Newark City Councilman Ras Baraka declared victory in the race for mayor of New Jersey's largest city on Tuesday, the first citywide election since Cory Booker, Newark's charismatic former mayor, stepped down to join the U.S. Senate, the Associated Press reported.
Baraka, 44, the son of the late activist and poet Amiri Baraka, will be tasked with steering Newark, about 12 miles from New York City, as it struggles with an uptick in violent crime, unemployment and a possible state takeover of its finances, the AP reported.
"We are the mayor!!!" Baraka said in announcing his victory on social media website Twitter, according to the AP.
Booker, who served for seven years as mayor and used his national profile to help draw billions of dollars in investment to Newark, is now a U.S. senator, the AP reported. He won a special election last October to succeed Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died in office.
Baraka's rival for the job was Shavar Jeffries, 39, a former assistant attorney general and a civil rights lawyer, according to the AP.
The new mayor will have to tackle the city's most vexing issues, including a an unemployment rate of 13 percent among its 277,000 residents and the highest murder rate in more than two decades, the AP reported.
Baraka has backed a plan known as Operation Ceasefire that compels gang members to sever such ties and receive job training and education, according to the AP.
Jeffries and Baraka both put education reforms at the center of their campaigns, voicing careful support for the controversial "One Newark" school reorganization plan to consolidate, close or relocate a quarter of the city's schools, the AP reported.
Newark also faces the threat of a state takeover of its finances after showing an "extraordinary level of fiscal distress," state financial officer Tom Neff told city officials in a letter, according to the AP.
A shortfall in tax revenue could leave a gap of about $93 million in the city's operational budget for 2014, the AP reported. Some $30 million of that deficit was racked up in Booker's last year in office.
