Newark Council Runoffs - Ledger - Booker's six choices win

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Published in the Star-Ledger, Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Booker's six choices for council win runoffs
Newark voters finish remaking City Hall

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

BY JEFFERY C. MAYS AND KATIE WANG
Star-Ledger Staff

Riding the coattails of Mayor-elect Cory Booker, six more of his running mates swept onto the Newark City Council yesterday, the largest turnover of the city's government in 36 years.

Yesterday's runoff election results, combined with the three seats Booker's candidates won in the May 9 vote, will put the new mayor in control of all nine council seats, giving him the cooperative governing body he asked for to help make wholesale changes in everything from how city contracts are doled out to public safety and ethics.

"We have an electoral victory, but the real victory we seek is for our children. The real victory we seek is for economic opportunity for our people. The real victory we seek is for a government that does not serve itself but its people," Booker said last night while sitting atop a black Ford Expedition and waving a broom in the air in front of Flava Restaurant.

Booker and all nine council members take office July 1.

A pickup truck pulled up in front of the restaurant on East Park Street, and volunteers handed out brooms to some of the 250 people gathered there. Wearing "Embrace the Sweep" T-shirts, the crowd waved the brooms in the air and swept the sidewalk.

"I knew it was going to be a clean sweep," Danielle Coleman, 34, a Central Ward resident, said as she brushed her broom against the floor. "The city was really tired of our old mayor and old council. We need someone new to come in and fix it."

After losing a bitter election to longtime Mayor Sharpe James by 3,500 votes four years ago, Booker regrouped and engineered a complete shift in city politics similar to 1970, when Kenneth A. Gibson was elected the city's first African-American mayor.

James filed petitions to run this year but ultimately declined to seek a sixth term, leaving Deputy Mayor and state Sen. Ronald L. Rice as Booker's main opponent.

Booker won by raising more than $6.6 million and focusing on issues affecting the daily lives of residents, such as Newark's increasing number of murders, its long-troubled schools and what he said was a lack of ethics at City Hall.

Joseph Marbach, chairman of the political science department at Seton Hall University and associate dean at the school's College of Arts and Sciences, said the vote for Booker was a clear mandate "for him to go about his efforts at reform, modernization and economic redevelopment. As much as there could be a mandate, this would be one."

The election results mean three Latinos -- Luis Quintana, Carlos Gonzalez and Anibal Ramos -- will serve on the council at the same time, an explicit signal of the next big shift in Newark politics.

"It's the browning of Newark and the rise of another ethnic group," said Clement Price, director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience and an expert on Newark's political landscape. "We've seen this before with the rise of the Italians, the Irish and the African-Americans. If you don't like it, you should leave town now."

In addition to Quintana, an incumbent, and Gonzalez, who both won at-large seats, Mildred Crump, the city's first African-American councilwoman, won a return trip to City Hall along with Essex County Freeholder Donald Payne, son of Rep. Donald Payne (D-10th Dist.).

Oscar James II, the son of one of Booker's chief advisers, beat out the son of Mayor James to win a South Ward council seat. Ronald C. Rice, son of the man Booker trounced in the general election, beat incumbent Mamie Bridgeforth for the West Ward seat.

Rice attributed his victory to a dissatisfaction among West Ward residents over quality-of-life issues for the past eight years.

"The quality of life had gone down the tube. I think the community reacted to that. They thought change was possible with a new council member," Rice said.

A third element to Booker's sweep is a generational shift in Newark politics. Booker is just 37; some of his running mates, including Dana Rone, James and Rice, are also in their 30s.

"The only incumbent council people to survive in 2006 aligned with Booker. It's a generational shift and a vote for change. It's impressive that Booker went six-for-six tonight," said Rick Thigpen, former executive director of the state Democratic Party and a political consultant for the Strategy Group of Trenton.

Donald Payne Jr. spent most of the day campaigning in his base of the South Ward.

"People are excited by the change and excited about me being part of it," said Payne, who joined Booker's team for the runoff.

The losers were complimentary in defeat.

"I respect the democratic process. I really hope the mayor-elect and the city council put the people of Newark first," said Councilwoman Bessie Walker, who placed sixth.

Ras Baraka, who lost his third runoff for a council seat yesterday, said during an interview on Cablevision that he and other candidates were unable to energize their base.

Booker predicted the outcome earlier yesterday. "I feel it," he said during a telephone conversation with his mother, Carolyn. "I'm embracing the sweep."

An upbeat Booker voted at 8 a.m. and spent the rest of the day visiting polling sites and passing out Blow Pops and Snickers bars.

The man he is replacing, James, spent the day visiting poll sites and trying to help his son John James get elected to the South Ward seat he first won 36 years ago.

It wasn't enough.

The days leading to the runoff were quiet. That changed yesterday morning. Campaign signs that were not evident weeks ago were plastered throughout the city to remind voters of the election. The cars with pictures of candidates, which had disappeared after May 9, were back out in full force. The megaphone speakers on top played recorded messages urging people to vote.

Some voters said the election was about change.

Senior citizens Laverne Murray and Annie Jackson said it was time for new blood in City Hall.

"I want to see all these young kids in office," Murray said. "It's time for them to have a chance."

Staff writers Barry Carter and Reginald Roberts contributed to this report.

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