Mayor says eight years of progress, including more than $250 million in state aid, more than 11,000 lead lines replaced and an estimated 20 percent decline in violent crime, are at stake in the December 8 runoff

TRENTON, N.J. (Nov. 5, 2026) — Mayor Reed Gusciora said today that voters in the December 8 runoff will decide whether Trenton continues the progress of the past eight years or takes a chance on an untested mayor, and that the outcome will shape whether investors, employers and families keep betting on the city.

Gusciora, who finished second in the November 3 first round, faces Trenton police detective Corey McNair in the runoff for mayor of New Jersey's capital city.

“This election is a choice between progress and politics,” Gusciora said. “Investment is a confidence game. If investors believe Trenton will have a steady, experienced mayor, they will invest for the next ten years. If they think it will be volatile, they will wait, or they will go somewhere else. We have worked too hard to bring this city back to let that happen.”

Gusciora said the next mayor inherits not a finished job but an obligation to keep earning the confidence that stabilized the city's finances and brought investment back. Without it, he said, everything could be lost, from the water department he has kept a public utility to the housing developments, the investment now underway and the budget discipline behind them.

Under the Gusciora administration, Trenton has:

• grown state aid from $6 million a year in 2018, a level unchanged since 2012, to $67.3 million this year, for more than $250 million since 2018, the funding behind much of what follows;
• replaced more than 11,000 lead service lines, free to participating homeowners, installed smart meters for 63,000 customers and adopted a $763 million, ten-year plan to modernize its water system;
• cut violent crime about 20 percent per capita over roughly the past eight years compared with the eight years before, based on FBI Crime Data Explorer figures, by pairing enforcement with prevention: hiring 52 police officers in 2025 and 2026, putting Community Street Teams on the street to stop conflicts before they turn violent, sending mental-health professionals to crisis calls alongside officers, opening a $4.5 million Real-Time Crime Center and earning state accreditation for the police department;
• received a Moody's credit upgrade in May 2026, saved at least $4.3 million a year through a new employee health plan and secured more than $50 million in grants;
• seen equalized property value rise about 72 percent since 2018, from $2.42 billion to $4.17 billion;
• demolished more than 300 blighted properties, approved more than 150 vacant properties for transfer and started 215 senior apartments at Donnelly Homes and the former Junior One school site;
• closed a sale on Enterprise Avenue expected to bring about 200 jobs and committed $7 million to restore the Roebling Wire Works and Eagle Tavern; and
• completed ten playgrounds in a 26-playground program, created nearly 350 summer jobs in 2024, brought back youth soccer after 12 years and reopened the Reading Senior Center after more than eight years. Trenton won the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's 2024 Culture of Health Prize.

If lenders, developers, employers and state and federal agencies lose confidence in who is running the city, Gusciora said, public and private investment is likely to slow, projects now underway could stall, jobs would not be created, residents would leave and a tax base that has been expanding for the first time in decades would begin to shrink.

Gusciora said he took office in July 2018 after decades of neglect, and that the problems he inherited are structural, with real constraints. Trenton is more dependent on its partners than most cities. As the state capital, more than half of its property, 55 percent according to the city's 2025 filing with the state Department of Community Affairs, is exempt from property tax, including about $1.09 billion owned by the State of New Jersey. That is why state aid matters so much. It is not guaranteed. It is decided in the state budget each year, and it has stabilized the city's finances and given investors the confidence to build here.

“No one fixes decades of neglect overnight, and anyone who says they can is making a promise they can't keep,” Gusciora said. “Trenton doesn't have the tax base other cities do. Nobody handed us that money. Partners in Trenton and Washington gave it to us because they trust we will deliver, and it took me decades to earn that trust.”

Gusciora represented Trenton in the New Jersey Assembly for 22 years, from January 1996 until he became mayor in July 2018. In 2014, when Gov. Chris Christie canceled the $150 million project to build a new Trenton Central High School, Gusciora organized opposition, and the governor reversed course and put the project back on track.

McNair has served the city for more than ten years. He has not held elected office or run a large organization. Gusciora said he respects that service, but that running a city requires writing policy, bringing stakeholders together to make change at scale and managing a budget.

“This is not a popularity contest,” Gusciora said. “This is a job with a budget, a water system and partners in Trenton and Washington who have to believe the person at the table can deliver. It's easy to make promises. It's hard to deliver on them. Trenton isn't the place to learn on the job.”

Over the next four years, Gusciora said, he will finish the projects now underway, then turn about 800 vacant lots into new homes, rehabilitate 200 abandoned houses in the North Ward, reopen branch libraries as youth and neighborhood centers, open a North Broad Street clinic with two mobile health units and bring a hotel downtown.

About Mayor Reed Gusciora: Reed Gusciora has served as Mayor of Trenton since 2018. Before that he represented Trenton in the New Jersey Assembly for 22 years, from 1996 to 2018. His re-election campaign is online at progressfortrenton.com.

Mayor Gusciora welcomes the opportunity to discuss the runoff, his record in Trenton and his plans for the next four years with members of the media.