The film is called Street Fight. It's about the 2002 mayor's race in Newark, NJ. As you may recall, that campaign attracted a lot of national attention at the time, largely because of the outsized personalities involved. The four-term incumbent, Sharpe James, was a dynamic black mayor and something of an old-school political boss. The challenger, Cory Booker, was a dynamic black Rhodes Scholar, a 32 year-old city councilman intent on overthrowing the king.
Street Fight has a lot of troubling things to say about big-city racial politics. It also shows, in several extraordinary scenes, a modern political machine in action.
The film takes most of its cues from Booker. That's mostly because Booker gives filmmaker Marshall Curry extraordinary access, where James orders plain-clothes police officers to bounce Curry out of public events. If you've seen Michael Moore's Roger and Me, you know the drill. The result isn't the most objective movie. But what Curry does capture on his camera is damning enough.
For example, James calls Booker, who is light-skinned and a Democrat, a white Republican who takes money from the KKK. Later, when one of Booker's aides is seen at a strip club, James lashes out about the immorality of visiting such establishments. The owner of the same strip club then goes on tape saying that James has come there, too.
In other scenes, James unleashes the full force of his political machine. Booker, who lives in a Newark housing project, is asked by the housing authority to stop campaigning in one of the projects. To make the point clear, the deputy chief of police comes to see that Booker leaves. Then, on election day, James is seen bragging about the large number of volunteers, Newark natives, he's brought out to work for him. Yet Curry has on-camera interviews with James "volunteers" riding a bus up from Philadelphia, who admit that they're headed to Newark "for the money."
The election is close, but James wins.
There may be a rematch coming. Cory Booker has already announced that he's running again in 2006. The big question is whether Sharpe James will run for a 6th term. He'll have to decide by March 16. Election day is May 9.
Now would be a good time to add Street Fight to your Netflix queue. (UPDATE: the film's not on Netflix just yet. For now you'll have to check for rebroadcasts on PBS or find a screening somewhere. I caught it last week at the National Archives in D.C., but that was a one-shot showing.)
