Cory Booker: Supermayor Or Self-Promoter?

Cory Booker: Supermayor Or Self-Promoter?
by August 06, 2013 4:22 PM

In one week, voters in New Jersey go to the polls in a special primary election for a U.S. Senate seat.

No one on the ballot has more name recognition than Cory Booker, the 44-year-old mayor of Newark, who is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. But Booker’s critics say he’s been more focused on his own ambitions than on governing New Jersey’s largest city.

In the seven years since Booker was elected mayor, he has been ubiquitous on Twitter and on TV. The telegenic African-American mayor has gotten lots of breathless coverage — for to rescue a neighbor, for , even for that was locked out of the house on a bitterly cold night.

Booker is a relentless advocate for a city that had become synonymous with urban decay. When he took office, Newark’s population was falling and the crime rate was high. The city’s previous mayor went to prison for corruption. Now, Booker says, Newark is a model for other cities.

“The development of our city dramatically has turned around,” he says, “to the point where we’re becoming again what Newark used to be: an engine for economic growth for our entire state.”

Booker points to the construction of new office towers, hotels and grocery stores. The city’s population is growing again, too, for the first time in decades.

‘He Didn’t Even Look Our Way’

But if you walk just a few blocks away from the shiny new construction in downtown Newark, you get a very different impression of the city and its mayor.

Terry Peterson, who lives in a neighborhood on the west side of Newark, says he hasn’t seen any change. “You know, you still got crimes, drug-dealing,” he says.

Jerry Brown says Booker hasn’t done anything — except “getting his pockets fat.”

Like Peterson and Brown, others across the city say their neighborhoods have not improved under Booker.

“Everyone thought it was going to be different because we stood up for him,” says Cecilia Brailsford, who lives in the Ironbound neighborhood. “And when he got in, he didn’t even look our way.”

Booker’s critics contend that he’s more concerned with his own career ambitions than he is with the mundane details of running the city.

“Whenever there’s a real issue in the city that needs to be resolved, the mayor is nowhere to be found,” City Councilman Ras Baraka said in November. “The only way you can see the mayor is if you turn on Meet the Press.”

https://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/08/06/209576092/cory-booker-super-mayor-or-self-promoter