The election of the next Hudson County Democratic chair Tuesday is between Brian Stack and Amy DeGise.
But Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, who is backing Stack, recognizes it may be more of a referendum on him.
“This will be a good test for me how far we’ve come since this whole thing when I said I wasn’t running for governor in 2016,” he told ROI-NJ. “Critics say we won’t be able to deliver (the votes).
“On June 13, if Brian Stack is not the Democratic chairman, I’ll be criticized for it. Not so much Brian, but me.”
Stack, 52, is a state senator who represents the Jersey City area and mayor of Union City.
DeGise, 32, is on the Jersey City school board and is the daughter of County Executive Tom DeGise.
Fulop, in a one-on-one interview with ROI-NJ earlier this month, said the race to succeed the outgoing chair, Vincent Prieto, will have huge consequences in the county.
“The chairman obviously is going to have big influence in shaping the county executive race next year and all the Assembly races, because they get the party line,” he said. “This is hugely important.”
The vote will be determined by 900 county commission seats.
Fulop, speaking on June 4, said the vote totals appeared too close to call. But, he said, some of the numbers are predictable.
“The county is pretty much split down the middle on who’s supporting whom by municipality,” he said. “Hoboken is with us. West New York is with us. Bayonne is with them. West Hudson is with them. North Bergen is with them, etc., etc.”
The vote becomes a referendum on Fulop due to the large numbers of votes in Jersey City, which has 362 of the votes.
“The lion’s share of votes is with Jersey City, and we changed a lot of the committee people,” he said. “One of the things when I said we were kind of rebuilding the political presence here in early 2017 is we changed a lot of these county committee people.
“The math looks, on paper, fairly close. Jersey City has the lion’s share of the committee votes, it’s going to come down to whether we deliver or don’t deliver ultimately.”
