Thursday, May 11, 2006
Good Luck Cory: Booker beats back Sharpe machine to become new mayor of Newark
Repost from Bloomberg
"Booker Beats Newark Machine With Pledge to Fight Crime, Poverty
May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Cory Booker was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey in a landslide, riding a wave of support from voters in America's fourth-poorest city counting on him to cut crime, improve schools and clean up the machine politics he has fought for 10 years.
Booker, 37, a Rhodes scholar who grew up in suburban Bergen County, New Jersey, and who lost on his first try to unseat Mayor Sharpe James in 2002, received 72 percent of the vote in a four- way race. He beat his closest rival, State Senator Ronald Rice, by 48 percentage points with 95 percent of districts reporting, according to unofficial returns.
Booker's bid to topple the organization that helped keep James in office for 20 years attracted nationwide attention and $6.6 million in campaign donations, mostly from Wall Street backers. Now he must encourage investment in a city where 28 percent live below the poverty line, where 14 schools are designated by the state as failures, and where the murder rate last year was more than five times that of New York City, 15 miles to the east."
