Jared Hunter’s latest provides another take on last week’s mayoral forum, and sets the stage for tonight’s City Council Forum. Come join us at the Village tonight!
It’s not new to the city for leaders to come in promising things left and right and the community slowly begins to open up and then eventually the administrators make the same poor choices as their predecessors. Zoning boards become pressured to approve methadone clinics where the community doesn’t want them; hotel properties begin construction in areas of the city that most neighborhoods would never see themselves patronizing or benefiting from; politicians claiming to represent the entire city move through local, state, and federal politics at such a fast pace it feels like they’ve hurt the community more than helped it – and all of these have happened within the last few years. Eventually you get a community that is not only closed off to the idea of new leadership, they almost begin to despise the idea of changing anything. As a result, we see mismanagement running rampant throughout the city and the same few committed folks who don’t want to give up on the idea that they’ve lost their home – all of this culminating into the top executive of the largest metropolitan area in South Jersey winning [that position] with less than 10% of the vote. This is the ultimate sign of a crumbling political foundation: lack of voter participation and the overarching sentiment that my vote doesn’t matter.
Earlier this week I caught the tail end of a public forum hosted by the Camden Village for the mayoral candidates in this year’s election. Since Mayor Redd has announced that she will not be seeking a third term, there has been a boom of talk about who will succeed her – Mayor Redd has already tapped Council President Frank Moran as her successor – and this forum hosted two of those candidates on Monday night: Theo Spencer and Ray Lamboy. Spencer is a long time Camden resident who has built a strong professional career across the country as a digital consultant with a large professional services firm. Lamboy has been a resident of the Cramer Hill community for the past fourteen years, his family owned a successful furniture store in the city for years, and he is the Executive Director for the Latin American Economic Development Association (LAEDA). After taking a straw poll at the end of the forum, Ray received 28 votes and Spencer received 11 votes; Moran and Amir Khan (a community activist who isn’t running for Mayor) both received a single vote.
In my time with local and state New Jersey politics, I’ve come to realize that there will always be the administration-established candidate (who usually doesn’t show up), the community-established candidate, and an outlier candidate that has no distinct or recognizable ties to either but is still very qualified – I think that we’re seeing similar parallels with the Democratic gubernatorial candidates as well (Murphy, Wisniewski, and Johnson). It is always pretty obvious which candidate the majority of the community is supporting and that was no different at the forum.
From the folks I have interacted with over the last two semesters to help inform my research, I had a very strong revelation. At the beginning of the year I wanted to look at how marginalized communities could interact and create relationships with their local government to ensure an equitable distribution of resources and assets (obviously with Camden neighborhoods in the shadow of the Economic Opportunity Act being the point of interest). What I realized after speaking with community members informally was that creating a relationship with city hall is not very high up on the agenda for everyday people living in the regional communities of Camden. What the people have been telling me is that they need to know that they can hold their representatives accountable; that they have a place at the table to voice their concerns and ideas; that someone is listening and delivering on the things they’ve been losing their voices over from screaming at officials and administrators for decades.
With all of this in mind, I want to focus closely on Mr. Spencer’s presentation to the community. Professor Danley gave a great debriefing of the public forum with video clips of both candidates responding to specific issues. Many of the questions presented to Mr. Spencer as “What will do as a mayor?” were answered as “I would redirect back to…” presenting options for neighborhoods to solicit their council members about zoning board appointments or mentioning that he wanted to know who asked a question to gain better context around the issue presented. As I looked around the room when these points were made I could tell that the audience was experiencing the same sentiment towards public officials that they have for years. This was made clearly evident by a community member anonymously asking the question to Mr. Spencer why he chose not to interact with the audience before the forum started.
While Mr. Spencer’s responses were rational to address the needs of the concerns placed in front of him that night, it is difficult to wrap one’s mind around logic when emotions are still so very high. It sounded like a lot of the work was going to be put on the backs of others which, in any leadership position, is completely necessary. A leader that does not delegate is very seldom as successful as one that leans on the strength of others. Still, I have found in the last year of working in this city that the community does not need a leader that uses delegation more than coaching and accommodation to build up the trust necessary for leadership to be effective.
Tonight, the candidates running for city council will find themselves in the same hot seats as Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lamboy found themselves last week. It is imperative for these candidates to keep in mind how important it is for the community to feel accepted, embraced, and heard – both in word and in action. Here is flier for that forum tonight and I would love to see everyone out there and gather thoughts about the event!
Jared Hunter is a current student at Rutgers-Camden pursuing his Masters in Public Administration in the community development track. His research focus includes disparities between marginalized communities and local governments as well as community development centers and anchor institutions.
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