Mayor Ras Baraka speaks to supporters and media after a court appearance in Newark, N.J., on May 15. AP/Seth Wenig
In May, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka made headlines when he was arrested during a protest outside of an immigration detention facility in New Jersey and charged with trespassing. Baraka has staunchly opposed the reopening of the 1,000-bed detention center, called Delaney Hall, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a deal with the private prison company that owns it. The trespassing charge against Baraka was later dismissed, but he told supporters that he had been “targeted” by the Trump administration for speaking out. On Tuesday, he filed a lawsuit against Alina Habba, the interim US attorney for New Jersey, claiming that he had been maliciously prosecuted.
The encounter drew national attention at an opportune moment for Baraka, whose gubernatorial campaign has gained unexpected traction. An idiosyncratic figure, he is known for his radical political upbringing and his surprising success addressing violent crime in Newark. He is the son of Amiri Baraka, the firebrand poet and activist who spearheaded the Black Arts Movement, and Amina Baraka, also a central figure in the city’s Black cultural and political scene. Baraka followed in his parents’ shoes in both regards. In 2003, he performed a spoken word poem on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. He was a school teacher and public school principal before becoming mayor in 2014.
As mayor, Baraka has been unapologetically progressive on most counts and shown an unusual willingness to experiment with policy. During his tenure, Newark conducted a guaranteed income pilot program, allowed 16-year-olds to vote in school board races, and, in an effort to boost homeownership, held a lottery that allowed residents to purchase city-owned properties for $1. Newark has seen significant decreases in most categories of crime since Baraka took office and, in 2022, homicides hit a 60-year-low. Baraka notably broke from the left in 2020, when he rebuffed calls to defund the police and described it as a “bourgeois liberal” stance that did little to address systemic problems.
Baraka is perhaps the most interesting personality in a crowded Democratic primary to replace term-limited New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. He is running to the left of a field that includes Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop; US Rep. Josh Gottheimer; US Rep. Mikie Sherrill; former state Sen. Stephen Sweeney; and Sean Spiller, president of the state’s largest teacher’s union. Sherrill, a former Navy pilot, pulled ahead of the pack with a 17-point lead in a recent poll. Baraka and a handful of other candidates were clustered around 11 percent.
It’s highly likely that the general election will also be competitive. President Donald Trump recently campaigned for former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, who is favored to win the Republican primary. And last November, Kamala Harris won New Jersey by only six points—a significant downturn from Biden’s 16-point victory in 2020.
So it is remarkable that Baraka has centered his campaign on a full-throated defense of immigrants. The positions that have cemented Baraka’s popularity in Newark may not play as well in a state-wide primary—or in the general election. New Jersey is mostly suburban and around 60 percent white. If he wins, Baraka would be the state’s first Black governor.
Earlier this week, I traveled to Newark to interview Baraka. It was a sweltering afternoon, and the downtown business district was sedate. Outside of a Kenyan restaurant, an aide pointed to the city’s changing skyline as evidence of the success of the mayor’s housing agenda: There were several high-rise apartment buildings going up, each representing hundreds of affordable units. Inside, I met Baraka, who was wearing a gray suit and a floral tie. Though he is a commanding presence on the debate stage, he was soft-spoken and unhurried during our interview. He seemed a bit world-weary—the primary is in its home stretch. Early voting is already underway, and election day is this Tuesday.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was it like growing up in Newark with two very prominent artists and activists as parents?
I grew up in the heart of the South Ward, and the block was filled with its share of folks who were prominent in our community. We always had people come over—artists and musicians and poets and community activists from around the world.
It was pretty different growing up in that kind of environment. Early on, we were a part of what was called the African Free School [an alternative community school founded by Baraka’s parents]. My parents were also involved in electing the first African American mayor of Newark [Kenneth Gibson] and in the 1972 National Black Political Convention. There was both positive recognition from the community, and people who didn’t like my father. He was always center stage, whether you wanted it to be that way or not.
What your parents were doing was community activism, which is very different from running for public office.
Completely different.
How did you decide to get involved in electoral politics?
I was a community activist when I was a teacher. We would always be marching and protesting down to City Hall. And I wondered, why are we coming here to this building?
When I was 24, I ran for mayor. We raised $10,000 from fish fries and poetry readings. I remember debating [Newark Mayor] Sharpe James and William Payne [who later became a state assemblyman]. It’s like you’re in a fight and you get hit a couple of times, but you don’t get knocked out. You think, “Oh, I can handle this.”
That was my first foray into understanding what political power meant, as opposed to just having a defensive strategy. What does it mean to go on offense?
One of your platforms at the time was universal healthcare. Do you think that coming into office requires giving up on some of that progressive idealism and moderating?
No. I think that all of the things that we’re trying to do can get done. But they have to get done in this way. I just told somebody yesterday that I’m a Democrat because that’s the only weapon we have. The Democratic Party is the tool that we have to push the ideas we want to push, and organize the things we want to organize—right until something else is created.
All of the things that we’re trying to make happen—whether it’s universal healthcare or free education—that struggle is protracted, and it may take stages. But we have to do our part until other people can take it a little further than we can. There were no breakfast programs in schools until the Black Panthers started them, and public housing was an issue that came from the community. A lot of these things may start in a humble, small place and become more universal, more acceptable, through education and advocacy.
How do you strike a balance between meeting people where they are and persuading them on issues?
I learned that early on. I lost a lot of races because I thought I was right and other people were wrong. It was actually me being wrong, because I could not unite what I was saying to the things that they thought that were important.
My mother used to say you can’t bring people to the community meeting if they’re hungry. You got to feed them first, and then they’ll come to the meeting. The reality is, we have to meet people’s needs in order to make them care about the things that we think are important. To talk to them about why they don’t have food in the first place, right?
I think the Democrats have it a little backwards. They like to have these discussions without people eating. People have to eat first, then you can talk to them about billionaires who are taking their resources away.
This seems like a good time to turn to Delaney Hall and your sustained activism around the administration’s immigration agenda. Why has that been so central for you?
I think what these people are doing is dangerous, and if we allow it to continue to happen, many of us will be in jeopardy. Our lives, our rights, our democracy will be in jeopardy.
So it’s more than just what the polls say. You’re not pushing for things simply because they’re popular. I would imagine that people’s sentiment prior to Trump’s re-election is completely different than what it is now. Across this country, people are coming out of their houses, videotaping and trying to stop ICE from kidnapping people off the street.
Are you able to talk about your arrest and the lawsuit that was just filed?
The irony is that they keep saying that we tried to get arrested. Well, you don’t have to try to get arrested. They were itching to do that from the very sight of me.
They had no lawful reason to arrest me. Trespassing is a state charge that you get a summons for. You don’t get handcuffed, fingerprinted, have a mug shot taken, and be interrogated in a room. That doesn’t happen for a Class E misdemeanor, certainly not here in New Jersey.
These people violated my rights, and, more importantly, they violated the constitution of this country. They think they can do it arbitrarily, and nobody should say anything about it. So I don’t agree with that. I think somebody should say something about it.
What’s the significance of the Trump administration potentially targeting an elected official?
They just don’t care. And that’s really the danger of it. The cameras, the videos, should give you some pause, but it doesn’t. They lied on TV. When I got out of the holding cell, I had to listen to these people saying all this stuff that didn’t happen: that we broke the law. That the Congresswoman [LaMonica McIver] assaulted people. That we slammed ICE agents, and we barged our way into this place. All of this was not true. I thought I was in The Twilight Zone. And so we just started dropping the footage everywhere, so they could see what these people are manufacturing—lies.
I want to turn to the governor’s race. Affordability has been a common platform in the Democratic primary, but it was also one of the most persuasive issues that Trump ran on last November. Nationally, Democrats have had trouble convincing voters that they’re willing to prioritize affordability. How are you confronting that?
I think the Democratic message is right. People want the message; they just don’t like the messengers. We’re now yelling and screaming at Donald Trump’s spending plan that’s given some billion dollars of tax breaks to the wealthy, but the Democrats have talked about doing the same thing. The party of working families has not helped working families.
Health care in New Jersey is too high. Insurance companies and hospitals are killing us economically, and nobody is reining them in. LLCs are buying up all these properties and driving our mortgages up artificially, and nobody is reining them in. Childcare costs are higher than people’s rent. We can’t solve these problems. We don’t have the will to, and so people lose faith in our ability to govern.
Democrats are mistaking other Democrats staying home for approval for Donald Trump. It’s not approval for Trump. It’s disapproval for you.
You’ve campaigned on your record as the mayor of Newark, but this city is demographically and geographically different from the rest of New Jersey. How do those accomplishments translate to statewide issues?
The issues are the same: housing, crime, the environment, access to education and opportunity. We have reduced people’s healthcare costs in Newark. We have created homeownership. We have reduced crime.
It’s a mistake to think there are Black problems and white problems. Black people have a specific and unique history in this country that causes us to experience problems disproportionately. Doesn’t mean that other people don’t have them.
Maybe it’d be useful to talk specifically about affordable housing, which is an issue that can be very divisive in some of the suburban areas of the state. How are you talking to voters about your platform on that?
When people think of affordable housing, they think of a 30-story housing project full of poverty and violence. That idea is fueled by prejudice and racism. But affordability is a problem for everybody in New Jersey. In order to drive your taxes down, drive your rents down, drive your mortgages down, you have to build more housing. That’s just simple supply and demand that you learn in capitalism. Nobody disagrees that we need to build more housing. They just disagree on how and where.
When you’re out in the suburbs talking to those voters, who are predominantly white, are you trying to change the face of affordable housing?
The atmosphere has changed it for us. We just have to state it right. People know their children can’t afford to live here. They’re spending 30 or 50 percent of their income on rent. They’re living in their childhood bedrooms and attics and basements. When I say it, people laugh, because they know it’s true.
They know who these people are, right? I don’t have to change their face. It’s them. Your taxes are going up. You’re one month away from not being able to pay your mortgage, because it’s going up. It’s getting incredibly hard for you to sustain yourself. That resonates in everybody’s community, even in the suburbs.
To end on a lighter note, a video of you performing on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam has been featured in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour. Did you know that was happening?
I didn’t know that she was going to do that. I was shocked and humbled. I wrote that decades ago, fresh out of college. I would have never known—I didn’t even know Beyoncé when I wrote that. I don’t think there was a Beyoncé.