The city of Newark, New Jersey just elected its first new mayor in 20 years. Known for its high rate of violent crime, Newark suffered a nasty campaign between golden boy Cory Booker and the candidate anointed by outgoing mayor Sharpe James.
 |
|
Hizzoner Booker T. Coryngton |
Cory Booker swamped his nearest challenger, state Sen. Ronald L. Rice, taking 72 percent of the vote compared with 24 percent for Rice in the nonpartisan election. [Link]Mr. Booker, a chatty former Rhodes scholar who developed his oratorical talents at Yale Law School, has been tagged by fellow Democrats as a rising star in the party. [Link]
Booker is a vegetarian who doesn’t drink… [Link]
… a Democrat who cites the Republican mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, as a political model, and a churchgoing Baptist who meditates and quotes from Hindu texts… [Link - thanks, Randompedia]
Booker won by a landslide, but the campaign was marred by naked racial gibes from his black opponents. Red in tooth and claw, the ‘insufficiently black’ smear sounds a whole lot like desi racialists who question candidates’ authenticity (e.g. Bobby Jindal) and lob the grenade of Selling Out.
Booker is talking about the blacker-than-thou themes that James has been hammering on for weeks… “Sharpe James is running a campaign that uses every attempt possible to distract voters from the issues. He’s making racial allegations; he’s appealing to people’s worst fears…
“Four years ago, they said I was a tool of the Jews and a member of the KKK.” [Link]
… the battle pits the young challenger against an old-style political machine capable of using any means necessary—including personal harassment and police intimidation—to crush its opponents. Though both candidates are African-American, the race becomes racially charged when the mayor accuses Booker—a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School grad—of not being “really black…” [Link]
… Sharpe James described him — though they are both African-American Democrats — as Jewish, gay, a Republican and a proxy for the Ku Klux Klan… At Oxford, after wandering into a meeting of L’Chaim, a Jewish student organization, he joined the group and was eventually elected its president…
He was a vegetarian in a city where the insiders still made deals over smothered chicken at Je’s, a soul food restaurant near City Hall. “He doesn’t want to create himself just in the mold of a black politician… He wants to be someone that white people, Latino people, who other people just feel comfortable with.” [Link]
I don’t think it’s how future desi vs. desi campaigns in the U.S. will inevitably turn out, but it is a cheap and easy insult in a mud-slinging campaign. It certainly shows the crude racial smears in white vs. desi political campaigns in a whole new light.
In the end, the electorate grew tired of James’ machine politics, and the better candidate won. You win it, you fix it: let’s hope Booker is a better mandarin than dull Sharpe.
Outside one polling place… a Democratic district leader said he had just voted for Mr. Booker because he was sick and tired of all the crime in Newark. “There are prostitutes on my street corner and I call the police and nothing ever gets done.” [Link]
