NEWARK’S EXPLOSIVE MAYOR’S RACE

[DonViejo]

Charles Upton Sahm

The campaign for Cory Booker’s successor was already ugly, but a leaked video showing a candidate’s charged racial speech could shake things up just before the vote.

Voters in Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, will vote for a new mayor next Tuesday to replace Cory Booker, who rode a wave of national attention into the Senate last fall. The election comes at a moment when Newark, long one of America’s most dangerous and depressed cities, is experiencing a nascent revival. The stakes are high and the candidates offer a stark choice: Ras Baraka, a radical councilman from Newark’s South Ward, is up against Shavar Jeffries, a former Assistant State Attorney General and reformer. Baraka has enjoyed a significant lead, but the race is tightening and an explosive video posted to a mysterious Web site this weekend could shake things up in the campaign’s final week.

Baraka is a firebrand whose politics of racial resentment would seem out of date many places in 21st-century America, but still resonates in Newark. The son of Amiri Baraka, the controversial poet and essayist who died in January, Baraka also dabbles in poetry and was featured on Lauryn Hill’s 1998 record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. But unlike his father, who abhorred politics, Baraka has spent most of his life in the political realm.

After graduating from Howard University and obtaining a master's in education from Saint Peter’s in Jersey City, Baraka ran for mayor in 1994 when he just 24 years old and teaching in Newark’s public schools. During Sharpe James’ infamous 20-year tenure as mayor of Newark, Baraka served as deputy mayor and was later appointed to serve the term of a councilman who passed away. Baraka lost his council seat in the 2006 election that brought Cory Booker to City Hall. He then became principal of Newark’s Central High School and was elected to represent Newark’s South Ward on the city council in 2010. (Newark is divided into five political wards.) He remained on as principal of Central High until just a few months ago.

Shavar Jeffries’ life story is straight out of Horatio Alger. His father abandoned him. His mother was killed by an abusive boyfriend when he was 9. He was raised by his grandparents in Newark, did well in public school, and then received a scholarship to attend the prestigious Seton Hall Prep. From there he went on to Duke and Columbia Law School, clerked for the NAACP and a federal judge, and then began a career as a lawyer and a professor at Seton Hall Law School. From 2008 to 2010, he served as New Jersey’s Assistant Attorney General and helped to create a prisoner reentry program that produced a 26% reduction in recidivism of ex-offenders.

-snip-

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/05/the-leak-of-a-mysterious-video-could-change-the-outcome-of-newark-s-mayor-s-race.html

[JustAnotherGen]

1. I still don't get from the article

Why it's an 'explosive race'?

[DonViejo]

2. The only reason I can come up with...

is Baraka's perceived "radicalism."

Many in Newark’s business community remain nonplussed by the idea of a Baraka mayoralty. They note that Baraka has struck a very moderate tone during the campaign and doubt that he would do anything to damage the city’s fledging renaissance. Newark’s deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Jennings, says, “I don’t see development slowing down no matter who wins. Both candidates are pro-growth.” Others are less sanguine. “This guy is as radical as they come,” one prominent business owner tells me. “He makes de Blasio look like Ronald Reagan.” (emphasis added)

and

Baraka doesn’t seem too concerned about his radical image. “People call me a radical. Well, we’ve got radical problems,” he said recently. But others disagree. “Newark stands at a crossroads. Newark needs a leader who solves problems, not someone who throws bricks," says Jeffries supporter Councilman Anibal Ramos Jr. "Newark needs a chief executive officer, not a protester-in-chief."

[hedda_foil]

3. It's probably about this.

I think it might be about this. Though talk about burying the lede.

The race for mayor was ugly from the start—Baraka showed up at Jeffries’ home at 9:30 one night and the two men got in a shouting match; a low-level Jeffries campaign worker set fire to the Baraka campaign bus—but the heat was turned up this weekend when a Web site of unclear origin posted a 10-minute video of a Baraka diatribe. In it, Baraka indicates that whites are the “enemies” of blacks and suggests “We got to plan to remove them and then we got to seize power.” He was apparently addressing gang-affiliated teenagers and trying to impart a message of black empowerment, but even in context the language is extremely inflammatory.