NEWARK — His campaign ads boast that crime is down (well, sort of).
They say he’s brought jobs to Newark (unemployment is down one point in a year).
People are challenging some of his exploits — saying a guy named T-Bone he saved from the streets actually didn’t exist. (Maybe he did? It’s complicated.)
And while he campaigns for the U.S. Senate, his sexuality, weight, and his tweets with some Portland stripper are all out there for national speculation.
Hey, it’s not easy being Super Mayor. Just try it sometime.
If there is one dominant theme in the life of Cory Booker, it’s that he’s been at the center of attention since he was a boy. He stood out in his largely white hometown of Harrington Park. He stood out at Oxford as a black American studying the Torah. He stood out in Newark as a Rhodes scholar turned city pol.
And if there is another dominant theme, it’s that despite all that spotlight — or maybe because of it — friends and foes say he is one tough guy to figure.
Filmmaker Mark Benjamin spent three years in Newark, directing the 11-hour series Brick City, getting close to the mayor behind the scenes in his day-to-day life. What did he learn? That Booker behind-the-scenes was much the same as Booker in-front-of-the-scenes.
“He’s kind of like this hero that he invented,” he said. But he thinks Booker will make a great senator.
To his hard-core supporters, Booker IS a superman, capable of bringing disparate forces together for the betterment of one of the country’s toughest, most ungovernable cities. To his detractors, he is an infuriating phony who cares more about national fame than problem-solving.
Booker says flat-out that his fame has been good for the city.
“It’s been a strategy that’s worked incredibly well,” he said in an interview after Friday’s debate against Republican rival Steve Lonegan.
“The corner is turned,” Booker said, “The momentum is set. Whoever is the next mayor is going to have tailwinds.”
As for being aloof, or enigmatic, Booker dismisses that description out of hand.
“That doesn’t jive with the guy that in the middle of the night runs out to save a dog. That doesn’t jive with a guy who when there’s a noise complaint actually goes and tells people to turn it down,” he said. “These are two conflicting narratives. … Residents can get me on e-mail, they can get me on my cell phone, they can get me on Twitter, they can get me at community meetings.”
MYTH AND REALITY
An analysis of Booker’s tenure in Newark, his claims and pronouncements compared to the facts, begins with some basic math.
The mayor gets points just for being the first mayor in 45 years to not leave City Hall under the shadow of an indictment. And, if he wins the Oct. 16th race against Lonegan, he will be the first mayor in at least 100 years to win higher office.
But there is more. He will leave the city with a balanced budget for the first time in a decade, though he had to gut the police department and raise taxes by 20 percent to do it.
After seven years under Booker there will be twice as much affordable housing, two new hotels, a spate of made-over parks, a new residential tower, two (possibly three) new office towers and a $150 million educational complex in the heart of Newark’s downtown. And for the first time since the tumultuous 1960s Booker will leave Newark with a larger population than when he entered office.
Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio speaks in this 2011 file photo as Mayor Cory Booker looks on.
These are accomplishments in a city where progress doesn’t come easy.
But a review of the stats and interviews with city officials and civic leaders show Booker will be leaving one of the city’s meanest problems largely in the hands of his successor: Crime.
A safe Newark has eluded city leaders for decades. It’s a problem that Booker often claims he has begun to get under control, but the stats say the needle is moving back toward the danger zone.
Since before the days when Dutch Schultz was gunned down in the Palace Chophouse in 1935, gangland crime has tormented mayors of Newark.
Booker made it the central issue when he ran for mayor in 2006.
“We will put hundreds more of our police onto our streets,” Booker said at the time. “We will create the most sophisticated and well-resourced police department in New Jersey. Hold me accountable.”
A good start
Halfway through his first term, things were looking good.
“We have made major strides in reducing crime in Newark and providing our residents with a safer, stronger and prouder community,” Booker said in 2010.
Starting from 2006, Booker and the police department made dramatic cuts in murders and violent crimes.
But State Police records show murders and robberies on the rise. The Star-Ledger examined 10 years of crime statistics and found that while some things have improved, others are little better off today than in 2003.
In 2003, under former Mayor Sharpe James, Newark logged 83 homicides, according to Uniform Crime Reports compiled by the State Police. There were 2,848 violent crimes including rapes, aggravated assaults and armed robberies.
In 2012 the city had 95 homicides and 3,220 violent crimes. In 2008 and 2009 crime dropped but has been creeping back up. So far this year there have been 73 homicides, one just last night.
Booker says that shootings are down 27 percent since he took office, a stat that is not logged by the State Police.
“We were rolling into 2010 with great numbers and then we had to lay off police officers,” he said, citing the down economy and steep cuts in state aid. Still, he said, since Police Director Samuel DeMaio took over in 2011, crime stats “started to come down the other way.”
Many residents of city neighborhoods say they don’t feel it.
"I am a hostage in my own home," said South Ward resident Deborah Boone-Coy in a recent interview. "I don't feel comfortable to indulge in normal casual activity."
That is not the Newark Booker promised to voters.
The slow accumulation of bodies usually goes unnoticed outside the city unless it involves a sensational detail: a child murdered, 10 dead in 10 days, a pizza deliveryman gunned down. All of that happened within the last two months.
For many in Newark the sound of gunshots and the late-night glare of police lights make it unclear who is winning.
Boone-Coy is a sales executive, married with one child in Newark schools. She lives in the city’s Weequahic section. She and her family are middle-class Newarkers. They own their own home and pay property taxes. They are the kind of residents that any mayor wants more of.
Boone-Coy says the specter of violence hangs over her entire existence.
“This is just like a regular thing,” she said. “The way I comport myself in the city — every single time I get in my car. I’m not comfortable. I’m always looking.”
Booker acknowledges crime is still the number one issue in Newark, but says the progress under his leadership is unassailable.
“In the worst economy, with funds cutting back for public safety … crime is lower than when we took over during a booming economy,” he said.
Not all residents feel the same as Boone-Coy. In fact, in a poll last year, Booker had a 70 percent approval rating among Newarkers. But his tendency to oversell roils those who see a much different Newark than the one in Booker’s speeches and television appearances.
His allies say the aura of “Booker as superhero” has been with him from the beginning and is not entirely of his own making.
“The mythology was being created around him,” said Booker’s longtime friend and current chief of staff, Modia Butler. “He was young, articulate … rolling up his sleeves, living in the projects, talking about where the city was at the time and where it should be,” Butler said. “All of that created the mythology.”
Young Leaders
Those who knew Booker from when he was elected to the city council in 1998 said that he was part of a group of young leaders bent on wresting control of the city from the old guard, led by then-Mayor James. They included names such as Anibal Ramos and Ras Baraka, now city councilmen.
Rahaman Muhammad, pictured left in this 2010 file photo, was part of a group of young reformers in Newark that included Cory Booker.
Rahaman Muhammad, a city union leader, said one of the group’s most successful ventures was to stage a sit-in at Garden Spires, a violence-ridden housing complex that had been all but taken over by drug lords. Dozens of people set up a tent outside the complex and stayed there for 10 days to protest conditions.
But it was Booker who drew the focus of the media. Muhammad suggested in an interview this past week that the hype ran ahead of the facts. Booker claimed to have gone on a hunger strike. Muhammad, who is supporting Booker’s Senate run, doesn’t remember that part.
“Cory said he went on a hunger strike,” Muhammad said. “I was eating. His staff was eating. We had plenty of food.”
Was this another T-Bone tale? Muhammad couldn't say for sure. What he does remember is that Booker, by then a city councilman, got the lion's share of attention.
Muhammad said that was the first indication that as Booker's star rose, it was leaving others behind.
Booker said he was the one who led the strike and the hunger strike was real. He said he lost 30 pounds.
Booker swept into the mayor’s office in 2006 with a full slate of allies on the city council. By 2010, after winning his second mayoral term, Booker lost two seats on the city council and the support of many of his re-elected allies.
A grueling three years of political brawling culminated last year with a melee on the council floor after Booker tried to install a supporter on the city council.
Elderly ladies were pepper sprayed, activists were cuffed and hauled off to jail. City Hall was locked down.
Still, Booker said the narrative of a city divided is overblown, especially considering how unruly Newark politics has always been.
“Every single one of our major policy initiatives passed in the council except for one,” he said.
Loyal to a fault?
If Muhammad and others felt left out, Booker was fiercely loyal to other early supporters, sometimes even when it hurt him politically.
An early example was Pablo Fonseca, Booker’s former hard-charging chief of staff. In 2006 Fonseca’s ally Anthony Campos was made chief of police. Campos rescinded a series of transfers made by Police Director Garry McCarthy, and a battle between Fonseca and McCarthy ensued.
Booker said internal feuding is not unique to Newark.
“A mayor of a big city having employees not getting along? Come on,” he said.
Still, Booker had to eliminate the position of chief. He made Campos a “public safety director” where the Fonseca ally earned $155,000. In 2010, when Booker laid off 163 officers, Campos got a $12,000 raise, according to city budget documents.
In all, Campos took in $322,000 — a chief’s salary — with drastically reduced responsibilities. Campos turned around last year and sued Booker for alleged “broken promises.”
Then there is Elnardo Webster, a friend of Booker’s since high school and once his law partner at Trenk DiPasquale.
Booker has taken heat in his Senate campaign for allowing Trenk to bill city-controlled agencies for more than $1.5 million. Booker meanwhile earned $688,500 in equity payouts since becoming mayor as part of an agreement that his campaign refuses to disclose.
Booker denies there was any serious consequence to standing with his friends.
“Nothing’s hurt me politically because we’ve won every race,” he said. “Nothing’s hurt me legislatively because we’ve passed 99 percent of our agenda.”
And if he is an enigma to many, if he travels or tweets too much, he is bringing home some serious bacon.
Booker has earned $1.3 million on the speaking circuit since taking office. But his message of optimism has brought in a whole lot more for the city he governs.
The mayor has raised close to $400 million in philanthropy to Newark for everything from schools and parks to roads, food and clothes.
Moreover, he’s brought investment.
Early in his administration, Booker’s administration drafted and fought for the Urban Transit Hub tax credit. That allowed for electronics giant Panasonic to relocate to Newark and for Prudential to build two office towers.
Booker has successfully courted dozens more businesses including Manichewitz, Audible.com, Wakefern, Dinosaur BBQ, Joe’s Crab Shack, Bartlett Dairy, CityPlex and Pitney Bowes to name a few.
“I think that he created a perception of Newark that created interest in developers that wasn’t there before,” said Al Koeppe, the chairman of the state Economic Development Authority and a frequent critic of the mayor’s. “He was a refreshing new presence. Even without taking a hard look at what kind of mayor he was, people took comfort and interest.”
A harder look
Booker's campaign against Lonegan has brought a much harder look.
Lonegan, a former mayor from Bogota, is a self-described "right-wing radical," and has attacked Booker at every turn.
Democrat Cory Booker (left) and Republican Steve Lonegan participate in Trentonin the first debate of New Jersey's special U.S. Senate election.
With 10 times less money and staff, Lonegan is a master of political theater, setting up low-fi events throughout Newark to blast Booker over his shortcomings. First it was his education policy, then it was his expenses as mayor, then it was a house Booker owned and let fall into disrepair, and then it was the mayor’s deal with his former law firm.
Lonegan’s attacks may have had an effect. Polls taken a month ago showed Booker between 25 and 35 points ahead. Polls taken more recently have him only 12 to 13 points in front.
And as much as he is looking at his margin of victory or defeat on Oct. 16, Booker is also looking at his legacy in Newark.
As he pulls the curtain down on his time as the CEO of New Jersey’s largest city, how Booker is remembered depends largely on what happens next and who takes over.
Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University and author of “The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America,” said the mayor’s political legacy in the town that made him could break a few ways.
She said if the next mayor carries on his policies, that will be a vindication. If someone takes Newark in another direction and fails, that too will be a boon.
“If someone comes in and does the opposite and Newark thrives, then that is a repudiation,” she said.