Newark Mayoral Candidates Take Center Stage at NJPAC

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center will host two one-hour conversations next month with each of the Newark mayoral candidates.

NJPAC has teamed with WBGO Jazz 88.3FM to present Councilman Ras Baraka on Monday, April 14 and former Assistant Attorney General Shavar Jeffries on Monday, April 21. WBGO News Director Doug Doyle will introduce the discussions, which will be moderated by Dr. Clement Price.

The events will be free and open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis. The discussions, which will be held in NJPAC's Chase Room, will be streamed live at www.wbgo.org, and will air in full the following Sundays on WBGO Jazz 88.3FM.  The general election in Newark will be Tuesday, May 13.

"Newark is at a major transition point in its history,” NJPAC President and CEO John Schreiber said. "These conversations with the candidates vying to lead the city will allow Newarkers to learn where each candidate stands on important issues and get a better understanding of each man’s vision for the future. We are grateful to partner with Dr. Price and WBGO to host these conversations in and for the community we call home.”

Price, a Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers and history professor, was named on Jan. 31 an official historian for the City of Newark by Mayor Luis A. Quintana. In 2006, he moderated public conversations in that year’s Newark mayoral race between U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (then Newark’s incumbent mayor) and New Jersey State Sen. Ronald Rice.

"Both of these remarkably talented, and very different, political and civic leaders have chosen to put themselves before Newark’s voters and the larger public at a time when the future of the city is at a cusp inconceivable a generation ago," Price said. "My conversation with each of them should be a valuable insight into how they think, what they have learned, and how they individually imagine Newark’s next big steps forward."  

The conversations will be aired the Sunday after each event, April 20 and April 27, from 9 to 10 a.m. on WBGO Jazz88.3FM.

"We are excited to once again partner with NJPAC and our good friend Dr. Price of Rutgers-Newark to provide an in-depth look into the Newark mayoral race,” Doyle said. "The talks will be engaging and informative, allowing voters in Brick City to make up their own minds about who they want as their next leader."

The Candidates (profiles provided by NJPAC and WBGO):

Ras Baraka

Ras Baraka was elected to the Newark Municipal Council in 2010 to represent the South Ward. Born, raised and educated in Newark, he graduated from Howard University with a degree in political science and history and earned a master’s in education supervision from St. Peter’s University. A community organizer for more than 20 years, he ran his first campaign for Newark mayor in 1994, at the age of 24. In 2002, he was appointed Deputy Mayor to fulfill the unexpired term of the late South Ward Councilman Donald Tucker. Baraka is credited with transforming Central High School, where he has been principal since 2007. He is the son of the late poet and author Amiri Baraka and the poet Amina Baraka and the father of three girls. 

Shavar Jeffries

Shavar Jeffries is a fifth-generation Newarker who was raised by his grandmother, a public school teacher, in the city’s South Ward. Since 2004, he has been an associate professor at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School, where he and his students handle primarily pro bono cases for the benefit of Newark schoolchildren. In 2008, Jeffries took a leave from the law school to serve as Assistant Attorney General and Counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General. He is a former President of the Newark Advisory School Board and the boards of the Boys and Girls Club and TEAM Academy Charter School, both of Newark, and serves as counsel to the Newark law firm Gibbons P.C. Jeffries is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia Law School.