His first run for elective office was an unsuccessful campaign for the New Jersey Senate in 1991, where despite the partisan nature of the election and the overwhelmingly Democratic composition of the district (only 6% of voters were registered Republicans), Schundler lost to incumbent Edward T. O'Connor, Jr. by only a 55.1% to 44.9% margin. The next year, Gerald McCann was removed as mayor of Jersey City because of a criminal conviction unrelated to his public duties, and Schundler entered the special election to finish the remaining eight months of McCann's term. He won the election with 17 percent of the vote in a crowded field of 19 candidates. Like most major cities in New Jersey, Jersey City elections are officially nonpartisan. While Schundler never billed himself as a Republican on his campaign literature or ads, he was known to be a Republican based on his run for the State Senate a year earlier, and he is thus reckoned as the first Republican to hold the post since 1917. Contributing to his victory was the fact that two African American candidates split the Black vote, and two siblings (Lou and Allen Manzo), also split a large number of votes.