BARAKA BACKS SHERRILL, BUT HAS SOME THOUGHTS

But congresswoman, Newark mayor agree on the urgent need to stop Ciattarelli

Even this morning, as Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka were getting ready to converge on what would be a packed, standing-room-only basement meeting room at the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Newark for Baraka’s long-awaited endorsement of her gubernatorial campaign, the congresswoman was on the phone with the mayor to discuss their disagreements. “I appreciate her calling me in the morning, this morning, and trying to iron out and hash out those differences,” he told the crowd.

And Baraka made it clear that there are a fair number of people who support him who didn’t like that he was preparing to line up behind Sherrill, against whom he ran a spirited and often testy primary campaign earlier this year. “There are many people who didn’t want to see this happen,” he said. “I got a bunch of calls this morning, a bunch of calls in my car on the way here. But I do what God has led me to do.”

And endorse her he did. “I’m here supporting the congresswoman because I need to,” said Baraka, to raucous cheers from the overwhelmingly Black audience, one that included a passel of Black legislators and candidates, including Newark’s own Chigozie Onyema, along with Essex County poohbahs such as Joseph “Joey D” DiVincenzo, the county executive for more than two decades, and LeRoy Jones, the chairman of the New Jersey state Democratic party. “I’m here endorsing the congresswoman for governor of the state of New Jersey!” said the Newark mayor.

“I appreciate the congresswoman for being here today and having the courage to be out here and throw herself into this race and to deal with the criticism,” said Baraka. “And me.”

Perhaps helping to cement the Sherrill-Baraka accord is the previously unreported deal between the Sherrill campaign and a consulting firm run by Amiri “Middy” Baraka, the mayor’s brother, according to which the campaign will pay the firm at least $600,000 to help turn out the African American vote in November.

Last week, in a lengthy sit-down interview with The New Jersey Democrat, Baraka said that he’d been in steady contact with Sherrill’s policy people, giving them ideas drawn from his campaign “about what we think should happen for Black, brown, and working-class people,” adding that he expected that Sherrill would adopt at least some of his ideas in order to win his endorsement. “They need to come out very publicly and forcefully with these agenda items, sooner than later,” he told TNJD on August 26. He emphasized the need to solve the state’s housing problems, to close the Black-white wealth gap in New Jersey, and to deal with the crisis in Black maternal health,

And he made it clear that the back-and-forth with Sherrill hasn’t been easy. “I don't know why it's this painful, but, you know, at the end of the day, we're getting there,” he said. Today, that endorsement came.

What isn’t clear, at least from Sherrill’s speech today thanking Baraka for his support, is whether Sherrill is developing concrete plans to deal with Baraka’s ideas. Without providing any details or actual policy proposals, Sherrill told the crowd at Zion Hill:

We want to make sure that we’re addressing issues of how people have opportunity and get ahead in this state, whether it’s making sure that people can develop generational wealth through owning a home, or whether we address the segregation in our school system, or whether we take on the fight to improve Black maternal health.

That’s a start. But based on conversations with people in the room, there’s a desire for the specifics.

Where Sherrill and Baraka strongly agree is that the Democratic party has to come together to stop MAGA’s Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate, from getting to Trenton. “At the end of the day, the MAGA grip is tight,” Baraka said, adding that he’d rather debate Sherrill on the fine points of a civilian review board for the police – an issue on which they differ – “than debate her on whether the National Guard should be in our streets.”

New Jersey’s progressives and Black activists have hoped, since Sherrill came out on top in the June 10 primary vote, that she’d see the importance of getting a big turnout from the state’s substantial Black voting population. In her remarks on Wednesday, Sherrill nodded in that direction. “I know that the only way that we lose this race in New Jersey is if Democrats don’t vote.”

As TNJD has reported (see “Can Mikie Sherrill Win NJ’s Black Voters?”, on August 12), the state’s one million-plus African American community can easily provide the muscle to push Sherrill over the top. But so far, at least, her campaign hasn’t gone out of its way to appeal to Black voters, and during the primary campaign she virtually ignored that community in favor of outreach to white, middle class voters and small business.

Whether Baraka’s endorsement will precipitate more vigorous efforts toward Black and brown voter remains to be seen. But, coincidental or not, one of the state’s leading progressive organizations, NJ Citizen Action, which has deep ties to minority communities and labor, also endorsed Sherrill today. “She has consistently pushed back against the MAGA agenda and has been a steadfast defender of critical programs that New Jersey’s working families rely on, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security,” said Dena Mottola Jaborska, NJCA’s executive director.

A number of unions and progressive groups are dissatisfied with Sherrill’s readiness to listen to their agenda. The New Jersey Education Association, for instance, has been talking to Sherrill about an endorsement all summer long, and the union is concerned over her previous association with the charter school movement. A progressive assembly candidate told TNJD that it’s clear that Team Sherrill is keeping the left at arm’s length. But because of the Ciattarelli threat, most of the groups will likely come around.

“We gotta get Mikie elected,” said a leader of one of New Jersey’s progressive groups, speaking on background. “We’re literally calling her and her staff every day, we set up meetings with them, we talk about housing, we give them our solutions to the energy crisis, about child care, health care. And we’re not hearing everything we need to hear. We’re going to be doing everything we can to get her elected, but it’s harder because she’s not addressing all the issues that we think she should in order to move our community.”

And should Sherrill be elected, the sometimes fraught dialogue with New Jersey’s progressive groups and with leaders such as Baraka will continue. “I pledge to support the congresswoman so she can become governor,” said Baraka. “I pledge to get out here and fight and organize so she can become the governor. And I pledge that when she is the governor that she will not see the last of me.”