Ronald Rice

Luis QuintanaWhen Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo found out this morning that the name "Luis Quintana"' was on a Senate Judiciary to-do list, he angrily reached for a telephone and called the governor's office.

DiVincenzo wanted to know what Quintana was doing on the list months after he thought he made it clear to Gov. Jon Corzine that the at-large Newark councilman should not be considered for an appointment to the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission.

Mila Jasey wouldn't say much in her first comments as an Assemblywoman-elect; she wouldn't even commit to backing Joe Roberts for Speaker next year.
Mila M. Jasey won a Special Election Convention to replace Mims Hackett in the State Assembly tonight, and promptly took the fifth.

"No comment," she said, when asked if Hackett, who was arrested earlier this month on bribery charges, should resign his post as Mayor of Orange.

What about Gov. Jon Corzine? Should he release his email correspondence with his former girlfriend, CWA President Carla Katz?

"No comment," Jasey said. "That wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on."

And would she support Joe Roberts for another term as Assembly Speaker? Again, Jasey had no comment.

Senate President Richard Codey is seeking an African American woman to replace Mims Hackett in the State Assembly-- a move that could eliminate Black men from the Essex County Assembly delegation, and make State Senator Ronald Rice the only African American man in the Essex delegation.

 State Sen. Ronald Rice talks to Elaine Lane, whose son, David, was killed in 1998.Mayor Cory Booker and his team arrived in office promising youthful vigor and now they’re the authority figures and the older generation of resistance-schooled Newarkers are still the fiery outsiders beating on the gates of power - even as they hold power.

And Newark is still battling.

In honor of the 44th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the mayor and other city leaders revisited the Ivy Hill neighborhood in the West Ward on Tuesday evening to re-commit themselves to the fight against guns and gang violence in the wake of schoolyard executions here earlier this month that left three young Newarkers dead.

Mayor Cory BookerSen. Ronald Rice

The YouTube of Newark Mayor Cory Booker making a controversial comment at a Summit fund-raiser in May had been in web circulation for a couple of months, according to the mayor’s staff.

This week, the issue came to the attention of the Newark City Council, and after viewing the YouTube at City Hall after Wednesday's meeting, council members Donald Payne, Ron Rice, Jr., Dana Rone, Anibal Ramos and Luis Quintana condemned the mayor’s remarks. 

The poetry of the mayor’s phrasing leaves young audiences whispering that Barack Obama has nothing on Cory Booker, but the gruffest old time Newarker-naysayers found - or dragged - some youthful allies here Wednesday to join their baleful chants about managerial mayhem in the city.

The fact that almost half of the children participating in Newark Works’ summer employment program didn’t receive their paychecks on time enabled the anti-Booker forces to fit another generation - and another rack of feathers into their war bonnets as they descended on City Hall to berate a likewise chagrined Newark City Council.

When Simeon Hunte studied at Arts High School in his hometown of Newark, he knew he wanted to be an artist and he ended up doing that in the little free time he had during his deployment to Iraq as an Army specialist, just before he was killed.

The war has taken more than young people from Newark, who sought something beyond the gangs and the worst influences of their crime-plagued city. In a self-portrait he mailed home to his wife, Tara, and their two children shortly before he was killed, Specialist Hunte depicted himself palming the world like a basketball and slam-dunking it into the stars.

"More than anything, the people in my city crave hope," says Mayor Cory Booker.

According to its critics, the Newark City Council over the past year has mostly marched to a single drummer - one that couldn’t be found, they say, in the Spirit of Newark Drum and Bugle Corps.

In what was hardly a blow the house down follow-up to last month’s mini Bastille storming of City Hall - but a telling political vignette nonetheless, residents took to the microphone at today’s council meeting to excoriate what they see as a governing body spellbound by Mayor Cory Booker. The council sat there and choked it down for the most part, before pledging to override the administration’s axing of the Spirit of Newark.

It was none other than State Sen. Ronald Rice, defeated by Booker in the mayoral election last year but reanimated with his district 28 primary re-election just last month, who led the charge for the council to take action to preserve the corps. The traveling group of some 100+ young musicians want to go to Pasadena to compete this year. They received $85,000 from the city in 2005, remained on life support with some state funding supplied by Assemblyman William Payne last year, and appeared to be going out on a long tuba note of gloom until Rice complained.