THE NEW NEWARK

Barring some unforeseen electoral catastrophe in the last few hours, Cory Booker is the new mayor of Newark, a quaint Jersey town best known as the scary place where the weak get physically abused in the 2004 stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.

Newark has suffered with the reputation of a city with no hope for decades. Even the city's nickname, "Brick City," comes from the number of housing projects that have been built in the primarily black city through the years. Newark stands as one of the poorest cities in the nation, and has seen little economic improvement during the last 15 years under Mayor Sharpe James, who several weeks ago announced he would not stand for re-election.

Booker was narrowly defeated in 2002 by James in a racially charged primary. Though both men are African-American, James accused Booker of not being authentically black because of, among other things, his top-tier education, his friendship with Jews and his willingness to accept money from Republicans. Booker's only serious challenger this time out, Deputy Mayor and State Senator Ron Rice, has treaded lightly in the same waters as James, questioning Booker's authenticity but not in the same harsh tones.

But Republicanism is not necessarily a bad thing for Booker, who has made it clear that he welcomes support from all corners of the political spectrum and is willing to bring new ideas to Newark from any ideology, so long as they are good ideas. Sound familiar? It should. Booker is consciously modeling himself after our very own Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and has made it clear that he intends to govern in much the same fashion.

"What's distinguishing Bloomberg, if you talk to people who really know cities, is not his leadership, it's that he brought together one of the most exemplary teams in municipal government I think this nation has ever seen," Booker told The New York Times in April. 

And like Bloomberg, Booker has made education a top priority for his new administration. When he took office in 2002, Bloomberg wasted no time outlining a bold vision to save the city's public schools, an issue largely ignored the previous eight years under Rudy Giuliani, probably because you cannot arrest a school. Booker is also preparing to enact a new education agenda in Newark, and just like Bloomberg, mayoral control is the critical component.

Booker has demanded that, as mayor, he be given a large role in operating Newark's public school system, which serves over 40,000 students and has a budget of about $928 million. The Newark school district is currently under state control, and Booker has been a chief critic of New Jersey's ability to provide a quality education for students and to build appropriate new facilities to learn in.

Part of Booker's agenda, unlike Bloomberg's, is not so much as to save Newark's public schools, but to save Newark's children from them. Unlike the majority of the nation's top Democrats, Booker is a supporter of school voucher programs, which would allow public school students to attend private schools while Newark paid the bill. Booker is a founding member of Educational Excellence for Everyone, a non-profit established in 1999 specifically to promote school choice options such as vouchers. From this issue is where Booker falls victim to claims of being a right-wing puppet, and he has recently backed off from his whole-hearted support of school vouchers. But Booker's critics are off-base, as some Democrats elsewhere have rushed to support school vouchers as Booker has. In fact, perhaps the most successful school voucher program was implemented in Milwaukee in the 1990s under former Mayor John Norquist, a democrat.

Whatever route he takes on education, crime, economic development or the host of other serious problems that plague Newark, those solutions have to work for Booker's career's sake. In large part due to the Academy Award-nominated documentary Street Fight, which chronicled Booker's near-miss in 2002 against James, Booker has become a national figure who many believe may represent the future of the Democratic Party, both in New Jersey and even on a national scale. Right now, his resume fits the mold of a young, up-and-coming superstar in the tradition of Illinois Senator Barack Obama or San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Should his reforms fail to catch on in Newark, his national reputation will be sunk.

But more than keeping Booker's reputation intact, it is important for the city that Booker be able to deliver on his promises. A walk through the city greatly illustrates the need for drastic improvement. Despite having tremendous economic engines like Newark Liberty Airport and a substantial port operation, none of that success has found its way into the city as a whole.

On a recent trip back home to visit her family in the Midwest, my friend's bus stopped briefly to pick up passengers in Newark. An otherwise sunny day gave way to the harsh streets, gray concrete, cloudy skies and overall forbidding nature of the city. She came up with a slogan that might fit the city as it exists today: "The sun never shines in Newark." Cory Booker might be the sunshine Newark needs.