TRENTON – With all the criticism that Mayor Reed Gusciora has faced the last four years, one would think people would be lining up in droves to challenge him in the upcoming mayor’s race.
But seven months out from Trenton’s municipal races, the incumbent still is faced with an unimpeded path to a second four-year term. He’s the first mayor since 2006 to run for re-election in the capital city.
As several candidates announce council bids, will anyone gun for Gusciora in 2022?
At-large councilman Santiago Rodriguez backpedaled away from an earlier promise that he’d run against, and beat, the mayor.
Darren “Freedom” Green, who finished outside of the runoff, in fourth place in an eight-candidate in the 2018 race, was thought to be another likely challenger in the upcoming cycle.
But the normally outspoken city activist has gone virtually silent the past few months, save for a few social media posts condemning gunplay that continues ravaging the capital city streets.
He declined to discuss his future plans with The Trentonian when contacted this week.
And while many believe that council president Kathy McBride and West Ward councilwoman Robin Vaughn are likely to enter the mayor’s race in the coming months, neither has formally declared their intentions.
The woman known as “Radioactive Robin,” however, has ratcheted up her anti-Reed rhetoric in recent weeks, making some insiders believe she’s primed to announce her candidacy.
In recent posts, Vaughn invoked the name of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, suggesting Trenton is better off returning a “Black mayor” to power rather than running the risk of having a “weak White mayor who doesn’t understand the needs” of Trentonians in office another four years.
“Once Reed Gusciora is voted out, Trenton will be a different city,” Vaughn said.
Political observers expect that whoever mounts campaigns, the Trenton mayor’s race will be “ugly,” especially with certain council members already interjecting race as an issue into the political discourse.
That could be an effective strategy in a city that is majority Black and Latino, but it depends on who is channeling the message, said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
“Anybody who is coming from city council is going to run a race that is going to be at least as ugly as what we’ve seen in the day-to-day governance,” he said. “It’s not as if somebody is going to wake up tomorrow and choose to change their stripes. This campaign is going to be the culmination of a four-year strategy.”
“The city is too small, and has too many problems, to be divided along racial lines,” Rasmussen added. “If you talk about Mayor Baraka, he would not tell you, ‘I’ve worked with one part of the community, but not another part of the community.’”
Some council members, upset over the apparent intrusion of outsiders and the state’s historic stranglehold over the city’s affairs, have attempted to weave a tale of empowerment for the city’s downtrodden and deflated residents.
They’ve faced pushback when their words veered into faction-based tribalism that, at times, has mirrored the infighting on the streets, among ward-based neighborhood cliques who are responsible for most of Trenton’s record-setting violence the last two years.
More recently, East Ward councilman Joe Harrison attacked Vaughn for telling Black colleagues to “block all these racist white elected officials.”
He said Vaughn’s words racist, coupled with her constant attacks on members of the mayoral cabinet, and an infamous recording of her epic homophobic tirade against the openly gay Gusciora.
“Robin Vaughn does nothing. She sits on her computer and takes shots at everybody,” South Ward councilman George Muschal told The Trentonian.
He said race should be less of a deciding factor in the upcoming mayor’s race than who is best equipped to run the city..
“I don’t care who it is. If you’re qualified, you deserve it. I want a qualified person, and I don’t discriminate against no one,” he said.
Race is hardly the only issue that may sway voters.
Acrimony over the last four years is sure to be another big topic of concern, as Gusciora and council have clashed on virtually every issue, from the budget to redevelopment.
That could be enough to embolden Trenton’s normally apathetic electorate to come out in record numbers, Rasmussen said.
In the last election, only 23 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the May races, which featured five Black candidates that fractured the vote, guaranteeing Trenton wouldn’t be run by a Black mayor for the first time in 28 years.
Before that, ex-Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer was in power for 20 years. He bowed out of a sixth term, allowing corrupted Mayor Tony Mack to enter the political scene.
Mack was removed from office by a state judge after being convicted in a federal bribery scheme. Councilman George Muschal briefly filled in as mayor.
Then Eric Jackson was elected in 2014, but only served a single tepid term before stepping aside.
The runoff between Gusciora and Trenton native son Paul Perez attracted fewer voters, with only 8,848 residents casting ballots, to give Gusciora’s a slim margin of victory of 305 over Perez, who actually outpaced the longtime assemblyman in the first round.
Gusciora’s less-than-convincing win, coupled with the dysfunction that has marred his first term, have some believing he’s susceptible this cycle.
Rasmussen believes council’s obstructionism gives the mayor a built-in excuse to explain his failures to voters, and parry potential future attacks from opponents who paint him as “weak.”
“They’ve given him a very powerful and easy to understand reason why things have not moved forward,” he said. “You can say that’s weakness on one part of the other. This is not willing to give an inch for the betterment of the city.”
