from his record.

"He’s not talking about his ‘Right to Counsel’ bill that didn’t help a single tenant," the former governor said. "He’s not talking about his failure to control spiraling property taxes and rents. He’s not talking about his efforts to cut the police budget, which would destroy public safety in Jersey City. Instead, he’s lumping me in with nonsense MAGA accusations to avoid answering for eight years of non-accomplishment.”

McGreevey added, "James has never managed anything, let alone a $700 million municipality...Jersey City is more than Downtown."

READ MORE: Jersey City Mayoral Candidate Jim McGreevey Responds To Q&A

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