JERSEY CITY — In a high-profile Democratic primary where the son of a U.S. senator facing corruption charges and the mayor of Hoboken are gunning for a House seat, Kyle Jasey wants to be seen as “a regular person.”
When he showed up at a Downtown Jersey City café for an interview, he wasn’t accompanied by a campaign staffer or even dressed up in a suit. Instead, he arrived on his bicycle, which he dubs the “dad-mobile” as it has seats in the front and back for his two kids.
After securing his bike, he stepped inside the café with its white and brick walls and lowkey music wearing a crewneck sweater, blue jeans and a green track jacket, and ordered a coffee before sitting down to chat.
Jasey has been around politics for a long time. He supported his mother, who is a former state Assemblywoman, he was a member of a local Democratic party and also volunteered for Gov. Jon Corzine’s failed reelection campaign in 2009.
But Jasey, a 41-year-old real estate lender in Jersey City, framed himself as the antithesis to his incumbent, Rep. Rob Menendez Jr., who he says got there through an act of “pure nepotism.” He also said he didn’t want to be “the guy that does his mom’s thing” by pursuing the seat his mom vacated.
“I’m in this to help people,” Jasey said. “I don’t have to do this; I don’t feel compelled for attention or anything like that, I can have a happy life doing (real estate), starting businesses. But I’m in this because I want to make a difference, and that’s important to me.”
It’s for those reasons he’s chosen to run in the upcoming Eighth District Democratic primary, a contest that will determine whether Menendez Jr. will be able to retain his seat in the wake of the federal corruption charges levied on his father, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.
Before moving to Downtown Jersey City in 2011 with its brownstones and burgeoning high-rises, Jasey was born in Orange and raised in South Orange. He spent four years at Duke University in North Carolina and later went to business school at Rutgers University.
His mother, Mila Jasey, represented the 27th District in the state Assembly for 16 years before retiring at the end of last year. Jasey said she’s a “genuine person (who) really cares about people.”
Jasey has contemplated following his mom’s footsteps throughout the years; he weighed challenging both Menendez’s in the past but never committed to it. But a hospitalization for COVID in 2022 made him start having regrets that he didn’t run for public office.
“I felt like I’ve never done anything that (would) set a strong example for my kids,” he said. “About going for it in life.”
He initially launched a candidacy against Sen. Menendez last year but decided to switch to the Eighth District primary when first lady Tammy Murphy entered the Senate race (she ultimately ended her candidacy last month).
“That’s what I set out to do,” Jasey said. “At the end of the day, the senior (Menendez) is out, and so let’s just take care of all of this in one fell swoop.”
On his approach to Congress, Jasey pitched himself as a problem solver and someone who is willing to reach across the aisle “if there’s a deal that makes sense,” citing his experience in business and working with people across the political spectrum through a real estate network.
His current job involves real estate financing with investors, but he and a friend once ran a humorous T-shirt and poster company that at one point had a top selling product: a beer pong poster with 10 cups that reads “Beer Pong: Heroes Are Made One Cup At A Time.”
Although drinking games might not be the answer to a gridlocked Congress, Jasey is hopeful that he can find common ground despite how “very daunting” it can look, whether it’s through issues such as universal health care, infrastructure or green energy.
“I think that’s a good perspective to have, especially these days,” Jasey said. “The fact that I have a lot of friends that are Republicans (or) Trump supporters. They’re not bad people, they just disagree, and that’s okay. I try to understand where they’re coming from.”
He touched on his personal experience with health care, saying that he’s hesitated to go to the emergency room over fears his insurance wouldn’t cover the visits, and that a premature refill of his medications would have cost $750 if he hadn’t negotiated with his pharmacist on the price.
Jasey also wants to address housing, noting the rising costs of rent or buying a house in the Eighth District. He’s aiming to prevent hedge funds from becoming invasive in the housing market, saying that they’ve been buying up houses and only allowing them to be rented with jacked up prices.
He also supports a cease-fire in the Israel and Gaza war. He said that he wants to “stop seeing all these innocent people getting killed,” although he believes the rhetoric surrounding the conflict has gotten “really twisted.”
“I feel like everyone’s plating these two and saying ‘you can either defend yourself or kill all these innocent people’,” he said. “No, just defend yourself but without killing all the innocent people, prohibiting supplies and food from coming into (Gaza).”
Later on in the day, while walking through Downtown on an overcast day, Jasey contemplated not just his life as a busy dad, a Duke basketball follower and a “Sopranos” fan, but also the machinations of New Jersey politics and the state of the primary.
The indictment of Sen. Menendez and the subsequent domino effect can be credited for the highly unusual Eighth District primary; Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla’s serious challenge for the seat, as well as the abolishment of the “county line” for this year’s primaries.
Studies have shown the county line ballot design system unfairly favors a group of “bracketed” candidates in elections throughout the state, primarily in primary elections.
Jasey says as a newcomer running against the political machines, he is all for the complete abolishment of the county line. He hasn’t hidden his disdain for the Menendez’s either, saying that he thought it was “a shame” that Sen. Menendez was still up for reelection after his first corruption case in 2017 ended in a mistrial.
He boasted that he was one of the only people who had “the guts” to run against Sen. Menendez before the corruption indictment.
Political observers have called Jasey the underdog in the race. Unlike Menendez Jr. and Bhalla, he has trailed behind the two in fundraising by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and his campaign is being run by him, his wife and some other consultants.
But Jasey said he isn’t running just to prove a point or to plant the seeds for another run for office. He believes he has a path to victory in June, saying that Menendez Jr. will be bruised by his father’s trial in May and that Bhalla could be dragged down by “what Menendez (Jr.) comes out with.”
In other words, he sees himself as the appealing third option for voters unsure about the other two.
“I think it’s going to get really nasty, and a lot of people are going to a look at it and say ‘Hey, I’m not sure about either of these guys. Is there any other option?’” Jasey said. “That’s where I see this maybe turning in my favor.”
