Booker Bites Back

In my article this week, I wrote about about Cory Booker's 2006 mayoral campaign in Newark, and I examined the significance of a stack of racially inflammatory, anonymous leaflets that were publicly available during a visit to the candidate's South Ward headquarters. One of them was titled "How Black Mayors Sell Our Cities to White Developers," and it accused incumbent Sharpe James of treating a local business owner like a "sharecropper."

I've posted it here.

Judging by the Cory Booker/Sharpe James matchup back in 2002, things may just be starting to heat up. This is Booker's second shot to take City Hall and, now more than ever, he's in the tough position of playing to two audiences at once: local voters in Newark, who are suspicious of his connections to "outsiders," and those "outsiders" themselves, who include moneyed Manhattanites and moderates on the national scene.