Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, center, greets Shirley Little outside a polling place on election day in Newark, N.J., in this 2006 file photo. The execution-style shooting in Newark on Aug. 4, of three college students, has thrust Booker into a harsher spotlight, unlike one that usually presents him as the harbinger of a brighter future for the downtrodden city.

Newark, N.J. ? Newark’s young mayor went to bed about midnight that Saturday, after a jam-packed day: At an elementary school reunion, he’d danced as Melba Moore crooned for her old classmates. He’d stopped in at a basketball tournament for teens living in public housing, a job fair, an anti-violence rally, even a couple of neighborhood block parties.

But a few hours after he dozed off, Cory A. Booker’s BlackBerry started beeping.

The news shook him. Four young people shot. Three dead.

It angered him. On a playground. Gunshots to the head.

And it renewed a sense of purpose for the Rhodes scholar and Yale Law graduate who has led struggling Newark for just over a year.

“In times of crisis,” he says, “you can either have breakdowns or break apart, or you can forge strength.”

Booker promises change

Crime, drugs, gangs and violence have become entrenched in Newark’s fabric, which Booker has vowed to change. But the latest murders, the execution-style shooting of three college students, has thrust him into a harsher spotlight, unlike one that usually presents him as the harbinger of a brighter future for the downtrodden city.

When Booker bounded into City Hall 13 months ago, he implored Newark residents to hold him accountable and promised crime would be his top priority. The overall crime rate has declined, but the number of killings, 61, is almost as many as during the same period last year. The city’s homicide rate has increased 50 percent in the last decade to a total of 106 last year.

Booker, 38, is held to a higher standard than his predecessors when it comes to fighting crime in Newark, partly because he himself set the bar so high. He tackles the culture of crime like the diligent student he has always been, who puts in the extra time and effort to ace an exam.

But Newark’s daily challenges are like no other test he has faced.

‘I need help’

His unbridled optimism plays out differently in corners of Newark and beyond; he’s perceived as a new hope to some and as insincere to a small but noisy group trying to get him recalled and personally blaming him for the violence.

As the mayor struggles to move Newark forward, he accepts responsibility.

“I need help,” Booker said at a news conference last week to announce new high-tech police cameras and gunshot detectors. “I cannot get this job done alone.”

Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, has a reputation as a poor, dangerous place, where deadly riots 40 years ago killed 26 people.

Booker sees a different Newark: For example, while many lament the dollar stores and boarded up storefronts in the central business district, he sees the potential for major retail outlets.

And there are signs of progress. This fall, the New Jersey Devils will open a new arena downtown, blocks from an upscale refurbished Art Deco apartment building with valet parking and the decade-old New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Youths are key to future

Booker is determined to make sure that killings don’t define the city for decades to come.

“This response in the days and weeks and months afterward will be seen as a defining moment for our city,” he has said.

Previous Newark mayors haven’t been as ambitious as Booker, says Clement Price, a historian at the Newark campus of Rutgers University and a longtime resident.

“Newark in terms of mayors has been a minimalist city: take care of the basic stuff, clean the streets, collect the trash, provide minimal law enforcement,” he said.

Minimalist isn’t Booker’s way. Except in this sense: He repeats a mantra about the power of one.

“One person, when they join with others, can accomplish impossible things,” Booker says.

Booker sees the youths of Newark as the key to its promising future, and seems to be trying to combat the city’s problems one kid at a time.

He spends a lot of time talking and making friends with teens, using his athletic cred (the 6-foot-3 mayor was a tight end at Stanford) and his tech savvy (he’s a relentless text-messager).

He actively pushes policies aimed at helping teens. For example, early one morning just before classes let out for the summer, he showed up outside a high school.

“You looking for a job, man?” he asked the arriving students. Wearing a suit and tie, he handed out applications for summer work.

Optimism returns

On the Friday night before the schoolyard shootings, Booker was at the movies seeing Harry Potter with a few teenagers. And there’s another Booker story in that: These kids had made threats against him shortly after he took office. His response: He asked to meet them and became a mentor.

Life would change dramatically for Booker a night later when his Blackberry awoke him with news of the shootings.

Four friends were attacked in a schoolyard. The three who died were forced to kneel against a wall and were then shot in the head. The fourth survived and helped identify suspects.

Today, a few weeks after the killings, Booker’s optimism is back on display.

“If anything, I see the way our city has responded to this crisis,” he says, “and it gives me more hope, in the strength, the spirit and the potential of Newark.”