IF ONLY BUSHROVE HAD RECRUITED HIM TO THE GOP:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker's purple leadership (Washington Times, March 30, 2009 )

Even before he was sworn in as mayor, Mr. Booker filed legal challenges to halt apparent "pay for play" sales of Newark real estate at bargain-basement prices to political insiders and developers. In June 2006, his suit was upheld by a local judge.

Since he took office in July 2006, Mr. Booker has brought demonstrable improvements in the daily lives of Newark residents. Shocking but true: One of the first things he did was he told taxpayers the truth. Newark's city government needed more money. He sought and obtained an unprecedented 8.3 percent property-tax increase to invest in Newark's rebirth and renewal. Among his remarkable achievements in less than three years:

Through new recruits and reassignments, Mr. Booker immediately put several hundred new cops on the street, contributing to 40 percent reductions in shootings and murders. He backed his new director of the Newark Police Department, Garry McCarthy, when he installed street barricades to seal off the open-air drug markets, despite harsh criticism from liberal critics.

c He has been a key member in Mayors Against Illegal Guns - a national organization of more than 225 mayors, including liberals who favor gun control and conservative supporters of the Second Amendment. But all are committed to eliminating illegal weapons purchased and possessed by criminals.

c He has collaborated with and obtained funding from the private sector, helping to provide support for the first-ever community court in New Jersey and the funding of one of the nation's most-extensive wireless public-safety networks. The system placed 109 cameras over a seven-square-mile area where 80 percent of the shootings had occurred in the prior three years.

c He doubled the production of affordable housing, already completing more than 400 units, with more than triple that amount in the pipeline - and did so by attracting private partners ranging from rock star Jon Bon Jovi to local minority developers.

c His particular focus has been on reconnecting predominantly black male ex-offenders with their communities and families. He has created innovative programs, such as the Center for Fathers, to teach them parenting skills, train them for jobs, teach them about alternatives to another cycle of drugs, crime and prison.

c Like his friend from across the Hudson River, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, and schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Mr. Booker committed himself to fundamental change in Newark's public school system. He broke with liberal orthodoxy by supporting charter schools and school vouchers, teacher accountability and performance testing.