STEVE FULOP’S ANTI-MACHINE ‘MACHINE’

Dozens of assembly candidates join Fulop’s ‘Democrats for Change’

Steve Fulop, the three-term mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey’s second largest, is running what both supporters and critics would call an unorthodox gubernatorial campaign, to say the least. He’s chosen to avoid seeking the county-by-county endorsements of Democratic committees, many of which are run by New Jersey’s traditional party bosses and long-established machines, and he’s skipping county conventions. “The New Jersey political machine structure, well, they certainly hate what I’m doing,” Fulop told The New Jersey Democrat in an interview. “That’s for sure.”

And, by organizing dozens of candidates throughout the state to run for the state assembly, all of whom will use Fulop’s “Democrats for Change” slogan, Fulop is putting together an anti-machine “machine” of his own. And while some of the candidates are incumbents running for reelection – like Jessica Ramirez in the 32nd legislative district (LD-32) – most are insurgents running against county-endorsed candidates. So far, there are at least 35 Fulop-backed assembly candidates, one or two in nearly every district statewide.

In November, all 80 New Jersey assembly seats will be up for grabs.

It’s an audacious, and probably unprecedented effort designed to directly challenge New Jersey’s entrenched boss system. At a recent press conference in South Orange, TNJD asked Fulop whether it made sense to run against the Democratic party’s establishment, whose assistance, after all, might be needed to mobilize voters in November’s general election. “The Democratic establishment in New Jersey has no incentive to grow, because they’re comfortable where they have been for the last 20 years. A lot of them have monetized the system,” he said. “Do I think we need the party, the activist-based party? One hundred percent. Do we need the lobbyist class, the chair people? The answer is no.”

“That party didn’t deliver in the last election,” added Sheena Collum, the mayor of South Orange and Fulop’s designated lieutenant-governor running mate. She was referring to 2024, when hundreds of thousands of Democrats opted to stay home rather than vote for Kamala Harris.

In advance of the June 10 Democratic primary, the machines in New Jersey’s 21 counties have largely lined up behind favored candidates. Steve Sweeney, the former senate president, has won the support of county committees across south Jersey. Rep. Josh Gottheimer won the backing of his home county machine, in Bergen. And most of north Jersey’s other county machines have backed Rep. Mikie Sherrill. But, with the demise of the “county line” in primary balloting, it’s unclear what those endorsements will mean when people actually go to the polls.

In a separate telephone interview with The New Jersey Democrat, Fulop described his strategy in putting together a team of assembly candidates.

It all started when Fulop and a small group of advisers started building the 2025 campaign, even before then-U.S. Senate candidate Andy Kim led a successful challenge to the so-called “county line,” which gave party committees enormous power to rig primary ballots for favored candidates. “We said, why not encourage down-ballot candidates to run for office?” Fulop said. On his campaign website, he put out a call for people who’d want to run alongside him, and more than 150 people responded. Fulop set up a screening committee to vet the candidates. The screeners, county by county, were mostly Democratic activists, who recommended people to Fulop’s team from the list of people who’d applied. “And then I would invite them to run with us,” he said. “There were maybe a couple of districts where we couldn’t find anyone, so I solicited them. But 90 percent of them came through the application process.”

Screening was critical, of course, to avoid linking up with candidates with baggage or, worse, with fringe types. And Fulop stressed that, other than joint work on elements such as flyers, mailers and lawn signs, his campaign is not directly providing money to the candidates. Nor do the candidates have to agree with Fulop on every plank in his campaign.

Fulop certainly sees both his campaign, and that of his allies, as a direct challenge to New Jersey’s powers-that-be. “The assembly component goes at the heart of their power. I mean, what’s the reason that you have [LeRoy Jones], the Essex chairman, as a lobbyist for PSE&G and Horizon?” he asked. “It’s because the state assembly and the senate power structure are really their base, and going at them like this is an infringement on their power base.”

One of the candidates that Fulop pointed to is Brittany Claybrooks, who’s running with Fulop in LD-34. A former councilwoman in East Orange, Claybrooks served as the political director in north Jersey for Sen. Andy Kim’s 2024 campaign. In an interview with The New Jersey Democrat, Claybrooks said she first met Fulop during the Kim campaign. “I met him right after he made the courageous decision to switch his endorsement from [Tammy] Murphy to now-Sen. Kim.”

Claybrooks isn’t shy about confronting the boss system. “I believe the enthusiasm is there. People are ready for change,” she said. And she had experience. As a member of East Orange’s city council, Claybrooks found herself in conflict with the party chairman. “When it was decided that the party would not endorse me, we met, and what he said was, ‘I decided solely that you would not be the endorsed candidate,’”she said. Incredibly, perhaps, the chairman of the East Orange Democratic Committee was LeRoy Jones, who was also chairman of the Essex County Democratic Committee and the New Jersey Democratic State Committee. In other words, all three, along with being a well-paid lobbyist with 1868 Public Affairs. “Too many people are beholden to these political gods,” she said. “These political bosses are roadblocks to the best democratic government we should have.”

Back in 2022, when she was an elected district leader in East Orange, she had clashed repeatedly with Jones and with his wife, Jacqueline Jones, also an East Orange Democratic party official. Ultimately, she resigned from the committee, and in her letter of resignation to Jones – a copy of which she shared with TNJD – she cited “conflicts that have taken place with you and the Chairwoman of the First Ward, Mrs. Jacqueline Jones,” adding, “I have been both threatened and disrespected.”

In May 2024, Claybrooks announced a bid to run for Congress in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, for the seat vacated after the death of Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. She again ran into the Essex County machine, and again failed to get the backing of Jones and the party establishment. Instead, they united in support of a rival candidate, LaMonica McIver. A bitter fight, including efforts by the machine to disqualify Claybrooks, followed. (McIver won the primary with 47 percent of the vote in an 11-candidate field, and was elected to Congress in November 2024.)

A year later, Claybrooks decided to seek the assembly seat. “I decided that something had to be done,” she told TNJD.

Another candidate on Fulop’s team, perhaps the newest addition, is Assemblywoman Garnet Hall of Maplewood, who represents LD-28 in Trenton. Hall sought the endorsement of the Essex County Democratic Committee in June, but found herself blocked when a pair of Newark-based machines cooperated against her. According to various sources, the political machine attached to Ras Baraka backed Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker and the county machine loyal to Jones backed the upstart Chigozie Onyema, both from Newark. In advance of the Essex County Democratic convention, the two machines agreed to support each other’s candidates in LD-28 and to ice out Hall for reelection.

Asked about those reports Fulop said, “That is correct. That is exactly what happened. And her view was, she isn’t going to be pushed out.”

Hall, who’s been active in local politics for 30 years and who serves as deputy county clerk, told The New Jersey Democrat that after the Essex convention, “I had to make a choice. I had to find another path.” Collum, who knew Hall well, connected her to Fulop. “I have to stand up for Maplewood and South Orange. I’m the first African American representing Maplewood,” said Hall. She agrees that the powers-that-be decided to back the two candidates from Newark. “You can see the numbers, and you can see how the vote went. But they’re not my constituents. I’m for the people, and ‘We the People’ means everybody.”

Eddie Freeman III, an attorney from Evesham Township, is running alongside Fulop for assembly in LD-8. A native of Kansas and a former sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve who was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, Freeman returned to graduate from the Oklahoma City University law school, and Freeman served as deputy mayor of Evesham. The Democratic establishment elbowed him out of his council post, and last summer he met with Fulop, who recruited him to the ticket. “I told him, ‘I would like to do it.’” He stresses that although he’ll use Fulop’s “Democrats for Change” slogan, his campaign is independent. (That’s true of all 35 assembly candidates running with Fulop.)

Freeman said that he considers himself an anti-machine candidate, however. “I would say that the reason why … is that it shouldn’t be where some powerful or rich person directs how the party should proceed or who should be endorsed or who should be running for office. I am very much anti-establishment, anti-party boss system.”

And with the end of the “county line” and a fairer ballot, the election in June will be a test of how much things have changed. “This is going to be the trial run,” Freeman said. “We saw it last year, with the Andy Kim Senate race, but this is when it’s actually going to be tested.”

This piece has been edited to clarify the sequence of Claybrooks’ conflicts with LeRoy Jones, the party chairman.