Booker jumps into Central Ward battle alongside Osborne

Laborers' business manager Eddie Osborne: Politicker file photo 

NEWARK - The old guard's gauntlet down, Mayor Cory Booker seeks to stem the local losses of the past few months by making a stand with the campaign of Central Ward Council candidate Eddie Osborne. 

Booker on Monday will officially endorse labor leader Osborne for Central Ward Council, according to Newark sources.

One of 13 candidates seeking to replace ousted Councilwoman Dana Rone, Osborne this week said he didn't know if he would receive Booker's backing.

"But I definitely would like to have it," he told PolitickerNJ.com.

Sources say an 18-day Osborne/Booker lit-blitz starts in the ward tomorrow, as Booker's soldiers join union workers in an effort to propel Osborne past apparent frontrunner, former Councilman Charles Bell.

Bell has the support of North Ward Democratic leader Steve Adubato, state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex), former council colleagues of Bell's, and Central Ward Democratic Chairman Dwight Brown.

Even though a lot of candidates are contending, Booker's official entry into the race will have the immediate impact of heightening a steadily building rivalry between the mayor and the muscle behind Bell.

Booker's Osborne endorsement comes in the uncomfortable aftermath of losses the mayor suffered in district leader fights, including Brown's defeat of Booker lieutenant Jermaine Jame;, and Rice chief of staff Rufus Johnson's outmaneuvering of the mayor-backed Terrance Bankston in the freeholder race. 

The news hasn't been all bad for the mayor.

Piled-up local losses occured while an exhilarated Booker climbed the heights of Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Il.) meteoric rise nationally as Obama's most animated new Jersey ally.

Now the mayor's forces hope the dual branding of Obama and Booker on Election Day will catapult Osborne onto the council and demonstrate a perfect blending of national and local strength.

But his local Democratic Party antagonists are determined to have that morning-after Election Day headline deflate the mayor's spirits by undercutting what they want to be an Obama victory with a big Bell win in Newark.

Such an outcome wouldn't bode well for the mayor in the long lead-up to the 2010 re-election.