Newark Mayor Cory Booker Wins Re-election

Standing between his parents, Cary Booker Sr. and Carolyn Booker, Newark Mayor Cory Booker celebrates his re-election Tuesday night from the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark

Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker easily won a second term Tuesday night, beating out three challengers with 59 percent of the vote, according to reports.

Just before 10 p.m., Booker declared victory over his three challengers – Clifford Minor, Yvonne Garrett Moore and Mirna L. White – and addressed a packed room at the Robert Treat Hotel.

“Newark is going to continue to rise,” Booker said. “Newark, New Jersey, has great days ahead.”

While his staff has delivered positive change, including ethics reforms and a drop in crime, he said there is much more work to be done. He warned that progress would not come easily in a city battered by poverty and recession.

“We know we have difficult days ahead, but if I want to be in the trenches with any group of people in the United States of America, I want to be in the trenches fighting with my fellow residents of the city of Newark,” Booker said.

Speaking to reporters, he called the election results “a pretty profound statement in an economy and a nation that seems to be throwing incumbents out left and right.”

Booker’s team showing fell short of its clean sweep four years ago. In 2006, he won 72 percent of the vote, and his slate won all nine Council races. On Tuesday, Booker critic and former council member, Ras Baraka, won the South Ward seat, easily defeating the incumbent, Oscar S. James II, who was allied with the mayor.

Another member of Booker’s slate, Charles A. Bell, the Central Ward councilman, had a wide lead but was just under 50 percent of the vote, forcing a runoff against Darrin Sharif.