Sharpe James

It's going to be an eventful weekend for Al Sharpton.

First, he'll be urging black leaders to coalesce in support of a single black candidate in the Congressional 11th, where Rock Hackshaw says Charles Barron is taking an interest as well.

And on Sunday, I'm told, Sharpton will be speaking at the church of his new ally Cory Booker in Newark, where the Reverend helped five-term mayor Sharpe James turn away a challenge from Booker four years ago.

-- Josh Benson

It's a New York political blog, but it's worth diverting your attention for a moment to the sweet-smelling state across the river to ponder what Cory Booker managed to do yesterday.

He carried carried six of six council candidates to victory yesterday in Newark's runoff elections, ensuring that his allies will be sitting in each of the council's nine seats when he takes office on July 1.

It's a pretty amazing political accomplishment. Although Booker had a multi-million dollar financial advantage over his opponents, it wasn't as if the candidates who lost yesterday were nobodies. Several well-known incumbents went down, including Ras Baraka - the son of 9/11 conspiracy theorist and former state poet laureate Amiri Baraka. And another surprise loser was John James, the son of the city's domineering five-term Mayor Sharpe James.

The guy's a media monster. My guess is he's going to get more coverage in New York over the next few years than all but a handful of city and state officials.

The challenges Booker's going to be grappling with in one of the country's poorest cities makes for a compelling story, whether he succeeds or fails. (A documentary about his first, unsuccessful bid for mayor was nominated for an Oscar last year.)

And he's going to attract national attention for some of his more controversial ideas. He's a Democrat, for example, but has made himself a hero to national conservatives (and an enemy of the local teachers union) by proselytizing for school vouchers.

My Baghdad-bound former colleague Damien Cave has the wrap-up.

-- Josh Benson

After a weeklong stint on this blog last summer, I'm back again.

"Who cares?" I can hear many of you asking, not unreasonably.

After all, it was Ben Smith who built The Politicker into a local phenomenon. It was Tom McGeveran and company who nurtured it over the last few weeks.

My only job, then, should be not to screw it up.

Some things will certainly stay the same.

As always, it will be a source of relevant and frequently updated material from me and the scary-smart Observer staff, geared towards the sorts of people whose hearts sink each time they reach the end of a Fred Dicker column.

More importantly, The Politicker will continue to serve as a vehicle for interaction with our readers, giving us the chance to tap directly into your politely-rendered collective wisdom about who to look at, what to write and when we've got it wrong.

The catch, of course, is that with the recent proliferation of New York politics blogs -- Ben remarked on it with the resigned air of a local whose neighborhood has just been overrun by hipsters -- it's going to be more of a challenge than ever to distinguish ourselves.

We accept it.

In the meantime, as I slowly recover from two years of writing about people with names like George Norcross, Sharpe James and Jim McGreevey, The Politicker may veer unpredictably. You may well read it for the same morbid reason that you watch car chases, magicians in water bubbles or a Jeanine Pirro campaign speech: it's a live spectacle that can go horribly wrong at any time.

That's fine. We're here to amuse as well as to inform.

Either way, we'll give it everything we have. All we ask in return is your continued attention, comments and tips.

Please.

-- Josh Benson

Are you still looking for the mystical sixth borough—that El Dorado of cheap rents, decent bagels  read more »

Are you still looking for the mystical sixth borough—that El Dorado of cheap rents, decent bag  read more »

The Times reports on a a feud between Jon Corzine and Sharpe James; and the legislature overrides most of George Pataki's vetos, but the governor says he will block the property tax rebate. Newsday reports on the Yanks and Mets stadium deals.

The Sun reports that Department of Education Deputy Chancellor Carmen Fariña will retire at the end of the school year.

And the Albany Times Union reports that Chuck Schumer opposes President Bush's VA plan.

—Nicole Brydson

There is an elephant in the room of New York politics. It is the issue of social class.  read more »

There is an elephant in the room of New York politics. It is the issue of social class.    read more »

Up for an Oscar this year is Marshall Curry's documentary about the Newark Mayor's race, Street Fight, featuring a memorable line from former Ferrer spokeswoman Jen Bluestein.

"As formidable an opponent Sharpe James is, the penguins are just as tough," says Jen.

By the time Cory Booker lost his 2002 run for mayor of Newark, the young African-American lawyer, fo  read more »

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.  read more »

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.

Jason Horowitz and I conclude that the most powerful person in city politics may well be a former ambassador to Belize named Carolyn Curiel. (Yes, she also heads the group that writes the Times's local endorsements.

Jessica Bruder heads over to Newark to find that Cory Booker, Mr. Clean last time he faced Mayor Sharpe James, may have learned a trick or two about race politics from his old adversary.  read more »

Eve Kessler finds Mike Balboni formidable.

And Anna Schneider-Mayerson considers Jeanine Pirro as a lawyer, and fits her into a category of pioneering female prosecutors defined by "the paradoxically aggressive, feel-your-pain rhetoric of former-prosecutor-cum-TV-personality Nancy Grace; the ball-busting feminism of sex-crimes-chief-cum-thriller-writer Linda Fairstein; the refined and coiffed yet slammer-friendly M.O. of Manhattan D.A. hopeful Leslie Crocker Snyder."

On the morning of Feb.  read more »