A New Mayor to Match Jersey City's Ambitions Nadav Neuhaus for The New York Times Van Vorst Park. Thanks to a swell of affluent young residents, Jersey City has become a place of bike lanes and brunch spots. JERSEY CITY - Once an unfashionable town named after an unfashionable state, this has become a place of bike lanes and brunch spots, organic farmers" markets and free yoga in the parks. Brought on by the swell of affluent young residents who followed financial firms across the river, strollers now crowd the sidewalks and shimmering towers filled with luxury rentals line the waterfront. Kumon, the supplementary after-school program of the anxious elite, occupies a shiny storefront downtown. Through all of this, however, Jersey City politics have stayed stubbornly within the mold of Frank Hague, the early-20th-century mayor and political boss who set the standard for corruption, even by New Jersey standards. Newly vigorous community groups have complained of projects stumbling because of bureaucracy. Developers have accused the city of playing favorites with tax abatements. A bribery scandal has swirled around City Hall. But on Monday, Jersey City will swear in a new mayor, one whose campaign slogan - "enough" - and impressive résumé seem to match the city's new ambition. The new mayor is Steven Fulop, a 36-year-old former trader at Goldman Sachs. After 9/11, he took a leave to serve in the Marine Corps, and upon his return from Iraq worked his way up as a city councilman, helping to organize community groups and crusading for better schools and stronger ethics laws. "It's a breath of fresh air," said Tony Frier, who moved here two decades ago and opened the 9th and Coles Tavern with his husband three years ago. There was so much bureaucracy and red tape, it was bogging everything down. There was no progress being made. He's got a vision. It's going to give everybody new life. Mr. Fulop, a Democrat, has built a reputation as a reformer, impressing even his former adversaries with his plans to standardize tax abatement procedures, restructure the Police Department to reduce crime in neighborhoods that have been left out of the city's rebirth, and produce greater civic involvement from the financial firms that have made this area Wall Street West, including the creation of a program to offer summer jobs to local students. "People are finding us across the river, and I want to expand that," Mr. Fulop said. Historically, people outgrow the West Village, come here and then move to the suburbs. Our goal is to stop that last move. Already, more families with children are staying. Tribeca Pediatrics has an outpost across from Hamilton Park, which was rebuilt by neighborhood groups after years of occupation by the Latin Kings. Still, the city's public schools remain under state control, with all but a handful classified as failing. Residents pay premium taxes, even as garbage cans overflow and potholes go unrepaired. Though downtown neighborhoods have gotten safer, neighborhoods farther out still struggle with high crime rates. Many have long suspected that the city's recent success was due to its proximity to New York, and not because of, but in spite of, the city's political establishment. Hudson County residents have reason to temper their optimism: the fresh-faced new mayor of Hoboken, Peter Cammarano, was one of 44 officials swept up in the bribery scandal that brought down Jersey City's deputy mayor four years ago. The second of three sons born to immigrants from Israel and Romania who own a deli in Newark, Mr. Fulop grew up in Edison, N.J., and like so many of his new constituents, moved here to work for Goldman. He bought an apartment near the waterfront in 2000, figuring the influx of financial firms would make the city a good investment. After his tour in Iraq, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress before narrowly winning a seat on the City Council in 2005. Four years ago, Mr. Fulop expanded his political influence by sponsoring a winning slate of school board members. More recently, he helped bring in a longtime veteran of the New York City schools, Marcia Lyles, as superintendent. And he has hammered city officials about ethics violations since 2009, when the sweeping corruption investigation known as Operation Bid Rig ensnared several dozen Hudson County politicians, including several associates of Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, on charges of accepting bribes from a developer.