Q&A With NJ Assembly Candidate Tamar Warburg

New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Steven Fulop recently announced that he would support two candidates – Tamar Warburg and Dan Park – to run for New Jersey’s State Assembly in the Bergen County-based District 37 next year. The district includes Teaneck, Englewood, Tenafly and Fort Lee, which have large Jewish communities.

Park and Warburg join an array of Assembly candidates who Fulop is backing across New Jersey in a bid to remake New Jersey’s party boss-dominated political system. In April, Fulop, the three-term mayor of Jersey City, pledged to spend $10 million to recruit candidates who would be independent of county chairs if elected to the legislature.

His pick of Warburg, a Teaneck attorney raised in Englewood and who is the mother of five young children, is particularly groundbreaking. If elected, she would be the first Orthodox Jewish woman to serve in the New Jersey Assembly.

A graduate of Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Warburg spent the first eleven years of her career at a major New York City law firm, and in 2019 assumed her current role of General Counsel at the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater MetroWest NJ.

Warburg, who was elected in June to the Teaneck Democratic Municipal Committee in a sweeping municipal election which saw Teaneck deliver the highest voter turnout in all of Bergen County, sees Fulop’s choice as a recognition of the local Jewish community’s efforts to gain greater political representation. “The local Jewish community’s performance in the June election was extraordinary. The community came together and showed both its ability and desire to engage in the political process. Mayor Fulop was clearly inspired by that effort and has decided to actively embrace that engagement.”

The Jewish Press sat down with Ms. Warburg to discuss her run for office.

What made you decide to enter the Assembly race?

Mayor Fulop and his team approached me and asked me to run.

I had gotten involved in Mayor Fulop’s campaign over the summer – I found it honest and substantive. It was something I eagerly wanted to support, so I helped his team organize a campaign event over the summer. In working with his team, I discussed what Teaneck’s Jewish community accomplished in the June primary. They were clearly inspired by our efforts.

What was your initial reaction?

Shock. To be honest, this was never something I saw myself doing. I have plenty of titles – daughter, mom, general counsel – I do not need more. But Mayor Fulop and his team are good people, and persistent. So I agreed to hear them out.

The offer was extraordinary. This was not simply an endorsement. Mayor Fulop was putting the full weight of his campaign behind me, including funding, a team of advisors and volunteers, and a wonderful running mate. So my calculus changed.

Mayor Fulop’s offer was not to me, Tamar Warburg. It was an offer to my community and my district. When I ran for the TDMC, my goal was to give my community a seat at the table. And here was Mayor Fulop offering us that on a state level – a real shot at an Assembly seat – something no Orthodox candidate has ever achieved in this district. No other gubernatorial candidate has made the investment that Mayor Fulop was proposing to make in our district’s Orthodox community. How could I turn that offer down?

Tell us about your running mate, Dan Park.

The Fulop campaign introduced us, and we bonded immediately. Dan is Korean American and serves as a councilman in Tenafly, which has a large Jewish community. Our introduction actually took place in our sukkah. I invited Dan and some members of Fulop’s campaign team to have lunch during Chol HaMoed. Dan happens to love hamentashen – from his days at Tenafly High School with his many Israeli classmates – and brought us some from a local Kosher bakery.

I could not ask for a more wonderful and knowledgeable colleague. I am excited to introduce Dan to the Jewish community. I think they will love him and that he will be an excellent assemblyman.

In running for Assembly, you are challenging incumbents Shama Haider and Ellen Park. Why?

Elected office is a privilege, not an entitlement. Just because someone was elected once does not mean they should be elected again. Elected office belongs to voters, not incumbents, and our representatives should earn the privilege each election.

I think voters in this district need to ask what the incumbents have done to earn their votes. Do they even know their assemblywomen’s names? A lot has happened in this community over the past year – have the incumbents been present? If the answer to that question is “no” – if most voters in this district could not pick them out of a lineup – that is a problem.

What issues are most important to you?

As a Jewish person, antisemitism is top of mind. What our community witnessed after the October 7 massacre in Israel on college campuses and even in my own town was shocking. It is what drove me and others in Teaneck to politically engage. The threat is real and more needs to be done to ensure that the Jewish community is protected. Dan and I recently issued a statement condemning an antisemitic rally – and, yes, we called it that unequivocally – which targeted a private home in Bergenfield, and calling for laws designed to protect our residents to be enforced. This is something we are both strongly committed to.

I also have five children in, or soon entering, yeshiva day schools, so day school affordability is something that I care about deeply and personally. The struggles of families who utilize these schools are real and I am committed to finding solutions that are realistic and effective.

I also believe in the importance of public education and that bolstering our public schools is key. Most students in our district attend public schools, and I am deeply proud that towns in our district like Tenafly and Fort Lee have some of the best public schools in the New Jersey. I want to replicate these towns’ success in others throughout our district and state.

Above all else, the job of an assemblywoman is to advocate. It is to fight for the issues that matter to residents. To do that, an assemblywoman needs to be present. She needs to engage her constituents. Everyone in her district should know who she is and that she is there to serve them. And that is what Dan Park and I are committed to doing.