There was good news and bad news for Newark Mayor Ras Baraka in last week’s non-partisan municipal election: he was re-elected by a wide margin, but not as impressively as his last two races; and he retains a council majority, but must now deal with a veteran activist.
Baraka will begin his fourth term with a working majority on the city council; presuming South Ward Councilman Patrick Council wins his June runoff (he finished 182 votes short of the 50% he needed to win outright in a 7-candidate field), Baraka will have five of the nine members allied with him.
In the council races, Baraka caught one significant break: the decisive, 10-point victory of Central Ward Councilwoman Amina Bey over former Councilwoman Gayle Chaneyfield-Jenkins. Bey had won a November 2025 special election for the unexpired term of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) by just 98 votes over Chaneyfield-Jenkins.
The open seat contest to replace retiring Councilman Carlos Gonzalez was more complicated.
The favorite appeared to be Josephine Garcia, a school board member and Gonzalez’s chief of staff; had Garcia won, she would have become part of a faction that included Luis Quintana (At-Large), Anibal Ramos (North Ward), and Michael Silva (East Ward).
Instead, the surprise winner was Donna Jackson, a grassroots community leader who had been a thorn in the side of three mayors: Sharpe James, Cory Booker, and Baraka. Her relatively massive 1,664-vote victory over Garcia allows her to convert her outsider role into a city councilwoman without owing anybody anything.
The late Councilwoman Mildred Crump called Jackson “the smartest, uneducated woman I know.” She was described by Newark political insiders as loud, brash, and confrontational.
“Says what she wants,” one Newark political veteran told the New Jersey Globe. “Now she has access to information.”
Jackson raised $450, and in a report filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission on Election Day, she reported $450 cash on hand. Garcia raised almost $105,000.
The 61-year-old Jackson could be the kind of irritant that Booker was to James, and Baraka to Booker. While it’s not clear that she has any future political ambitions, she clearly has a local fan base.
Baraka’s 70% against seven challengers on May 12 was impressive, but noticeably less than his 83% against Sheila Montague in 2022 and 77% against Chaneyfield-Jenkins in 2018. With a 33% turnout, 88% of registered voters didn’t vote for Baraka.
Last year, as a candidate for governor, Baraka received 73% of the Democratic primary vote.
Baraka has strongly suggested that this is his last term as mayor, and the conventional wisdom, Newark political watchers say, is that an early 2030 short list of successors includes Ramos, Council, Council President Larry Crump, and West Ward Councilman Dupre “Do It All” Kelly, Assemblyman Chigozie Onyema (D-Newark), and Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz.
But now, that list may reasonably include Jackson.