A controversial video posted on a mysterious website threatens to send an already heated race for Newark, N.J., mayor into overdrive in its final week.
Ras Baraka, a radical councilman from Newark’s South Ward -- and son of the late Amiri Baraka, the controversial poet and essayist who died in January -- is up against Shavar Jeffries, a former assistant state attorney general and reformer in the May 13 mayoral vote.
The Daily Beast notes the race has been "ugly from the start."
Baraka showed up at Jeffries’ home one night and the two men got in a shouting match, the
New York Observer reports.
The Star-Ledger reports a low-level Jeffries campaign worker set fire to the Baraka campaign bus in February.
Last weekend, a 10-minute video of a Baraka diatribe was posted on a mysterious site, the Daily Beast reported, which did not reveal the name of the website.
In it, Baraka indicates whites are the "enemies" of blacks and suggests, "We got to plan to remove them and then we got to seize power," the Daily Beast reported.
Baraka was apparently addressing gang-affiliated teens, and delivering a message of black empowerment, the Daily Beast said.
"But even in context the language is extremely inflammatory," the Daily Beast reported.
The latest
Newark First poll, released Monday, showed Baraka leading Jeffries by a 38-34 percent tally.
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