Newark - NY Times - Where Winning Isn't Easy, but It's Easier Than Governing

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The New York Times, Sunday, April 30, 2006
Our Towns

Where Winning Isn't Easy, but It's Easier Than Governing

By PETER APPLEBOME

Newark

RAHEEM ELDER is the Newark that most people think they know.

He's without a job, living in the dreary Baxter Terrace public housing project, hoping to catch a breeze that never seems to come his way. He has two kids, 7 and 14, and he wants them to have a better life than he's had.

"I'm 39," he said on Thursday afternoon, the red brick of the three-story building looking more worn and tired than he was. "A lot of my friends didn't make it to that age. I don't want to see my kids live like this. They deserve something better."

About half a mile away, Wanny Wong is the Newark that most people don't know exists. She's the 33-year-old owner of the two-month-old Intrinsic Cafe, selling green tea bubble tea and passion fruit slush in a cool, understated room she designed herself, where a steady stream of kids — Asian, Indian, black, white, Muslim women in burkas — from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Rutgers-Newark campus breeze in and out. She says that running through the hoops to get it open took a mixture of naïveté and foolishness, but she hopes it was worth it.

"People come here and say this should be in New York or in Hoboken, not in Newark," she said. "And I just say, well, why not Newark? You can feel the transition coming. It won't come right away, but it's coming."

Both of them are supporting Cory Booker, the 37-year-old phenom who will almost certainly be elected mayor of New Jersey's largest city when Newark residents go to the polls on May 9. Pleasing them both is just one reminder that the small miracle of being elected mayor as an outsider in the ultimate insider town is the easy part. Actually governing will be another matter entirely.

When Mayor Sharpe James decided not to run again, Newark was spared Street Fight II, a replay of the 2002 brass-knuckles showdown between Mr. Booker and Mr. James.

But — trick or treat! — it still feels like pretty much the same movie, with Mr. Booker's race against Mr. James's diminished stand-in, Ronald L. Rice, a sidelight, but the fundamental dynamic still the same.

So Mr. James is leaving office after two decades as mayor without quite agreeing to go away — witness the blithely brazen attempt by Mr. James and his allies on the Municipal Council to set aside $80 million in two private funds for redevelopment, in effect leaving it for the old regime to control. And Mr. Booker, who combines the political profile of Barack Obama with the exuberant wonkiness of Bill Clinton, waits in the wings without being quite sure what he inherits.

In the end, Mr. Elder and Ms. Wong want the same thing, a city government that works, not just for the insiders riding on the gravy train but for everyone else. If Mr. James's considerable achievement was to bring Newark back from the dead, Mr. Booker's challenge is to make sure everyone gets a shot at taking advantage of it.

It's easy to see why even the skeptics can be dazzled by Mr. Booker. He can shift in a heartbeat from charming supporters on the street to leaning against his van and reeling off a combination sermon and political lecture on the political world beyond what he calls the "shallow, tin-eared" racial politics he said Mr. James was practicing in trying to justify his $80 million power grab.

And there's something beyond infectious in Mr. Booker's manner, like the way he banters with a longtime Baxter Terrace resident, Gail Harvey, who's saying people in Newark are desperate for change, but they're not quite sure how to grasp it.

"They want to change, they know it's time," she said. "But you don't know what to expect from something you've never had, like you've always had chicken soup and someone gives you vegetable."

"Wait, am I the chicken or the vegetable?" Mr. Booker said, deadpan.

"You the vegetable, baby," she replied.

If only it were so easy. City budgeting is a Rube Goldberg morass with a deficit looming. The housing authority is being investigated by HUD. The schools are under state control. Water rates just went up 40 percent. Gang activity and violent crime remain out of control. The building boom is enriching mostly contractors who live out of town. Unlike many cities, virtually all the affluent neighborhoods outside downtown Newark are in adjoining suburbs, not within the city limits. That is an enormous institutional hindrance to the renaissance Mr. James envisioned.

And the real political battle in town is the Council races, where it seems touch and go whether Mr. Booker can elect enough of his supporters to control the council. If enough supporters of Mr. James win, Mr. Booker will have the throne but not the power.

Ms. Wong advertises her little oasis in the student newspapers as "a moment of Zen in Newark." There's a lot of Zen in Cory Booker, too. He comes across as some wonk ninja from Stanford, Yale and central casting. But, alas, it will take some powerful combination of Zen, grit, magic and luck to make his excellent adventure work once he gets in office.

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/nyregion/30towns.html?pagewanted=print

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