Young Council Candidate Says Newark 'Needs New Blood'

When Rashawn Davis plans to run for the West Ward seat on the Newark Municipal Council next May, he’ll barely be old enough to drink legally.

But where others may see his youth as a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble of Newark politics, Davis, 20, sees an opportunity.

“When you think about the problems affecting Newark, whether it be crime, economic development, or education, you see that they affect young people the most,” Davis said. “You have all these issues affecting younger people and no representation from someone that age on the council.”

Unless an even more youthful candidate enters the race, Davis would by far be the youngest seeking a position on the governing body, whose youngest member currently is Anibal Ramos, the 38-year-old council president. Davis is seeking the post now held by Ron Rice, who earlier this year said he may run for an at-large seat in 2014.

Although more commonly seen in board of education races, candidates of Davis’ generation seeking municipal government office in New Jersey is not an unheard-of phenomenon -- two years ago, Alex Torpey became one of the nation’s youngest mayors when he won a tough election in South Orange at the age of 23.  

“I think what Newark really needs right now is new blood. For the last 10 or 15 years, and maybe even longer, what we’ve been doing is shuffling around the same old guard,” said Davis, who grew up in the Georgia King Village homes and in Vailsburg.

“If we want to have a new Newark, we need young people to come forward and take the lead.”

And like Torpey, Davis, a government major at Georgetown University who begins his senior year in the fall, believes social media technology can be employed to make government more responsive. The University High School alumnus wants to create an app that will allow residents to do everything from reporting a pothole to touching base with their elected representatives.

“We really want to bring city hall into the comfort of the home and the comfort of everyone’s hand,” Davis said. “That’s something Newark needs to do and something we need to push.”

Davis, who worked as an intern for the Brick City Development Corp. last summer,  also believes that the best approach towards public safety is to begin treating crime like a public-health problem, an approach favored by Rice and mayoral candidate Ras Baraka, who now represents the South Ward on the municipal council.  

Davis also wants to create a city hall mentoring program, where city employees would be “strongly encouraged” to pair up with Newark youth.

Davis also has ambitious goals for city finance -- if elected, he would work on rewriting the tax code so as to make development benefit city homeowners more directly.