Sharpe James, former longtime mayor and cheerleader for NJ’s largest city, dead at 89

NEWARK — Sharpe James, the longest-serving mayor of New Jersey's largest city, died on Monday. He was 89.

James, who served for 20 years as mayor while also serving nearly a decade as a state senator, was an ostentatious and tireless cheerleader for the Brick City, which had suffered a loss in population and commerce in the decades before his first term as the city's second black mayor.

The Democrat's storied rise in New Jersey politics ended in tatters after the U.S. Attorney's Office headed by future governor Chris Christie began investigating James' dealings.

In 2008, he was convicted of 33 federal charges including mail fraud and conspiracy involving the sale of city property to his girlfriend. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

His last run for mayor was documented in the 2005 Academy Award-nominated documentary "Street Fight," which ended with James beating upstart rival and future mayor and U.S. senator Cory Booker.

On Monday, Booker called James "a beloved pillar of our shared community" who gave "nearly four decades of his life to public service."

"I am deeply saddened by his passing, and I extend my most heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew him throughout Newark," Booker said.

James was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and moved with his widowed mother to Newark in 1940. He served in the Army and worked as a physical education teacher at Essex County College before he was elected to the City Council from the South Ward in 1970.

Fashioning himself as a reformer, he successfully took on the entrenched incumbent mayor, Ken Gibson, in 1986, and went on to win four more terms — once even unopposed — as his administration became a textbook case of the very machine politics he first crusaded against.

During his tenure, James saw the completion of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and the demolition of decrepit public housing complexes. He campaigned for the New Jersey Devils to move to Newark and for construction of the Prudential Center, which opened in an increasingly revitalized Downtown in 2007.