Cory Booker

The Star-Ledger reports that Newark Mayor Cory Booker and the New Jersey Devils are trying to assemble investors to buy the Nets basketball team from development firm Forest City Ratner.

Should the Nets be sold—Forest City denied that the team is for sale—it would presumably kill the more than $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, developed by Forest City under the premise that a new Frank Gehry-designed arena would be created for the Nets.  read more »

EAST RUTHERFORD—Newark Mayor Cory Booker is predicting record Newark voter turnout, and high attendance throughout the state.

"We've got another upset coming on Tuesday," he said. (The Super Bowl metaphors are not gonna stop allllll day!) "We're back here not to rock the sports world like the Giants just did, we're here to rock the world!"

"We're going to be hitting hard as soon as the polls open," he said.  read more »

Here is Newark Mayor Cory Booker saying something important to Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion at last night's DL21C holiday party on 34th Street.

Before Booker delivered the night's keynote speech - which included a harrowing story about him putting his hands inside the chest of a man who had just been shot - I asked him what he thought of Barack Obama, another African-American politician with massive cross-over appeal who has become an object of fascination for the media.

"I think he's a phenomenal individual," he said. "This is one of those circumstances where there's incredible hype and substance to back it up."

-- Azi Paybarah

Buried deep in today's New York Times' article on the future, or lack thereof, of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, is the most biting critique of the agency that has been seen fit to print. Robin Pogrebin got her hands on a memo by noted arts consultant Adrian Ellis who wrote:

L.M.D.C. was one of the most unimpressive organizations with which I have worked in 16 years of consulting: the expression 'sloping shoulders' could have been invented for it -- everyone sitting across the table seemed furtive, cowed, insinuating, hand-wringing and evasive, from the first meeting to the last.

Today--in response?--the L.M.D.C. issued a press release confirming that it is disbanding "in the fall" and announcing that President Stefan Pryor had taken a job as deputy mayor in Newark Mayor Cory Booker's administration. The city will take over the remaining arts grants and Fulton Street's redesign, and no one has stepped up to defend Frank Gehry's performing arts center.

-Matthew Schuerman

It's a New York political blog, but it's worth diverting your attention for a moment to the sweet-smelling state across the river to ponder what Cory Booker managed to do yesterday.

He carried carried six of six council candidates to victory yesterday in Newark's runoff elections, ensuring that his allies will be sitting in each of the council's nine seats when he takes office on July 1.

It's a pretty amazing political accomplishment. Although Booker had a multi-million dollar financial advantage over his opponents, it wasn't as if the candidates who lost yesterday were nobodies. Several well-known incumbents went down, including Ras Baraka - the son of 9/11 conspiracy theorist and former state poet laureate Amiri Baraka. And another surprise loser was John James, the son of the city's domineering five-term Mayor Sharpe James.

The guy's a media monster. My guess is he's going to get more coverage in New York over the next few years than all but a handful of city and state officials.

The challenges Booker's going to be grappling with in one of the country's poorest cities makes for a compelling story, whether he succeeds or fails. (A documentary about his first, unsuccessful bid for mayor was nominated for an Oscar last year.)

And he's going to attract national attention for some of his more controversial ideas. He's a Democrat, for example, but has made himself a hero to national conservatives (and an enemy of the local teachers union) by proselytizing for school vouchers.

My Baghdad-bound former colleague Damien Cave has the wrap-up.

-- Josh Benson

The Times reports the Cory Booker has won a mandate in Newark.

Hillary Clinton opens a debate on family planning.

Newsday reports that Tom Suozzi is echoing the calls of John Faso. —Nicole Brydson

Forgive the digression, but for anyone who likes politics, it may be worthwhile to keep an eye on election results today over in Newark, where Cory Booker is attempting to shore up his thumping mayoral victory by electing a friendly majority to the city's nine-member Municipal Council.

Yes, it's a runoff council election in Newark.

But the players are kind of amazing: the champions of the old guard

And it could well determine whether Booker can build a record in office that will allow him to run for higher office anytime soon, or whether it all comes to an end amid gridlock.

My former colleague Damien has the write-up.

Forgive the digression, but for anyone who likes politics, it may be worthwhile to keep an eye on election results today over in Newark, where Cory Booker is attempting to shore up his thumping mayoral victory by electing a friendly majority to the city's nine-member Municipal Council.

Yes, it's a runoff council election in Newark.

But the players are kind of amazing: the champions of the old guard

And it could well determine whether Booker can build a record in office that will allow him to run for higher office anytime soon, or whether it all comes to an end amid gridlock.

My former colleague Damien has the write-up.

The Times reports on threats made against Cory Booker.

Hearings are scheduled for legislative redistricting.

Today is Primary Day in New Jersey.

The Daily News reports that Greg Meeks ranks in the top 10 of "globetrotting congressional offices."

Bill Weld is facing pressure to drop out of the governor's race.

—Nicole Brydson

Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t waste time on the normal pleasantries when he placed an early-m  read more »

Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t waste time on the normal pleasantries when he placed an early-morni  read more »

Are you still looking for the mystical sixth borough—that El Dorado of cheap rents, decent bag  read more »

Are you still looking for the mystical sixth borough—that El Dorado of cheap rents, decent bagels  read more »

The Daily News reports that Stephen Minarik may quit later this year; and Tom Suozzi is going on the offensive against Joe Bruno and Sheldon Silver.

The Times rounds up Cory Booker's win in Newark; and investigates the Clinton-Murdoch alliance.

The Sun reports on John Faso's tax plan; and that George Pataki will use his last months in office to push for two projects, Javits expansion and Moynihan Station.

—Nicole Brydson

The Times reports that Rudy Giuliani stumped for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania; and Cory Booker says Newark is missing out on millions of dollars that could be raised by selling real estate at market rate.

The Sun reports on union spots that take aim at George Pataki's budget vetos.

The Albany Times Union reports on the next step in the CFE lawsuit for city schools; and George Pataki's federal fundraising picks up.

—Nicole Brydson

There is an elephant in the room of New York politics. It is the issue of social class.    read more »

There is an elephant in the room of New York politics. It is the issue of social class.  read more »

By the time Cory Booker lost his 2002 run for mayor of Newark, the young African-American lawyer, fo  read more »

In my article this week, I wrote about about Cory Booker's 2006 mayoral campaign in Newark, and I examined the significance of a stack of racially inflammatory, anonymous leaflets that were publicly available during a visit to the candidate's South Ward headquarters. One of them was titled "How Black Mayors Sell Our Cities to White Developers," and it accused incumbent Sharpe James of treating a local business owner like a "sharecropper."

I've posted it here.  read more »

Judging by the Cory Booker/Sharpe James matchup back in 2002, things may just be starting to heat up. This is Booker's second shot to take City Hall and, now more than ever, he's in the tough position of playing to two audiences at once: local voters in Newark, who are suspicious of his connections to "outsiders," and those "outsiders" themselves, who include moneyed Manhattanites and moderates on the national scene.

Jason Horowitz and I conclude that the most powerful person in city politics may well be a former ambassador to Belize named Carolyn Curiel. (Yes, she also heads the group that writes the Times's local endorsements.

Jessica Bruder heads over to Newark to find that Cory Booker, Mr. Clean last time he faced Mayor Sharpe James, may have learned a trick or two about race politics from his old adversary.  read more »

Eve Kessler finds Mike Balboni formidable.

And Anna Schneider-Mayerson considers Jeanine Pirro as a lawyer, and fits her into a category of pioneering female prosecutors defined by "the paradoxically aggressive, feel-your-pain rhetoric of former-prosecutor-cum-TV-personality Nancy Grace; the ball-busting feminism of sex-crimes-chief-cum-thriller-writer Linda Fairstein; the refined and coiffed yet slammer-friendly M.O. of Manhattan D.A. hopeful Leslie Crocker Snyder."

We finally got a chance to watch Streetfight, the award-winning documentary about Cory Booker's losing 2002 run for Mayor of Newark.

The movie presents really overwhelming evidence, in case you needed it, of Newark Mayor Sharpe James's abuse of power. At one point, the Mayor is heard saying "I don't want you putting me on camera...next time, we'll take the camera," at a public event; moments later, a thug in a red James campaign hat pushes the camera to the ground.

Later, the hapless, out-of-the-loop James press secretary, Rich McGrath, tries to explain to the filmmaker, "It just makes us look terrible... These guys, I tell you they are, they've got this thing about the press."

Al Sharpton and Jim McGreevey do themselves no favors with enthusiastic endorsements of James, whose campaign consisted in large part of branding Booker variously a Republican, Jewish, white, and gay.

At one point, a frustrated Booker bangs on the table and, jokingly, concedes, "I'm a tool of the Republican Party."

Which gives his press secretary, one Jen Bluestein, clad in a pink blazer we know we've seen somewhere before, the chance to deliver the second-best line of the film:  read more »

"I thought you were a tool of the Jews."

On the morning of Feb.  read more »