A lot to talk about in Camden this week, from Christie’s last visit to the city as governor, Camden’s Amazon bid (and how New Jersey chose not to support it), the Camden spotlight in the final gubernatorial debate, a primary campaign post-mortem from Sean Brown, and difficult news on Camden crime. Lots to talk about!

 — Let’s start where everyone’s starting, the Amazon #HQ2 competition. 

 — Yesterday I attended Gov. Christie’s last event in Camden, a ground-breaking of the Joint Sciences Center on Broadway Street. Here’s part of the extended the lede from Phaedra Traethon’s coverage: 

How did the couple know something was happening?

“The only time they clean the abandoned lot next to our house is when (N.J. Gov. Chris) Christie drives through,” Flem said. Their Lanning Square neighborhood is overrun with suburbanites seeking a drug fix in the city, she said; she’s chased prostitutes and drug users from her backyard.

Another Lanning Square resident, Maria Miranda Rodriguez, agreed.

“Our parks are infested with drugs and alcohol,” she said angrily. 

“They’re catering to the colleges and the hospital,” Flem said. “But what are they doing for the community?“

And here’s more from the event itself: 

Christie, who returned to Camden for the third time in six weeks to tout the city’s progress under his watch, acknowledged “we’re not there yet.”

Still, “eight years later, we are a hell of a lot better off than we were eight years ago,” he said. “And it’s because of the work of people like (Redd, Rouhanifard and Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson) and the belief and confidence of the people of the City of Camden.

“This is a great American success story, and I’ll never stop talking about how proud I am to have been a small part of making this city, with events like today, a better place.”

I was struck by the common message — that of a unifying bipartisanship as the basis for Camden, that feels so grating to the activists and residents I talk to here who have had their rights stripped for this unity. Much more on bipartisanship to come at a future day — but it’s hard not to connect the the rah-rah nature of this event (which is for a good thing — the joint sciences center — but extended into a wider narrative about the city) with the Camden comments by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno in the second gubernatorial debate. 

 — I’ve been writing more about state politics over at Blue Jersey, and I did the debate wrap-up there if you want more about my wider thoughts. But Camden played a prominent roll in the debate, including this: 

“Camden was a mud flat years ago”. Says a lot about how Guadagno sees the people there — only corporations “saving” city. Ugh. #NJGovDebate

— BlueJersey (@bluejersey) October 18, 2017

Sometimes debates do have honest moments. Let’s make this simple: don’t talk about communities of color this way. #NJGovDebate https://t.co/udICSzFqso

— Stephen Danley (@SteveDanley) October 18, 2017

This moment really got under my skin, because it speaks to the wider blindness of some of these policies. I.e., too many political folks see Camden as a deficit. It naturally follows that anything that’s done/built/created must be good. It’s a view that’s deeply rooted in race and the history of white flight, and that misses both the assets already in the city and the great loss felt by residents who lose so much of what they love during times of investment. As a result, it increases those losses. Who cares about what happens to a “mud flat”?

 — But the politics of building, groundbreaking, “new jobs”, construction jobs, and shovels in the dirt are very good. It’s one of the reasons there’s such a frenzy around Amazon’s HQ2 competition — these are the types of tangible “wins” that play so well with voters, even if they ignore the opportunity costs or future budget deficits called. I talked a little bit about this at Blue Jersey and this piece about San Antonio saying no thanks to Amazon gets to the gist of that argument: 

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff also penned an open letter to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

“As aspirational and confident as we are about our community, we’re not submitting a formal proposal,” the letter said. “It’s hard to imagine that a forward-thinking company like Amazon hasn’t already selected its preferred location … blindly giving away the farm isn’t our style.”

There’s a lot to all this, from arguments like NJPP make that the best long-term way to attract companies is investing in infrastructure, to questions about whether a massive investment like Amazon breaks some of these rules and is worth pursuing (I’m open to the idea). 

While more details about the Camden plan are coming out, the broader news that New Jersey has chosen to back the Newark application seems like a big hurdle for Camden’s chances. 

 — Jim Walsh released a piece on crime in September: 

CAMDEN – An upsurge in violent crime last month took a toll on ongoing efforts to increase public safety in Camden, according to statistics from the New Jersey State Police.

Violent crime in Camden fell by just 0.2 percent for the year through September, a sharp slowdown from the 3.3 percent decline through Aug. 30, the latest numbers show.

The change reflected a 25 percent jump in September for homicides and other violent offenses in Camden, according to State Police figures.

The city had six homicides in September, compared to one a year earlier. State Police reported monthly increases of about 44 percent for robbery, 23 percent for assault, and about 5 percent each for burglary and theft.

I’ve said my piece often on crime, but I think it’s important to be humble about gains (and losses). It’s hard to have a month like this in the city.

 — Sean Brown, who was extremely involved in the Lamboy, Bethea, El, and Hall Cooper campaign, does a post-mortem of the election. Here’s an excerpt, but it’s definitely worth heading over to his blog and reading the whole thing.