Brian Lairer on WNYC, and as many of you know, we've been inviting the candidates in the June

primaries for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey to come on with us and answer my questions and yours.

And we have our latest guest in that series now, the Mayor of Newark, Raz Baraka,

running in the Democratic primary for governor.

Mr. Mayor, thanks very much for joining us for this.

And welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

And New Jersey listeners, your questions. Welcome for mayor and gubernatorial hopeful

Raz Baraka at 212-433. WNYC, call or text your question.

212-433-9692. So I'll give you a general platform to start out. You're the mayor of the state's largest city.

What do you think you offer the rest of the state if you say you're the best candidate to be there,

governor? Well, we have executive experience. That's clear. I've been the mayor of Newark for 11 years,

a principal school teacher for over 23 years, a councilman for four. You know, we have some of the most

intractable and difficult issues in the state of New Jersey right here in Newark. If the state has

the cold, Newark has the flu. The issues that we've mitigated in Newark are statewide issues around

housing, around homelessness, around access to broadband, around lowering costs, you know,

health care costs, finding opportunity to bring small businesses in, investing in black and brown

and women businesses. Everything that we're talking about statewide is happening in Newark,

even the pushback against what's happening nationally coming out of the White House,

attack on our immigrant House, attack on our

immigrant community, attack on our LGBTQ community. We've stood up strong here, and we've been fighting

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