Friends & foes conspire to bury Sharpe James’ corruption with his corpse

Sharpe James, who served five terms as mayor of Newark before a federal prison sentence punished the corruption festering beneath his political machine, has died at 89.

In the hours following his passing, New Jersey’s political class—many of them no strangers to scandal themselves—lined up to praise him as a visionary.

The commentary flipped Mark Antony’s ironic assertion: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Allies and adversaries alike seem intent on burying Sharpe James’ crimes and corruption alongside his corpse.

The words spoken by members of New Jersey’s political establishment were a masterclass in selective memory, a reminder that in the Garden State, even convicted felons can be canonized if they wielded power long enough.

To offer condolences to the James family is a matter of basic decency. To celebrate the man himself as some kind of urban savior, however, is something else entirely—a symptom of the moral decay that has long defined New Jersey’s political culture.

Yet, the political establishment’s refusal to honestly reckon with his crimes speaks volumes. In New Jersey, corruption is not a disqualifier—it’s a rite of passage.

James was not just a mayor who overstayed his welcome. He was a man who, after positioning himself as a reformer, ultimately became the very thing he once claimed to oppose.

His crimes were not minor ethical lapses. In 2008, a federal jury found him guilty of fraud and conspiracy for rigging the sale of city-owned land to his girlfriend, Tamika Riley, who flipped the properties for enormous profits while contributing nothing to Newark’s revival.

The scheme was brazen, the betrayal complete. Yet, in the statements released upon his death, one would hardly know he had been a convict at all.

David Wildstein, the disgraced architect of the Bridgegate scandal, called James “colorful, passionate, and controversial”—a sanitized description for a man who treated public office as a personal enrichment scheme.

Wildstein, a longtime Republican dirty trickster who turned his criminal conviction into a profitable platform by setting up a political gossip blog after he admitted to orchestrating the politically motivated shutdown of George Washington Bridge lanes—endangering public safety—knows a thing or two about corruption.

His revisionist take on James is a testament to the bipartisan nature of New Jersey’s ethical decay.

Democratic National Committee member Mo Butler, a partner at Mercury Public Affairs—a firm entangled in Paul Manafort’s foreign lobbying scandal—called James a “giant among giants.”

Given Mercury’s history of representing unsavory foreign interests, Butler’s admiration for a corrupt politician is hardly surprising.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, whose husband, former Essex County Freeholder Samuel Gonzalez, was implicated in ballot fraud during her 2007 campaign, lauded James as an “iconic” leader.

Gonzalez avoided prison through a pre-trial intervention program, a familiar escape route for New Jersey politicians. Ruiz’s statement ignored James’ crimes, instead praising his “grit and determination”—qualities he certainly displayed in defrauding Newark.

Governor Phil Murphy, who has spent millions from his Wall Street fortune cultivating a false brand of progressive reform, spoke glowingly of James’ “deep affection for Newark” without mentioning the federal prison term that stained his legacy.

Even Cory Booker, who endured James’ racially charged attacks and dirty tricks during their 2002 mayoral battle, offered a diplomatic eulogy, calling James a “beloved pillar” of the community. It was a gracious statement—perhaps too gracious.

In his days as mayor of Newark, Booker built a national image of himself as a model citizen, with well-publicized—if not entirely contrived— acts of valor like helping his neighbors escape a house fire and saving a vulnerable dog from the bitter cold.

The documentary Street Fight captured James at his worst: using city resources to intimidate Booker’s supporters, tearing down campaign signs in defiance of court orders, and even having police rough up a filmmaker who dared to document his abuses.

That man—the petty, vindictive, corrupt machine boss—was the real Sharpe James, not the sanitized version being peddled today, but Booker’s faux progressive image is an equally damning indictment of a system where freedom of speech allows politicians to engage in false advertising and legal bribery almost ensures that they can get away with it.

Booker energetically held up Robert Menendez as a paradigm of civic virtue, about a week before the disgraced New Jersey politician was indicted on bribery charges for the first time.

Booker’s 25-hour speech was designed to mollify Democrats angered by the betrayal of Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who performed a playful role in the bloviating blowhard’s self-serving spectacle.

Booker was able to give his jaw occasional rests during the marathon speech by taking questions from Senators Dick Durbin and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who joined Schumer in voting for the Republican stopgap spending bill.

That measure was intended to destroy our economy, dismantle our government, create a crisis that allows the GOP to hand our government over to billionaires, and enact changes designed to make it easier for Trump to thwart our democracy.

Booker, Menendez, Schumer, Trump, and James are among the legion of corrupt politicians who sell out Americans on a daily basis although there was a time, early in his career, when they each seemed different.

Menendez testified at a 1982 racketeering trial against Union City Mayor and New Jersey state Senator William Musto, who was convicted and sent to prison. Chuck Schumer did not call for Menendez’s resignation after the lawmaker was found guilty of bribery charges.

James was first elected to public office in 1970 as a South Ward Councilman, in the wake of the Newark Rebellion of 1967, which occurred under the controversial, corrupt, and mob-tainted leadership of then-Mayor Hugh Addonizio. He later defeated the stagnant administration of Kenneth Gibson, promising to work with Governor Tom Kean to bring the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to Newark, a lasting achievement. But power, as it so often does, corrupted him.

By the end, he ruled Newark like a personal fiefdom, dispensing favors to allies and punishing enemies. As the late North Ward power broker Steve Adubato once observed, James stayed too long—long enough to forget that the city was not his to own.

Newark’s revival in recent years owes more to the reforms that came after James than to anything he did in his final, compromised years. Yet the political establishment’s refusal to reckon honestly with his legacy tells us everything we need to know about New Jersey’s tolerance for corruption.

New Jersey should bury Sharpe James’ legacy of corruption, not praise it – for while those who knew him may mourn the man, the leaders of our political establishment should never honor the criminal that betrayed Newark’s trust and tarnished public service.

Throughout the journey for empowerment in Newark by Blacks, Latinos, other ethnic groups, and women, their struggle for recognition and identity has been marred by greedy people who exploited the honor bestowed upon them by their community.

True respect for the millions of Americans who struggled to improve their lot in life demands we remember this country’s failures as clearly as its accomplishments, and not condemn future generations to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The tragedy is not that Sharpe James is gone. The tragedy is that so many who should know better still refuse to call him what he was.

And that, more than any single scandal, is the real story of New Jersey politics.