If Newark Mayor Cory Booker runs in a special October election for the vacant U.S. Senate seat, he could intensify a developing brawl for his own vacated mayoral seat.
If Booker wins the Senate seat and is sworn into federal office on Oct. 26, Acting Council President Anibal Ramos – if he can hold his majority on the council, is positioned to become acting mayor.
But that’s a big if.
Ramos has strong allies in Councilman Carlos Gonzalez and Councilman Augusto Amador and Councilman Luis Quintana was at the mayoral candidate’s campaign kickoff.
But Councilman Ron Rice, Councilman Darren Sharif, Councilwoman Mildred Crump and Councilman Ras Baraka would probably have something to say about that, and Quintana doesn’t want anyone running for mayor to first serve as acting mayor.
Quintana fears allowing Ramos, already a candidate for Newark mayor, to run for the job as an incumbent and not as simply the north ward councilman.
A source close to Newark politics said if Ramos were to run as acting mayor, Baraka and former Attorney General’s Counsel Shavar Jeffries, who are also both candidates for mayor, could challenge Ramos’s authority to run for mayor as an incumbent.
The case would end up in court, the source opined.
Ramos now sits in the designated acting council president’s chair as a consequence of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, Jr., (D-10) last year vacating his council seat to assume the seat left empty by his late father.
