Booker, Danno!

I hoped to write more personal entries than political ones, but a friend of mine forced my hand with an e-mail that requires me to write an entry that's both.  She sent me an e-mail yesterday urging me to vote for anyone except Newark mayor Cory Booker in the special primary election for the October 16 general election for the late Frank Lautenberg's U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey.  I had to reply by telling her that I don't vote in primaries because I am an independent.  Independents are not allowed to vote in primaries in New Jersey.

Cory Booker will likely have been declared the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate special election by the time you read this, but many progressives won't be too happy with the choice.  Booker is known for his ties to Wall Street and the power elites, and he's not known for supporting progressive goals like breaking up the big banks and putting a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions.  But my friend was primarily (no pun intended) opposed to Booker's nomination because as mayor of Newark, he's presided over a declining quality of life in the city, in which everything bad (like violent crime) is on the rise and everything that's supposed to be good (like high school graduation rates) is bad. 

Me, I don't blame Booker for Newark's decline.  Because, after all, it's Newark.  Like most American cities, Newark has for decades been the victim of de-industrialization and federal policies favoring suburbs over urban communities. It also owes a lot of its bad luck to geography; New York City is only a few miles to the east, and those who want to live in New York but can't afford it have Jersey City or Hoboken, which are right across the river from Manhattan, to consider.  (I call Hoboken the sixth borough of New York City.)  But Newark?  Not so much.  The point is, Newark had been going downhill for a long, long time before Booker became mayor in 2006;  it's unreasonable to expect him to reverse or even stem decades of decline in seven years, particularly with the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that resulted from it.  (Booker is also the first mayor of Newark born after the 1967 riot, the event that many people say extinguished the city's vibrancy, just to give you an idea of how long-term a problem the deterioration has been.)

Of course, being a U.S. Senator is different from being a leader of a city, so maybe Booker's political abilities will serve him better in Washington.  Had I voted in today's primary, I probably would have voted for Frank Pallone or Rush Holt, both Democratic U.S. House members running for the Senate seat, but I'm comfortable voting for Booker in October.  Because his likely opponent, Steve Lonegan - who has likely been anointed the Republican candidate for the Senate seat by the time you read this - is a ultra-rightist who believes he should force liberals to tow the Tea Party line and put up or shut up.

Once again, the Republicans have made the general election choice easy for me.