"Oscar" Considers Old Politics in the New Newark (and I Announce for Mayor). Street Fight, a film about the ugly mayoral campaign four years ago in my city, Newark USA (that's the one in New Jersey, the real Newark, founded 1666; all the others are imitations), is up for an Academy Award for "Documentary Feature".
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PBS, on which I saw this film last July, describes it thus:

"Street Fight" covers the turbulent campaign of Cory Booker, a 32-year old Rhodes Scholar/Yale Law graduate running for mayor of Newark, N.J. against Sharpe James, the four-term incumbent twice his age.

(The PBS website also contains a longer discussion of the film at http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/streetfight/about.html.)
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Mayor James's side employed strong-arm tactics and name-calling but won by only 3,500 votes in a city of (then) 280,000 people (more like 300,000 now). Mayor James called Booker a "faggot white boy", even tho most people in this country would regard Booker as "black", despite his lite skin. I don't know about Booker's sexual orientation. The film showed city employees ripping down Booker campaign posters. We may face, but still do not know if we face, a replay of the 2002 campaign this year, even tho Mayor James said last time that this term would be his last term. You see, his team has quietly filed nominating petitions with the Board of Elections but asked that verification of signatures not yet be commenced, and the Mayor's office has not declared one way or the other. So is he running? or not? It makes a difference — to me, not least.
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I think politicians should stick by their pledges, for everyone should keep his word. Sharpe James said last time that this would be his last term. I have wanted to run for mayor myself, but not against James. He's done a good job, and I wouldn't stand a chance against him. But I can't wait to collect the requisite 1,159 signatures before March 16th if James doesn't announce his retirement until March 17th.
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So I lost patience, and registered as an announced candidate today, in large part to dispel the multitudinous ignorant misconceptions about Newark that handicap this city in its resurgence. And I really am a "faggot white boy" — albeit an "old boy", at 61. (Picture Brits exclaiming, "I say, old boy!" I hasten to add I do not have a British accent. I have the perfect speech of educated New Jerseyans, the purest and best English on the planet.)
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I originally intended to run a low-key, Internet-only campaign, and merely wanted to obtain from the City Clerk the form of petition one needs to submit (with 1,159 signatures) to qualify to appear on the ballot this May. But they wouldn't give me so much as a single copy of the petition form unless I registered to run. So I did, earlier today. I filled out the initial paperwork and got some petition forms. I need to read thru the materials they gave me and create a .PDF version of the petition for people to print at home, fill in, sign, and mail to me to collate with others for the Board of Elections, which I hope to do tomorrow, or the next day at latest. My slogan, which I'll need to register if I get enuf signatures to qualify for the actual campaign, will probably be something like "A bigger, better, Greater Newark" — or should it be "Faggot White Boy"?
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"Greater Newark" is a reference to a keystone of my campaign, enlarging Newark geographically by annexing the 'burbs, starting with distressed Irvington and East Orange. My campaign website will set out the major points of my program, and I will mention here and in my "Newark USA" foto-blog the URL for that website once I have finished it.
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The requirement that one collect signatures in the dead of winter is practically designed to restrict ballot access to established parties and candidates, because who can stand on the sidewalk with a clipboard for hours in freezing temperatures, trying to stop people who are rushing by to get indoors somewhere? I told the people at the City Clerk's office that I have no intention of doing that but will try to collect signatures via the Internet. No one else has, apparently, tried to do that. So in that, at least, I'm a pioneer for democratization of the process in Newark.
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There are many illegitimate measures in place all around this country to keep minor parties and independent candidates from getting on the ballot. The signature requirement in itself is one. In some countries, all you do is post a bond of, say $1,000 and your name will appear on the ballot. If you get less than 5% of the vote, you forfeit your bond. If you get more than 5%, you get that money back, whether you win office or lose. Newark, and other American jurisdictions, can easily do that, either as the sole requirement for securing a place on the ballot or as an alternative to signatures. That is, if you have more signatures than money, you opt to submit signatures and dispense with the bond. But if collecting signatures (in the middle of winter) is impractical, a would-be candidate should have an alternative mechanism for getting on the ballot. A bond is one. There might as well be others.
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The timing of Newark's election is also suspect. Why are we having a mayoral election in May, when major elections in this country are held in November? This is practically designed to minimize turnout, which helps the incumbent and major-party challengers.
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Newark elections are also nonpartisan, so you can't even tell anything about a person's stances on major issues by his party affiliation. Tho some people might argue that there are so few Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, or any other party faithful but Democrats in Newark, that's hard to know, isn't it, if party affiliation is concealed. We don't even have registration into parties, so can't know who is qualified to vote in a party primary, but presumably have open primaries — an invitation to malicious voting for the weakest candidate by stalwarts of the opposing party.
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I and others working to rebuild Newark's reputation have our work cut out for us. Ignorance of Newark knows no bounds. People in ostensibly respectable media make assertions completely out of keeping with reality, and feel no need even to check their facts. In looking for information about Cory Booker, I came across an article from Washington Monthly that refers to Newark in these dismissive, disparaging terms:

After Oxford, Booker went to Yale Law, but rather than live in New Haven, chose to commute each day from a run-down housing project in Newark, a mostly-black, heap-of-junk port city in which Booker had never lived. * * *

Booker has set up a law firm on the top floor of the tallest building in Newark, looking out over a city of run-down rowhouses.

What?!? The tallest building in Newark is the National Newark Building, which overlooks beautiful Downtown Newark (and yes, it really is) and a city where new townhouses and single-family homes are sprouting up like mushrooms. To say that Newark is "mostly-black" is statistically true, if just barely, but that's misleading for a city that is less than 54% black. My own neighborhood, Vailsburg, is predominantly black, but the Ironbound and Forest Hill (singular, unlike Forest Hills, New York) are mainly white, and most neighborhoods are mixed. Indeed, the whole of Essex County (of which Newark is county seat) is largely mixed, and you can see black people on the streets and in the stores of every municipality. We like it that way. New Jersey is a Blue State, and Essex County is about as Blue as you can get (politically speaking).
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As for "heap-of-junk port city" — !! — does this look like a heap of junk to you?

How about this view from the corner of my block?

Or this (the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart as seen from Branch Brook Park)?

I am really tired of ignorant comments about Newark. As I say in my Resurgence City website, "Chances are, you don't know Newark, even if you think you do."
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Does Street Fight stand a chance at the Oscars? The odds say no. I found this paragraph from a longer review in L.A. Weekly at the February 27th entry to the blog "Floating Away":

"Last month, Street Fight became one of the five nominees for this year’s Best Documentary Oscar, and, like Booker himself, it’s the clear underdog in a race against cuddly penguins, mutant fish, paraplegic rugby players and free-falling Enron executives. Curry’s film doesn’t have nearly as sexy a hook — it’s about the art and artifice of local politics, and that rarely sells tickets — and so it’s no real surprise that it’s only just now arriving in theaters. Still, this is classical activist filmmaking of the first order, a movie with the power to turn hearts, change minds and, just maybe, right the wayward course of an entire city."

The film is, unfortunately, partisan, showing things from the Booker campaign's side only, but that is largely because the James side would not cooperate. We'll know within days, one way or the other, if Street Fight can rise above March of the Penguins.
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But whether it wins or not, Street Fight has almost certainly laid a restraining hand upon a repeat of the 2002 campaign's abuses.
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Mayor James has done a great job for Newark, and simultaneously serves as a State Senator. He should stick by his pledge last time and not run for Mayor again this year. He should instead continue to work in Trenton to advance the interests of all this state's cities at the state level.
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Every Old Guard needs to be refreshed or replaced. The vision that animated a person at the beginning of his political career eventually runs out of steam. Either all of its major goals are achieved, and the person has no further vision to offer, or attempts to achieve those goals have failed, and he has nothing to replace them with.
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Newark may have gone just about as far as it can go under Sharpe James. He has done yeoman work thus far, but it's time for him to retire and let new people, with new ideas, assume the burden of taking Newark to the next stage of its resurgence. Maybe that should be Cory Booker and his team, or me and the team I will assemble if I should, by some fluke, take over City Hall. But whoever it is, the next mayor of Newark has far more to work with than the Nation thinks, and far more to celebrate than to fear.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,296.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:50 PM