After months of speculation on the heels of his allies forming a PAC, and his continuing travels around the state (he turned heads late last year when he surfaced at an unglamorous soiree in Perth Amboy), Newark Mayor Ras Baraka actually finally said the words.

“I want to be the governor,” Baraka said at a Black History event in Newark on Monday, according to TAPInto.

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) was a special guest at the celebration.

It was packed, and Baraka was well-received.

“If I was the Democratic Party, I’d be worried,” a Baraka supporter told InsiderNJ.

Baraka backers see someone like Andy Kim, an upstart U.S. Senate candidate, and gleefully rub their hands together,

Largely unknown outside of Burlington County, Kim lacks charisma.

And he’s a slide rule rockstar.

Baraka is a gifted orator, and the mayor of Newark.

“Imagine what Ras will be able to do in this environment?” the supporter said.

This environment includes Kim beating First Lady Tammy Murphy off the line in her home county against the backdrop of a lawsuit challenging the justice of organization line campaigns and elections in New Jersey. The meltdown of U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a governor attempting to get the seat for his wife, and a party rife with nepotism, contribute to institutionally deadening atmospherics.

Assessed as a person of integrity – with experience in elected office – unafraid of the consequences of running against a party that continually serves up a conveyor belt of undigestible hash, and which appears dangerously unwittingly capable of allowing the multiply indicted Donald Trump back into the White House, Kim transmits a working, pre-Baraka blueprint, minus the intensity.

At the very least, Baraka’s presence in the developing 2025 gubernatorial contest creates a headache for Essex County Democratic Committee Chairman LeRoy Jones, said to favor U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11) for governor.