Bret Davis Schundler was born on January 14,1959 and is an American politician from New Jersey who served as the 42nd mayor of Jersey City from 1992 to 2001.
32 Facts About Bret Schundler
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Bret Schundler remains the last Republican to hold that office.
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Bret Schundler unsuccessfully ran for Governor of New Jersey in 2001 and 2005.
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Bret Schundler then served as the chief operating officer of The King's College, a Christian liberal arts college in New York City.
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Bret Schundler served in the cabinet of Governor Chris Christie as New Jersey commissioner of education from January to August 2010, when he was dismissed.
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Bret Schundler grew up in Woodbridge Township and Westfield, New Jersey as the youngest of nine children.
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Bret Schundler was recruited by Harvard University, where, to help pay for his tuition, he washed dishes, cleaned bathrooms, and worked as a security guard.
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Bret Schundler later worked for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign.
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Bret Schundler retired in 1990, and after traveling around the world for a year, changed his registration to Republican.
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Bret Schundler later said that he felt the Democratic Party had been taken captive by special interests.
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Bret Schundler won the election with 17 percent of the vote, in a crowded field of 19 candidates.
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Once in office, Bret Schundler developed a reputation as a politician who was incorruptible, which strongly resonated in a city with a long legacy of corruption dating to the Frank Hague era in local politics.
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Bret Schundler won his second full term in 1997; while coming up short of a majority in the first round, he won the run-off by a substantial margin.
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Bret Schundler led the battle to pass New Jersey's charter school legislation.
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Additionally, no Republican has represented a significant portion of Jersey City in Congress in over a century, and Bret Schundler was succeeded by a Democrat, Glenn Cunningham, in 2001.
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Toward the end of his tenure as mayor, Bret Schundler served as chairman of the Hudson County Republican Committee, and in 2001, he ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, facing former Congressman Bob Franks, who was favored by the party establishment.
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Bret Schundler ran on a conservative platform, which was somewhat unusual, since most New Jersey Republicans tend to be more moderate-to-liberal by national standards.
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Bret Schundler employed a more grassroots style of campaigning, visiting many local GOP organizations, and forming close relationships with the Young Republicans and College Republicans, as well as conservative issue-based organizations, including those active in homeschooling and other educational issues.
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Bret Schundler made frequent campaign appearances on the late Bob Grant's radio show to help bring voters out the polls on election day.
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The attack caused most air traffic in the US to be shut down for weeks, leaving Bret Schundler stranded in Israel less than one month before the election.
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Bret Schundler even lost Hudson County by 50,000 votes, despite his overwhelming electoral success in Jersey City.
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Bret Schundler did not run for office again until the 2005 gubernatorial campaign, but remained one of the most visible spokespeople for the more conservative wing of the Republican Party in New Jersey.
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Bret Schundler proposed a series of state constitutional amendments to control state and local spending in New Jersey, with the savings dedicated to property tax reduction statewide.
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Bret Schundler's campaign responded that the photograph had been prepared by the campaign's website contractor, and the campaign removed the picture from the website when it learned of the miscue.
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Bret Schundler lost the primary to Doug Forrester, who had been New Jersey's Republican nominee for United States Senate in 2002.
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Bret Schundler had the county line in Somerset and Hudson, and shared it with Forrester in Hunterdon.
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Bret Schundler stated that his formal announcement would happen after the 2008 presidential election.
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On January 12,2009, Bret Schundler dropped his bid for mayor, citing financial difficulties due in large part to the ongoing financial crash on Wall Street.
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On January 13,2010, Governor-Elect Chris Christie announced that Bret Schundler was his nominee to serve as New Jersey Commissioner of Education.
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Bret Schundler was a Professor of Public Policy at The King's College, a Christian liberal arts college located in the Empire State Building.
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Bret Schundler was Managing Partner of People Power America, LLC, which licenses TeamVolunteer, an online utility that helps political campaigns and non-profit organizations coordinate phone banks.
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Bret Schundler is currently the principal of School Partners, LLC, a firm that provides consulting to charter schools on everything from facility finance to their education program.