Central Ward Councilman Sharif Plans Mayoral Run

By Linda Sadlouskos and Paul Milo

Darrin Sharif, who since 2010 has represented the Central Ward on the Newark Municipal Council, last month told Patch he was exploring a possible run for mayor next year — and on Friday night confirmed that he would join the mayoral race for the 2014 election, according to NJ.com.

“In the last three years I’ve done a lot of things, and when people start to hear about them, I think they’ll agree they’re the kind of issues politicians should focus on,” Sharif told Patch in July.

The Central Ward representative also told NJ.com he feels he has "something important to contribute to our city."

Sharif is joining at least three other candidates in the race for mayor in 2014: already in July fellow council members Ras Baraka and Anibal Ramos, as well as Seton Hall law professor Shavar Jeffries had spent several months raising funds and building campaign organizations.

Sharif represents a ward that’s home to much of the city’s recent building boom, including the headquarters of Panasonic, now under construction at McCarter Highway and Raymond Boulevard, and the Marriott hotel near the Prudential Center. He played a role last year in getting approval for a new Prudential office tower to be built in a designated blighted area along Broad Street and also took part in the negotiations surrounding the merger of Rutgers and UMDNJ, which became official early this month.

That experience, Sharif said, would serve him well as successor to outgoing Mayor Cory Booker, who this month won the Democratic nomination in a special U.S. Senate election.

A self-described “deliberative” person who tends to speak with a technocrat’s precision, Sharif stressed in July that he would do a lot of leg work before deciding whether to run, a decision he expects to reach in September.  

“We’re going to do a lot of things first to make it a realistic proposition. We’re putting together an exploratory committee and we’re going to raise those funds necessary for a campaign.”

He also said he would go on a Hillary Clinton-style “listening tour” throughout August to share his message with prospective voters and hear their concerns.  

“The summer is a great time to do it. We don’t have many council meetings so I won’t have to neglect the most important duties of my office,” Sharif said.

Typically, candidates for political office emphasize their positions on tangible issues, like lowering taxes or increasing the number of police. Sharif, however, takes a much broader view of the role of politics in the lives of Newarkers, many of whom suffer from some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the nation.

“The greatest challenge of our lifetime is arrested human development,” said Sharif, who previously worked in government at the county and city levels and served as the director of operations for the Urban League of Essex County.

“All of these things that have been happening, the murders, the other crime, the poverty, are the result of arrested human development.”

Sharif wants to take that message -- about developing the “emotional, cultural, educational and social” potential of city residents -- to voters in every ward of the city, particularly those who feel alienated from the traditional political process.

“If I have a ‘brand,’ the one thing people attach to me is that I’m a serious person, a coalition-builder. Regardless of their ethnicity, there are some issues that affect all of us.”

Sharif also noted that a relatively small share of residents participate in city elections, and a large percentage of those who do are tied to “political machines."