On Sunday, April 20th, the current mayor of New Jersey’s largest city, Ras J. Baraka, joined MSNBC’s “The Weekend” (see video below) to discuss his gubernatorial campaign and the destructive impacts of the Trump administration, particularly for African Americans.
Mayor Baraka, a Newark native, poet, and educator, spoke with Symone Sanders-Townsend and Michael Steele about the opportunities that his family found in New Jersey and how his background is the epitome of the American success story. Mayor Baraka then spoke about supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion as a matter of good government and protecting immigrant communities and due process.
The interview follows an unprecedented joint endorsement by six statewide progressive and labor organizations: Rutgers AAUP-AFT, 32BJ SEIU, New Jersey Citizen Action, Make the Road Action New Jersey, New Jersey Working Families Party, and the Workers United LDFS Joint Board. Polling continues to show Mayor Baraka as not only a leading candidate in the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey, but as the most favorable candidate among voters. It also follows his 11th State of the City Address he delivered on Thursday, April 17th, from Prudential Hall in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), located at 1 Center Street.
Mayor Ras J. Baraka announced his candidacy in February 2024 at a Black History Month event in Trenton. If he wins, he’d be the first African American governor in the state of New Jersey and only the second Black governor currently in office, next to Gov. Wes Moore in Maryland. Only six Black governors have ever been elected in the history of the United States of America, with two during the post-slavery era, Reconstruction.
For more information on Mayor Ras J. Baraka’s campaign, visit his website and follow him on Instagram, Twitter (X), and Facebook.
You have brought up a very fantastic points, thankyou for the post.
It’s May 17 and I only just learned of Mayor Baraka’s candidacy from your article. Better late than severed!
I believe he announced his candidacy around February 21st or 22nd, but I don’t think I heard about it until a month later