To professional election observers, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka’s bid for a fourth term leading New Jersey’s largest city is a given.
“Wait, there is an election in Newark?” joked Matthew Hale of Seton Hall University’s political science department. “I am kidding. But the fact that I had to think about it shows you how forgone the conclusion is.”
Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday in Newark’s officially non-partisan race for mayor and all nine seats on the City Council.
As in the mayoral race, voters citywide will cast ballots for four at-large council seats, while candidates for East, West, North, South and Central ward seats will be chosen by residents of those wards only.
A total of 43 candidates will be on Tuesday’s ballots, including Baraka and his seven mayoral challengers, plus 37 council hopefuls.
After being elected in 2014 with 54% of the vote, Baraka won re-election in 2018 with 77%, then 83% in 2022.
Since then, observers say Baraka has bolstered his political standing by finishing a strong second out of six candidates in last June’s Democratic gubernatorial primary won by now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill…
Baraka’s race doesn’t have to be closely contested to be important — to him or to his running mates, said Prof. Julia Sass Rubin, an associate dean at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Members of the Newark forward slate may be hanging on the mayor’s coattails to drag them to victory, and the more lopsided the mayor’s margin, the better their chances of victory, Rubin said.
And, Rubin added, Baraka may be eager to notch another landslide for his own sake, lest a narrower margin than in 2022 be seen as a decline in popularity that could weaken him heading into his next election — for whatever office that may be.
In addition, the bigger the mayor’s win, the more decisive his mandate to govern as mayor as he sees fit.
“I mean, it certainly helps if he does well. It gives him political capital,” Rubin said. “And if he doesn’t do well, then I think it does open a possibility of criticism.”