Banking On Booker

Mayor Sharpe James has decided to call it quits after 20 years of running Newark into the ground and just a day before the names were going to the ballot. Despite what the nj.com article and the NYT article below claims to be positive developments in Newark's condition since James took office, the city remains in poor shape and the political leadership needs an infusion of youth.

The leading contender is Cory Booker, who was the focus of an Academy Award nominated documentary, Street Fight, and who lost to James by 3,500 votes in the last mayoral election.

What spurred James to quit the race? James claims that it was because he opposed being a dual office holder.

Mr. James, who has also been a state senator since 1999, said he was stepping down because he was "an opponent of dual office holding" and wanted to focus on state issues. He emphasized that he thought he would have won the May 9 election if he remained in the race because Newark is better off now than when he was first elected in 1986.

"Under my leadership Newark has climbed the rough side of the mountain and has become a renaissance city with pride, prosperity and progress," he wrote. "Newark is now a destination city with planned programs and economic projects that will surface over the next decade."

His decision ended weeks of uncertainty about his intentions, upended the race for mayor, and signaled the end of his 20-year tenure. During that time, Newark, a city of 280,000 once synonymous with urban failure, saw a revival of its downtown, even as crime, bad schools and poverty continued to afflict its neighborhoods.

The revival of the downtown was the result of hundreds of millions spent on the city, and most residents have little to show for it. He's had 20 years to turn Newark around, and the sad fact is that under James' leadership, Newark was known as the car theft capital of the US, though that image has improved somewhat since a car theft task force began cracking down on the rampant thefts in the city.

James remains the State Senator for the district that includes the City. He was elected State Senator in 1999 and has been both state senator and mayor for the last five years. It doesn't quite make sense why holding the two positions simultaneously would suddenly become an issue for James and cause him to withdraw from the race against Booker.

Booker was magnaminous tonite in commenting on Sharpe James. The same couldn't be said of James, who suddenly found it distasteful to hold two elected positions.