Milton Milan

Milton Milan became Camden's first Latino mayor yesterday and promised that the distressed city will be radically different four years from now. "Listen to us, world," Milan, 34, said in a 15-minute address before an enthusiastic, multiethnic crowd of 500 at the inauguration outside City Hall. "During the next four years, you are going to see the greatest recovery any urban city has ever done. " Milan was sworn in by U.S. District Judge Joseph Rodriguez, one of Camden's first prominent Latino leaders.

At the corner of Fifth and York Streets, just blocks from the center of Camden, is a wasteland. Abandoned houses with sagging porches stand littered with flecks of peeling paint, crushed beer bottles and cigarette butts. There are no parks, no stores, no trees. Just a fenced-in handball court anchored by a mural of Camden defiled with the words "F- the world. " This is the impoverished neighborhood where Milton Milan, now the mayor of Camden, spent much of his youth, hanging out and building friendships with people, some of whom are now defendants and witnesses in one of the most significant drug trials in city history.

In the second stunning blow in three months to the Camden City Democratic Party machine, two incumbents were defeated by mavericks in yesterday's Democratic primary. School board member Ali Sloan El shocked the party establishment by capturing the nomination in a race with Councilwoman Gwendolyn Faison in the Second Ward (Parkside, Whitman Park and parts of Centerville). In the Third Ward (most of East Camden and part of Central Camden) upstart Milton Milan defeated Councilman Kirk Jones.

A homicide task force is investigating a drug-related 1988 murder in which Milton Milan, Camden's City Council president and a candidate for mayor, has been named as a suspect. Investigators from the FBI, Camden police and the county Prosecutor's Office are reviewing the gangland-style slaying of reputed drug dealer Francisco "Poncho" Chamorro on Christmas Eve 1988. Chamorro was killed in a spray of bullets fired by three men in ski masks as he parked his car in front of his house in South Camden.

In a political slap at U.S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews, the newly elected mayor of Camden yesterday passed over the congressman who represents that city and endorsed State Sen. James E. McGreevey of Middlesex County for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Milton Milan, who will become Camden's first Hispanic mayor when he is sworn in July 1, fortified his independent image by repudiating the hometown congressman in favor of a North Jersey politician whom Milan said has demonstrated a greater commitment to helping cities.

With the clock ticking toward a deadline for a potential state takeover of the city if it does not quickly get its fiscal house in order, local officials yesterday launched a counteroffensive to get their viewpoint out to the public. "The state is holding us hostage because of Milton Milan," City Council President Gwendolyn Faison said at a hastily called meeting of close to 40 ministers and residents. Milan, who was indicted last week on federal corruption charges, was scheduled to be arraigned today in U.S. District Court.

Reputed cocaine druglord Jose Luis "J.R. " Rivera boasted of making Milton Milan the mayor of Camden and bankrolling his campaign, a witness testified yesterday in U.S. District Court in Camden. "He's the one that got Milton to become the mayor. He's the one that put up the money for it," Lucas "Gato" Torres told the jury on the fourth day of testimony in the federal drug trial of Rivera, 40, and Luis "Tun-Tun" Figueroa, 34. Milan, reached yesterday afternoon, said he has done nothing wrong.

Jailed ex-Mayor Milton Milan is scheduled to answer accusations in U.S. District Court today that he wrongfully fired an assistant business administrator who spoke out against his policies. Milan, 41, is serving a seven-year sentence in a minimum-security federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. It is said that he has been "born again" and has forgiven his enemies - and that he has lost weight and is running 10 miles a day. Friends say that upon his release, he may become a minister.

When Mayor Milton Milan took the oath of public office and swore to honestly serve the citizens of this impoverished city, his promise was a fraud, a federal prosecutor said yesterday. In her daylong closing argument to the 12-member jury in Milan's federal corruption trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Renee M. Bumb said that "Milan was in business only for himself," betraying the trust and confidence of Camden's 85,000 residents "for his own personal gain. " "When he took the oath of mayor and he swore he would faithfully, justly and impartially uphold the office of the mayor . . . that oath wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The oath was a fraud," Bumb said.

City Council is asking for resumes from residents seeking to complete the Council term of Gwendolyn Faison, who was elevated to mayor after predecessor Milton Milan was convicted on 14 federal corruption counts. Council expects to fill the vacancy at a meeting next Wednesday. The at-large seat will be up for grabs in municipal elections in May. "Every one of us [Council members] will have an opportunity to review the resumes," said Angel Fuentes, who replaced Faison as Council president.

The landmarks Camden has lost or tossed away could fill a hall of shame. They include long-gone but still-beloved buildings like the Stanley Theater, the Walt Whitman Hotel, and the Broadway Methodist Church, a list to which the shuttered Sears store on Admiral Wilson Boulevard soon will be added. Let's point out that the disappearance of any single structure in Camden has been far less damaging to the city's viability than the wholesale clearance of blocks along Broadway, Mickle, Federal, and Market between the Delaware River and 10th Street.

Camden's struggle to keep its streets well-lit illuminates a long-standing disconnect between City Hall and the community. When a neighborhood, nonprofit, or resident city government doesn't control comes up with an idea - even a good one - the city's response is usually a defensive crouch. The default responses from that art deco tower of granite at Sixth and Market are, "We can't do that, we don't have the money," or, "We're already working on that. We just have to find a way to pay for it. " Thus, the city appears to be responsive, can place blame elsewhere (Trenton, Washington, etc.)

In Camden, four Council seats are on the ballot this fall, with three incumbents vying to keep their seats. Challengers in the three contested wards are playing up the city's high unemployment rate and the recent increase in property taxes. All three are unemployed. In Ward 1, which covers Waterfront South and Lanning Square, incumbent Dana Burley will face Republican Edward D. Torres. Burley, 46, a state Assembly clerk, said she wanted to continue serving the city where she grew up. "I want to bring back stability and improve quality of life," she said.

Before polls even closed in Tuesday's primaries - with no surprise winners in Camden City Council races - a fresh face with a recognizable name emerged as an independent contender for a Council seat. Milton Milan Jr., 24, son of former Mayor Milton Milan, who served more than six years in federal prison on corruption charges, jumped into the race just before the 4 p.m. deadline to qualify as a candidate in the November elections. The younger Milan will challenge Clyde E. Cook, the Republican candidate, and current Council President Frank Moran for his father's old seat in Ward 3. Moran won the seat in 1997 in a special election to replace the elder Milan when he became mayor.

The entire Legislature is up for election in New Jersey this year, but only two suburban Philadelphia primary races Tuesday are contested. Here's a recap of The Inquirer's recommendations: In the Seventh District, voters shouldn't hesitate to vote for the incumbent, DIANE ALLEN, in the Republican primary for State Senate. Allen has won respect from voters in the Democratic-leaning district in Burlington County. Allen is not a rubber stamp for Gov. Christie, and recently opposed him on cutting funds for women's health clinics and making it harder for poor families to qualify for Medicaid.

Fittingly enough, history was made the night I first encountered the historian Howard Gillette Jr. It was 1997; Milton Milan had just been elected Camden's first Hispanic mayor. City Hall was jammed with media, and Gillette - mild of manner but acutely observant - stood there, smiling, taking it all in. "Who is this guy?" I asked someone. I soon found out, as did hundreds of people Gillette interviewed across South Jersey and elsewhere for his landmark book Camden After the Fall and his 2010 volume Civitas by Design . A professor of history and the founding director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH)

Accused hitman Juan "Two-Face" Rivera-Velez knew immediately that a confidant had flipped. "Someone must be talking," he told a federal agent when he was taken into custody in 2006 in the shooting death of a murder witness in Camden. His hunch was correct. This week, a federal jury was seated to hear the drug and murder conspiracy case against the 35-year-old Rivera-Velez. He is expected to be the last defendant to stand trial following the fall of one of Camden's largest drug organizations.

Camden Mayor Gwendolyn Faison has decided not to seek another term as head cheerleader for the troubled city. The city's first female mayor has been largely relegated to that role under a state takeover seven years ago that stripped away much of the power of the mayor's office. That was the price Camden had to pay to receive millions of dollars in state aid. To her credit, Faison has put up a brave front while a state-appointed chief executive perched in City Hall has called the shots in New Jersey's poorest city.

On a night when longtime Camden City Mayor Gwendolyn A. Faison announced that she would not seek another term, the city got a lesson in a powerful, controversial state law that has marked the mayor's tenure. The 2002 law, the Municipal Rehabilitation and Economic Recovery Act, provided $175 million to the city, but it took away almost all the powers of elected officials. "Now, when you talk about democracy in the city of Camden, you have to put the word democracy in quotation marks," said activist Frank Fulbrook, a panelist at a forum last night convened by the mayor about the law. The supporters of the law on the panel, all elected or appointed officials, showed pictures of new community centers and residential developments created with money from the law, and they offered statistics showing apparent economic improvement.