Six file to replace McIver in Newark’s Central Ward

Six candidates have filed to run in a non-partisan November special election to fill the Newark Central Ward city council seat left vacant last fall when Democrat LaMonica McIver resigned to take her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This is the seat that launched the political career of 29-year-old Cory Booker, who ousted four-term incumbent George Branch in the Central Ward in 1998.

The real fight appears to be between activist Amina Bey, the executive director of the non-profit Newark Emergency Services for Families and a political ally of Mayor Ras Baraka, and former City Councilwoman Gayle Chaneyfield Jenkins, who ran against Baraka in 2018.

One of the candidates is a promising newcomer, Jhamar Youngblood, a former college basketball player who earned a postgraduate degree at Dartmouth, and helped Newark public schools develop mentoring software to help students during the pandemic.

Also in the race: Tammy Holloway, a former investigator in the New Jersey Attorney General’s office; Walter Jacobs; and George M. Tillman, Jr., a businessman who served on the city’s Affirmative Action Review Commission when Booker was mayor.

Three other candidates who had announced their bids for McIver’s seat – Bishop Andre Speight, the Central Ward Democratic chairman; former Central Ward Democratic vice chairman Rafael Brito; and tenants right advocate Ryan Talmadge – have dropped out of the race.

Unlike May council races, special elections don’t require a runoff, so the top vote-getter will serve until the winner of the 2026 race takes office on July 1.

The field turned out to be smaller than expected after a new state law that raised the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot for most offices reduced the requirement for a ward council seat to 75.

Chaneyfield Jenkins sought an at-large city council seat in 1994, but lost in a runoff.  But following the 1995 bribery conviction and resignation of Councilman Gary Harris, she scored an upset victory against former school board member Bessie Walker and seven other candidates.  She was forced into a runoff in 1998 and was re-elected.

In the 2002 Newark Street Fight election between Mayor Sharpe James and Booker, Chaneyfield Jenkins ran with James.  She was pushed into a runoff but won.

Four years later, after James stepped aside and Booker was the easy winner in the mayoral race against State Sen. Ronald Rice, Chaneyfield Jenkins found herself in a runoff and lost to future Rep. Donald Payne, Jr.

Chaneyfield Jenkins staged a comeback in 2014, when she forced Central Ward Councilman Darrin Shariff into a runoff in a seven-candidate race that included Speight (10%) and Brito (66%).  She wound up unseating Shariff by 909 votes, 62%-38%.

When she challenged Baraka for mayor in 2018, she lost in a massive 77%-23% landslide; he won 75% of the vote in the Central Ward.