Street Fight

                The 2002 documentary Street Fight follows the Newark, New Jersey mayor’s race between upstart Cory Booker a high educated well spoken, African-American  and Sharpe James an African American, old-school ,straight talking incumbent. The documentary primarily follows Booker and his campaign but also does include James and his campaign as well. From the opening scenes of the film the viewers are exposed to Booker’s main campaign tactic which is going door to door to meet and talk with voters. Booker does this very effectively as he portrays himself as a compassionate and outspoken candidate. Throughout the campaign, Booker is the candidate who uses positive or neutral campaigning tactics and James is the one who tends to use more negative tactics. Other positive tactics that Booker uses is filming political ads in the streets of Newark, holding campaign fundraisers, and holding public outdoor rallies with food and entertainment. Sharpe James on the other hand uses much more controversial tactics. When a downtown business owner put a Cory Booker sign in his sidewalk windows, James had the shop shut down by citing arbitrary building code violations. Another negative tactic James uses is sending a pamphlet to voters calling Booker a “White republican” and also a “Faggot white boy”. Also other dirty campaign tactics which were most likely connected to James is that Booker’s phone was tapped at times during the campaign and also Booker’s campaign headquarters were broken into and valuable information regarding campaign strategy was stolen. Ultimately, James won the election by slim margin (53%-47%) but in 2006 Booker won in a landslide taking home over 70% of the vote.
Additional Campaign Strategies
        As election day in the city of Newark, NJ came closer, Sharpe James took even more drastic measures and used more controversial negative campaign tactics. Some of these tactics include ordering town workers to remove Cory Booker signs around the city, busing in supporters from out of state, and ordering cars and trucks with PA systems to sabotage Cory Booker rallies. James also attempted to manipulate the voting booths to make sure they would give him an unfair advantage but the NJ district attorney's office stepped in. Overall, James implemented many negative camapgin strategies during his campaign for re-election.

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