Allies of Newark Mayor Cory Booker's say challenger Clifford Minor's decision not to run a full council slate inhibits his ability to stir interest in his candidacy.

To date, Minor has not fielded candidates in the North, East or West wards.

Although his son, West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice, is allied with Booker against the Minor team, state Sen. Ronald L. Rice (D-Newark) backs Minor against Booker.

The senator disputes the argument that Minor's decision to forego having a candidate in the West Ward prevents him from having an ally on the ballot to occupy a critical fifth of the city and generate interest in the municipal contest.

"The wards can sleep even when you have opposition," said Rice, who ran against Booker and lost in 2006. "Ward opposition in and of itself doesn't necessarily create interest. You have to have a good mayoral candidate with a good message, and that's what Cliff Minor is. Trust me, nobody's going to be sleeping."

NEWARK - Running for South Ward council in what many observers say is the toughest race of the season, former Deputy Mayor Ras Baraka fought back Sunday against Councilman Oscar James's contention that Baraka can't simultaneously work effectively as principal of Central High School - Baraka's current job, which he intends to keep - and as South Ward councilman, which is the additional job he wants.

"That is the most disingenuous thing to say," Baraka told PolitickerNJ.com. "If he were that concerned about that, he should have come out with an ordinance to make being council person a fulltime job." 

Baraka said both North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos and At-Large Councilman Donald Payne, Jr., serve on the governing body in addition to woking at least a second government job: as director of county employment (Ramos) and as Essex County freeholder (Payne).

Both councilmen are running on the Booker Team with James.

"I've always been involved in activism and government at the same time," Baraka said. "They're out there telling people I've got to choose between trying to be principal or councilman. They're trying to get people confused."

Asked if he believes Payne and Ramos are effective representatives, he said, "The people who elected them thought they were successful. It's been done in the city, having two jobs."

NEWARK - The door to Peter Pantoliano's headquarters swings open.

A pair of operatives sit inside and they're so intent on the work, they don't notice a visitor.  

They run down strategy.

"We're working very hard," confirms the East Ward candidate by cellphone.

He's at City Hall right now. Just left headquarters.

But he plans to be back at HQ. Pronto.

A lot of the merchants around Ferry Street support Pantoliano's challenge of veteran East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador. The local optometrist counts himself a part of the business community.

"The ones who don't have Peter Pantoliano signs in their windows are scared to put them up," says Pantoliano.

But Amador starts with a base of 2,600 to 3,000 votes in the core Portuguese community in a ward that usually maxes out municipally at around 5,000 votes. Allies of one of Amador's most solid backers, longtime East Ward operative Joe Parlavecchio say if Pantoliano - an Italian-American like himself - can beat Amador, it's time for Parlavecchio to rethink retirement.

Not happening, he says.

However, if the city as a whole lacks the edge of a major campaign contest - "quietist I can ever remember an election year at this time," observes one South Ward insider - Pantoliano, notwithstanding the odds, is undisputably making an enthusiastic effort to unseat incumbent Amador.

NEWARK - In this constellation of South Ward operatives, operators and raw voters, seniors sit on the altar above all others, as the Galilee Baptist Church Chorus sings, "You are the source of my strength, you are the source of my life," bringing people to their feet in praise, including South Ward Councilman Oscar "Sidney" James II, who selected this hymn to accompany his runs for re-election as a member of the Booker Team in the ward many observers here consider the toughest. 

"We have serious problems in the South Ward," says James, "and we need serious leaders to solve these problems. But you don't solve problems by scaring people and then blaming other people. It's the old fear and smear game. I am not a perfect leader and we all have challenges. We've only had one perfect leader with a perfect father, and you know who He is."

Fashioned as the formal lift-off to James's 2010 campaign, the event here in the Greater Abyssinian Baptist Church on Saturday morning in the city's biggest ward at its worst is a production-heavy high-tech homage to the youngest member of the Booker Team, and at its best - a reflection of a soulful South Ward product intent on upending former Deputy Mayor Ras Baraka while giving a spotlight on his day to numerous community allies.

"There is some talk that this coming election is going to be a 'street fight' in the South Ward," James tells a packed church. "Everybody is waiting for a big fight in the South Ward. The media, the so-called experts, everybody including some mystery wise men. Well, sorry to disappoint them all, while spectators await the fight, while my opponents line the streets, I will be knocking on doors and knocking down all the bitter twisted lies."

NEWARK - The abandoned Subway storefront sits at the edge of the Central Ward on the western border.

Big colorful photographs of candidates face Market Street.

"Within striking distance of all five wards," says John Sharpe James, candidate for an at-large seat and son of former Mayor Sharpe James, whose face is among those in the bay window.

Fifty people sit in terminal style chairs inside the newly christened campaign headquarters, and James takes the floor.

"I don't need a microphone," he says.

A member of Clifford Minor's Newark's Choice team running in opposition to Mayor Cory Booker and the sitting Newark City Council, James immediately goes after the mayor in his Saturday afternoon remarks.

Newark At-Large City Council candidate John Sharpe James received word this morning from the city clerk's office that he has officially been certified.

"We're very well received everywhere we go," James told PolitickerNJ.com. "People are not happy with the services they're getting. It's clear that the current administration is spending too much time out of town or talking about themselves rather than engaging the residents of the City of Newark."

Son of former Mayor Sharpe James, the candidate is running as a member of mayoral candidate Clifford Minor's Newark's Choice team against members of Mayor Cory Booker's team: Council President Mildred Crump, At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana, At-Large Councilman Donald Payne, Jr., and At-Large Councilman Carlos Gonzalez. 

Among Newarkers facing an April 20th School Board election, the word on the street is not Hollywood's Avatar, but Brick City's own Shavar, as in 35-year old Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights attorney and former chief counsel with the state Attorney General's Office who ran the state's juvenile justice system and is now pursuing a seat on the School Board.

"Education is undoubtedly the most important issue we face as a city," said the married father of two and founding president of TEAM Academy Charter School. "Kids are absolutely the treshhold issue around which everything else revolves. Our babies deserve stronger and more community-rooted schools."

Child of a single mother who was killed when he was 10, Jeffries grew up with his grandmother in the South Ward, heavily dependent on the Boys and Girls Club before obtaining a scholarship to attend Seton Hall Prep and later going on to graduate from Duke University and Columbia University Law School.

Early in his carer, he defended the University of Michigan in affirmative-action litigation challenging its admissions policies, and represented Black farmers denied farming loans by the United States government. Later, he represented 30,000 children denied free tutoring services under the No Child Left Behind Act before moving to the AG's Office. 

"I've been blessed to do for my family what I want others to do for theirs, and that's the reason I'm running," said Jeffries, running with school psychologist Ivan Lamourt and Shanique L. Davis Speight on a ticket that has the backing of North Ward Democratic Party leader Steve Adubato, Sr.

Educator Jean Perez will run for an-large council seat on Clifford Minor's Newark's Choice ticket, Minor announced this week in a Facebook message to friends and supporters. 

"I'm running for an at-large seat, yes," Perez confirmed to PolitickerNJ.com Tuesday afternoon.

With the announcement last month that Juliana Blackburn-Maldonado would abandon her candidacy to focus on her law practice, Minor faced the prospect of formally launching his candidacy without a Latino on his ticket.

Although the challenger to Mayor Cory Booker declared his candidacy with his team at his side, he promised to find a Latino to replace Blackburn-Maldonado.

That turned out to be Perez, the second public school administrator on the Newark's Choice team, along with Central Ward High School principal Ras Baraka.

Perez, David Blount, and Carol Graves are all seeking at-large seats as allies of Minor. The foursome are running against incumbent at-large councilpeople Luis Quintana, Mildred Crump, Donald Payne, Jr., and Carlos Gonzalez.

NEWARK - Repeatedly ribbed for his less than scintillating personality but chalked up as an effective local lawmaker, East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador stepped forward this afternoon as the mostly unsmiling but hardly unwilling Ironbound equation in Team Booker's re-election strategy. 

"I may not have the personality of the prototypical politician, but I've been around a while and I know that all it comes down to in the end is what can you do for the people you represent," Amador told a room brimming with local political infrastructure, including several of his running mates, the District 29 Legislative team, among them East Ward Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Newark), and beloved local product Sheriff Armando Fontoura.

"There is no alternative out there," Amador added. "Don't look for any other candidates."

Even as the councilman worked the room, however, challenger Peter Pantoliano walked the ward, trying to drum up support to pluck Amador out of City Hall.

"I walked two districts today," the Ferry Street optometrist would later tell PolitickerNJ.com. "People are overwhelmingly saying it's time for a change. The majority of the Portuguese people say it's time."

NEWARK - The mood in this old factory turned corner room campaign headquarters was blunted even in the usually festive Ironbound.

Any confluence of less than ideal circumstances - prickly relations between Mayor Cory Booker's people and East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador, a downbeat economy, or just Saturday fatigue - would have to include Thursday's news, visible everywhere here in a Brazilian community coffee shop tabloid featuring a front page photo of former Deputy Mayor Ron Salahuddin, deputy mayor of public safety for Mayor Cory Booker, indicted Thursday on extortion and corruption charges. 

"I think the mayor said it all when he said that if this is true, the deputy mayor broke the level of trust he had," Amador told PolitickerNJ.com. "Looking at the transcripts, all of this actually all began right after everybody was sworn-in."

Now, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman made clear that Booker helped the feds close the case against Salahuddin, and had absolutely nothing to do with the charges leveled - a point amplified today by Pablo Fonseca, campaign manager for the Booker Team.

Present among Amador's campaign cadre at the East Ward kickoff in a statement of campaign unity (given Fonseca's friendly relations with Amador's opponent, businessman Peter Pantoliano),  Fonseca said he has not read the indictment against Salahuddin.