BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – At least five people as of press time have raised their hands in their desire to succeed LaMonica McIver as Central Ward Council Member in the wake of her being named as 10th Congressional District Representative for the Nov. 5 General Election ballot.
Rev. Andre Speight, Shawn McCray, Reginald Bledsoe, Gary Vickers and Gayle Chaneyfield-Jenkins asked the Newark Democratic Committee to have themselves considered as McIver’s Municipal Council successor as early as 72 hours after the current Council President was named, in a special July 19 tri-county party convention, to replace the late Cong. Donald M. Payne, Jr.’s name on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The city party committee’s consideration of the current fivesome as of press time or anyone else to succeed McIver is a matter of either when or if.
The “when” is based on whether a majority of CD10 voters here and in 17 other Essex, Union and Hudson county municipalities elect McIver in the Sept 18 and/or Nov. 5 general elections. McIver is up for voters’ consideration to first fill out Payne’s unexpired term through Jan. 3. She is also on the ballot for a full two-year U.S. House of Representatives term.
McIver could trigger a special Central Ward Council election for the Nov. 5 General Election should she resign no later than Aug. 31 – but that is when the “if” comes in.
The “if” is regardless of whether voters send McIver to Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill. City elders – including the Democratic committee and the Municipal Clerk’s office – may not make a special appointment or hold a special election and leave the seat vacant until the scheduled May 2026 mayor and council election.
State law calls for elected bodies to hold a special election should the vacated seat has more than a year left on its term. McIver, who was re-elected into her second term on Mayor Ras Baraka’s Moving Newark Forward 2022 slate, would be leaving with 17 to 21 months left on her term.
There had been two occasions where a vacated council seat was left open until the next election cycle – most recently when Mildred Crump resigned from her At-Large Council seat for health reasons in 2021.
The council promoted son and then-chief of staff Lawrence “Larry” Crump by appointment and was later elected by voters in the 2022 regular election. Then-Municipal Clerk Kenneth Louis, after L. Crump’s appointment, said he and his office staff “didn’t have the time” to conduct a special election with Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin (D-Roseland). (There is a short voting machine turnaround time in the three weeks between the annual April Newark Board of Education election and Newark’s quadrennial May nonpartisan municipal election.)
The other recent occasion was when then-at-large councilman and Council President Donald M. Payne, Jr., announced his intention to succeed his father, Donald M. Payne, Sr as CD10 Congressman after his father’s March 6, 2012 death. Payne, Jr. won that year’s special CD10 election that year, prompting him to resign from the Municipal Council.
The council appointed M. Crump to succeed Payne, Jr. as Council President – but eventually kept Payne’s at-large seat open until the scheduled May 2014 municipal election. There was a Nov. 12, 2012 Municipal Council meeting where the attempted swearing-in of Shanique Speight ended with someone setting off tear gas in the council chamber in a near-riot.
Booker and his council allies wanted S. Speight appointed to succeed Payne, Jr. while Baraka and his council colleagues wanted then-South Ward Councilman John Sharpe James. Booker, as mayor, broke a deadlock by voting for Speight.
S. Speight was never sworn in. A court ruling effectively kept Payne’s seat vacant by finding that Booker, given Newark’s mayor-council structure, cast an illegal tie-breaking vote.
Then there is the case of At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana. Quintana was already named “The Dean of the Municipal Council” when his peers, after 10 months’ deliberation, appointed him to finish Booker’s 2010-14 term. Booker resigned when a majority of state voters elected him as U.S. Senator in a special 2013 election to succeed the late Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park).
Quintana’s council seat was left vacant until a new mayor – Baraka – was elected in the scheduled 2014 election. Voters re-elected “The Dean” as councilman in the same ballot casting.
Rev. Speight runs a Central Ward nonprofit, is that ward’s Democratic chairman and is the husband of S. Speight. McCray is a Central High School basketball coach who had run independent campaigns for Newark Board of Education in 2018 and for council in 2022. Bledsoe was a one-term NBOE member.
Vickers is a retired NPD captain and a labor union leader. Chaneyfield-Jenkins has had at least two terms as Central Ward Councilwoman before mounting an unsuccessful mayoral challenge against Baraka in 2018.
McIver’s possible or probable departure ends about six-and-a-half years of stability as the Central Ward’s representative.
There have been at least four Central Ward council members 2002-2018 including Chaneyfield-Jenkins, the late Charles A. Bell, Darrin Sharif and Dana Rone. The changes came by resignation or losing elections; Newark can count on Central Ward voters to force a June council runoff.
The council, should or when McIver goes, will still have to name a council president. City ordinances require the “election of a temporary presiding officer.”
It was Gov. Phil Murphy (D-Rumson), on May 3, who called for the July 14 and Sept. 18 special primary and general elections to fill Payne, Jr.’s seat until Jan. 3. Payne’s April 24 death came too late for the six-term Congressman’s name to be replaced by Democrats in their June 4 party primary. A majority of party voters gave Payne their posthumous nomination for the Nov. 5 General Election. That election, against Carmen Bucco (R-Nutley), will determine who will get what would have been Payne’s seventh full two-year term.
McIver – by a three-to-one delegate ratio in a July 19 tri-county Democratic convention – was named to succeed Payne on the Nov. 5 ballot. Linden Mayor Derek Armstead was her nearest Challenger.
McIver will be facing Republican Bucco on the Sept. 18 and Nov. 5 elections.
