In winning more than 70 percent of the vote in the race for Newark mayor, Cory Booker inherits a city suspended somewhere between promise and despair. The promise lies in vast reservoirs of untapped resources: a prime location along the northeast corridor, a major transportation hub anchored by Newark Liberty International Airport and a network of roads and rail lines, a concentration of universities and health care employers, a major performing arts center, and strong economies in the surrounding region.

The despair, of course, can be felt in walks through the city’s most blighted neighborhoods, whose adults possess the lowest levels of college education among large American cities, whose population has been in decline since the 1960s, where unemployment is epidemic, and where more than one in four children live in a family with no working parents.

Booker earned his mandate with years of patient community organizing, fund-raising, and outreach to current city leaders, former residents, and Democratic powers who see unlimited potential in this 37-year-old Rhodes scholar. Booker has withstood an often ugly assault from his political rivals, who questioned his credibility both as a politician and as a black man who will be called upon to serve as a role model to Newark’s African-American population.

In fact, Booker is being called upon to be much more than that. The entire state has an investment in the future of Newark, its largest city. Cities serve as symbols of regional pride, as centers for culture and commerce, as engines for economic growth. If Booker can reduce crime, attract business, and instill hope in its residents, the benefits will ripple across the entire state.

Many Jews in New Jersey have a deep store of goodwill for Newark, a city where they or their parents were born or raised, and a city whose offspring have gone on to stellar achievements in the arts, education, finance, and social activism. Booker has in turn cultivated the support of many in the suburbs. It is a support that he deserves as he takes on his enormous challenge.

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