Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said he’s running for governor in 2025 to push for change at the New Jersey statehouse for people who have never had access to power.
“We have spent a lot of energy and effort around the state getting other people elected to do things, to represent us, to fight for us — and they get us all the way up to the door of democracy, but we never get the key to go inside,” Baraka, a Democrat, told Gothamist.
The remarks were some of his first since Monday night, when he surprised attendees of a Black History Month event by announcing, “I want to be the governor of the state of New Jersey.”
Baraka said he appreciates the work Gov. Phil Murphy has done, and that New Jersey has long been taking a “long, moderate walk down the right path.” But he said he wants to go further.
“There are things that we have to do in our state to deal with income inequality, to deal with wealth disparity, things that we have to do with building housing that has to be more imaginative, more robust, more aggressive,” Baraka said. “Things that are important for our folks to get them to work, to get them into housing, to reduce the cost of housing, to make the cost of living in New Jersey lower.”
He said his agenda will appeal to regular working families and creating more affordable housing will be his top priority.
His announcement immediately pits the mayors of New Jersey’s two largest cities against each other in next year’s Democratic primary, because Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop has already declared his run. Former state Senate President Steven Sweeney has also said he will run from his base of support in south Jersey and among trade unions. Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill are also broadly expected to run.
In the Republican primary, so far state Sen. Jon Bramnick has formally declared a run. Former state Sen. and perennial gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli announced immediately after losing to Murphy in 2021 that he’d run in 2025;…
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