Is Bret Schundler the next Thomas F.X. Smith?

Here's a scenario: a former Jersey City mayor quits the post to make an unsuccessful bid for governor. After an eight year absence from the local political scene, he returns to run for mayor against 10 candidates, including an incumbent with a big war chest but who is under fire for raising property taxes, and a rising star named Cunningham.

The main issues in the campaign are taxes, crime and housing.

Sound familiar?

It probably does, and it's not just because that's one probable story line for the 2009 election.

It is also the story of the 1989 election, when Thomas F.X. Smith, a well-liked former mayor and former Knicks forward (he played one game with the team), returned to run again, eight years after leaving office to mount an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid. Smith challenged Anthony Cucci, a one-term mayor who was taking flack for a revaluation that caused major property tax increases in some neighborhoods and a looming state threat to take over the city's public school system.

Smith and Cucci both failed to capture enough votes to make it to the run off in a race that the Associated Press described at the time as one where "some candidates resorted to putting fangs on unflattering cartoons and caricatures of their opponents in some advertisements, fairly typical of election day here."

The runoff came down to former Mayor Gerry McCann, who had succeeded Smith and served one term until he was upset by Cucci in 1985, and Councilman Glen Cunningham, who would go on to become mayor after Bret Schundler's departure.

Cucci didn't make it to the runoff, coming in a distant fourth. McCann ultimately won and held the office until he was forced to resign in 1993 after a fraud conviction unrelated to his time in office.

The election was 20 years ago, but Smith's campaign bears at least a circumstantial resemblance to the potential one of former Mayor Bret Schundler, who left office in 2001 to run for governor as a Republican (and again in 2005 primary), and who currently appears to be laying the groundwork for another mayoral run.

Moreover, Cucci's critics in 1989 were making some of the same points that are often heard of current incumbent Jerramiah Healy, who has a war chest of over $1 million but could be vulnerable on a rising murder rate and tax increases.

Schundler could not be reached for comment, and Smith passed away in 1996. But McCann, reached on Monday, cautioned that there are some key differences between the two former mayors.

"I don't want to canonize Bret Schundler, but he was intellectually superior to Smith, and when Smith ran, although he was once the mayor, he really didn't have a handle on any of the issues. At least he couldn't articulate it," said McCann, who's managed to work his way back into elected office as a school board member along with Cucci.

Surveying the political landscape with a year to go before the election, McCann said that Healy and Cunningham appear to be the favorites. But Schundler, he said, has a better chance than most political observers believe.

"I think that he clearly has a chance. He's a former mayor. There have to be some people in JC that like Bret Schundler," he said. "He got elected a number of times. You have to consider him a formidable candidate."

McCann downplayed the chances of former Assemblyman Lou Manzo, who has run four times before and whom he used to advise, and Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop, who he said is in worst position.

"His approach has been ‘I'm anti-Healy'," said McCann. "That's good if you're the only guy running against Healy. But at some point you've got to do more than just say I don't like Gerry Healy."

Fulop disagrees. He pointed to his two ambitious ethics reform referendums that he's working to put on the ballot in November, and said he's accomplished plenty in his home turf of Ward E, where he's a popular figure.

"The referendums are going to be meaningful and county-wide and will change the entire Hudson county political dynamic," he said. "Gerry McCann is best known for telling stories. He hasn't had a winning candidate since he left office, so I kind of downplay Gerry's perspective."

To Fulop, 1989 does bear a significant resemblance to the field shaping up next year. Cucci, he said, is like Healy. Cunningham is Cunningham. And Schundler is like Smith in that the political support he had eight years ago has scattered in his absence.

"Bret thought people were awaiting him like the messiah, and it hasn't worked out for him that way," said Fulop.

And while not completely ruling out the chance of an alliance with Schundler, who shares the same downtown base as Fulop, he downplayed the possibility.

"He's reached out," said Fulop. "At this point there was nothing discussed that we're on equal footing with or share the same views on as it relates to next year."

As for his own parallel to the 20-year-old election, Fulop is not sure. But he has noticed that Schundler was the only mayor to serve two full terms since Frank Hague, who was in office for 30 years, from 1917 to1947 (Thomas J. Whelan was elected to two full-terms, but was forced from office in 1971 after being indicted as part of the "Hudson County Eight" in a kickback scheme).

"I can't tell you where I'm going to fall, but I can tell you I'm a student of history," said Fulop.