Amidst the firestorm of the continuing Trump legal proceedings in Florida and Georgia, there was a compelling story of tragedy and triumph in Pennsylvania.  The tragedy was the collapse of a stretch of I-95 in Philadelphia, resulting from a tractor trailer carrying gasoline flipping over on an off-ramp, catching fire, and killing the driver.

This I-95 disaster posed a dire threat to industry, commerce, and commuting throughout the Northeast, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.   Over 150,000 vehicles travel on it every day, including 14,000 trucks.

This situation constitutes an economic and quality of life crisis for the entire region, but fortunately, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has responded thoroughly, quickly, and effectively.  Working together with the Biden administration, all relevant Pennsylvania agencies, and organized labor, Shapiro made a stunning, yet triumphant announcement yesterday:

“I can state with confidence that we will have I-95 reopened within the next two weeks. We are going to get traffic moving again thanks to the extraordinary work that is going on here.”

Shapiro elaborated, “folks here in Philly have a real renewed sense of civic pride through this project” and that “there’s something special happening in our community” with people coming together.

The political impact has been immediate.  Even before his election as Pennsylvania governor in 2022, Shapiro had been touted as a future presidential contender.  A February 19, 2023 Washington Post article listed Shapiro in the top ten list of likely Democratic presidential nominees  in the event Joe Biden does not seek presidential reelection in 2024.  Since his involvement in the I-95 crisis, media speculation has increased about the possibility of a future Josh Shapiro presidential bid in 2024 or 2028.

The emergence of Shapiro as a national figure will also have a major impact on gubernatorial races.  Shapiro is now the prototype governor those Democratic gubernatorial candidates, incumbents, and challengers will seek to emulate.

Shapiro is characterized by the effective use of power, especially in crisis situations.  The Democratic candidate in any gubernatorial primary who seizes the Shapiro mantle will have the advantage.  This involves persuading the Democratic electorate that he or she is the candidate most like Josh in terms of executive qualities and leadership.

In this regard, the 2025 New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary between Steve Fulop and Mikie Sherrill could prove to be a paradigm for Democratic primaries over the next two years.  Fulop is in the advantageous position of being far more Shapiro-like than Mikie.

To begin with, Josh Shapiro and Steve Fulop are political friends with a past working relationship.  Fulop raised about $60,000 for Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign at a 2022 fundraiser at Jersey City’s Liberty House.  If Fulop is the 2025 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, expect to see Shapiro make a major campaign effort for Steve.

Most significant is the fact that the Shapiro I-95 triumph demonstrates the significance of the prime Fulop message:  that a gubernatorial candidate must demonstrate major executive experience as either 1) a popularly elected chief executive of a major governing body; or 2) as the leader of a major federal or New Jersey agency.   Sherrill has no such experience whatsoever, while Fulop gained ample executive governing experience as mayor of Jersey City.

Governmental chief executive experience, as we have seen in the case of Shapiro and I-95, is especially critical to effective crisis management.  While Sherrill has no federal nonmilitary crisis management experience, Fulop’s effective and comprehensive response to the active shooter antisemitic murders in Jersey City in December, 2019 demonstrated critical crisis management at its very best.

In the Jersey City hate crime situation, two assailants opened fire as they entered a kosher deli in Jersey City, killing three people before engaging in an hours long firefight with police.  Fulop immediately accurately described the murders as a hate crime based on ample evidence, despite the unwarranted criticism he received from the then Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

Attached to the deli was a Yeshiva with 50 children, whose lives were endangered by the murderers.  Had the Fulop administration not responded as they did, the situation would have been far worse.

Fortunately, Mayor Fulop had deployed walking posts earlier in the month a block away from the deli.   This deployment enabled Jersey City to have a police response within seconds and pin the two culprits in the deli. The murderers had been poised to do much more damage. Fulop’s police leadership ran the command for several hours after and coordinated multiple agencies.

So when it comes to demonstrated chief executive experience, competency, and crisis management, Fulop will have little or no difficulty establishing himself as New Jersey’s Josh Shapiro.

Yet there is another similarity between Josh Shapiro and Steve Fulop, of enormous political significance. Both are Jewish – and products of Jewish Day School Education.

Shapiro is a graduate of Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, known when Shapiro attended it as Akiba Hebrew Academy.  Fulop grew up in Edison, New Jersey, and though his parents were not religious, they sent him to study at Rabbi Pesach Raymon Yeshiva, a nearby Orthodox school, through sixth grade. He also attended the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, a Conservative Jewish school, for two years.

Fulop is a grandson of Holocaust survivors from Rumania.  The Holocaust heritage is a strong influence on Fulop’s governing and policy beliefs.  He freely admits that it was a powerful presence affecting his actions during the Jersey City active shooter tragedy.   Thirty-five members of his mother’s family were sent to Auschwitz and only seven survived.

America has never elected a Jewish president.  New Jersey has never elected a Jewish governor, which is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that New Jersey has 440,000 Jewish adults, the fourth highest such total of any state in the nation.

The Jewish vote is largely concentrated in Bergen and Essex Counties, two counties where the Sherrill campaign is hopeful of winning the endorsement of the Democratic County chairs and thus, her presence as the organization endorsed gubernatorial candidate on the “line” on the Democratic primary ballot.  If Fulop wins the Jewish vote overwhelmingly in the 2025 gubernatorial primary, Sherrill’s advantage from the county Democratic organization endorsement in these two counties will be largely nullified.

In 2022, I authored a column speculating about the possibility of Shapiro being elected as America’s first Jewish president.  The chances of America electing its first Jewish president (Shapiro) and New Jersey electing its first Jewish governor (Fulop) seem more realistic than ever before.  Indeed, the Democratic Party slogan of the remainder of this decade may well be “New Jersey, Shapiro, and Fulop – Perfect Together!”

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.