Opinion

De Blasio wins — in Newark

Newark had a Bill de Blasio moment this week, when Ras Baraka — a councilman backed by public-sector unions — was elected mayor in a hotly contested election.

Mayor Bill is likely to consider that the election of a kindred spirit across the Hudson is an indication that the progressivism he championed is catching on.

For just as de Blasio complains about hedge-fund managers helping out charters, Baraka campaigned on a vow to “take back Newark” from the Wall Street influences he says have taken over the city’s failing schools.

By that, Baraka means the One Newark reorganization plan championed by state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson.

In this plan, one-quarter of the city’s schools will be consolidated and relocated, with many becoming charter schools.

Never mind that, as in New York, charters in Newark — which now educate one-fifth of the city’s students — have shown real success.

Baraka repeatedly made it an issue that charter backers were on the side of his opponent, law professor Shavar Jeffries, who had himself founded a charter school.

Baraka’s victory was also a repudiation of the reform that now-Sen. Cory Booker was supposed to bring to Newark when he was elected in 2006. The problem wasn’t Booker’s policies; it was his failure to deliver.

And Newark residents see that failure in the highest murder rate in years, unemployment at 13 percent and the state threatening to take over the city’s finances.

During the campaign, Jeffries suggested Baraka was running as “protester-in-chief.”

It worked for Bill de Blasio, and it’s now worked for Ras Baraka. We’ll see how well it works for the people of Newark.