Dana Redd takes office as Camden mayor

It was a hot August day in 1976 when the 8-year-old Camden girl, newly orphaned following her parents' deaths just two weeks earlier, was blessed by none other than Mother Teresa.

Wearing bows in her hair and a white dress she had worn only once before, Dana Redd took a lei made from flowers grown in the garden at her school, Sacred Heart in Camden, and handed them to the school's visitor, the world's most famous nun.

"And Mother Teresa embraced her with great affection and blessed her," remembered Msgr. Michael Doyle, longtime pastor of Sacred Heart Church. "That blessing was important in that child's development."

Raised by her grandparents, Redd would develop into one of the most prominent politicians in New Jersey in a remarkably short time: a state senator and councilwoman until today, and the vice chair of the state Democratic Committee for another month.

Just after 12:01 a.m. today, the 41-year-old Redd was to take her next political step and become the first new Camden mayor in nine years, ushering in a younger era in the troubled city. She replaces retiring Mayor Gwendolyn Faison, 84.

"Camden is my passion and life's work," Redd said in a 90-minute interview yesterday in her now-vacant City Council office. "Literally, I wake up every day and say, 'What are we doing for Camden today?' "

When Redd references her childhood publicly, it resonates in a city known as the nation's most dangerous.

Yet she is reluctant to go into details about her parents' deaths, which occurred in a Burlington County hotel and were reported by police as a murder-suicide initiated by her father, a Campbell Soup Co. union leader and onetime City Council candidate.

Redd said yesterday that she does not believe police and news accounts from the time. Doyle said those who knew the couple contended both were murdered.

Both sets of grandparents took roles in raising Redd and her 1-year-old brother in the Waterfront South and Centerville neighborhoods. Redd attended high school at Bishop Eustace Preparatory School in Pennsauken and went on to study business in night classes at Rutgers University-Camden while working full-time and helping to raise her brother.

By 1990, she was bitten by "the bug" of politics. She went to work as an aide to two Camden County freeholders, including Riletta Cream, who remembers that Redd pushed her to make the rounds at political functions.

At the city's Parking Authority, Redd worked in finance, and has been criticized for leading the agency into debt. Redd, however, said she was a number-cruncher, and neither signed checks nor controlled spending.

She later worked as a division head in Camden County government and was chairwoman of the Housing Authority of Camden, which she said she helped transition from federal oversight.

In 2001, Redd ran for her first of two terms on City Council, and in 2007, she was appointed to replace State Sen. Wayne Bryant (D., Camden) after he was indicted on corruption charges.

In both cases, she said she did not seek the positions but was approached by Camden County Democratic leaders. With her government and political jobs, Redd had become an insider, laying the groundwork for a mayoral run.

Redd plowed through the competition in the November election with considerable financial support from state Democratic groups and traditional Camden County Democratic fund-raisers - labor unions and contractors that do business with government.

Only one resident of Camden, a former school board president, donated to her general-election fund, according to state records.

Redd does not shy from her politician connections. She says matter-of-factly that she can get U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) or U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews (D., Camden) on the phone. She credits George Norcross, the unofficial head of the Camden County Democrats and a statewide political force, for support. "You'd better be a political insider if you want to get something done," Cream said.

Some city activists say the county Democrats are intent on enriching suburban interests instead of helping the poorest medium-size city in America.

"Everything [Redd] has done while in office has been to cater to the political party and the bosses and George Norcross," said one of her former mayoral opponents, Angel Cordero.

Added the city's best-known political gadfly, Frank Fulbrook: "She's not an independent, and she never was. And I've known her for 20 years. She's totally a party-loyal person."

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, who got to know Redd at the 2000 Democratic convention, said Redd is more about "progress than politics" and does not believe in the "machine-style politics of the past."

"The lazy view of her would be, she's part of the Norcross machine, but the truth of the matter is, she's always shown me that her priority and her focus is Camden and the people of Camden."

Redd said she could not immediately think of a time when she opposed a party-supported idea.

Redd voted and cheer-led the most controversial Democratic-pushed plan in Camden in recent years - the massive Cramer Hill redevelopment - and was sued over it. She now acknowledges that the plan did not do enough to take the community into account.

"It was very aggressive and not the approach to take," Redd said.

Redd testified during one of the lawsuits that she did not read some documents related to the redevelopment. Yesterday she said that the city attorney ill-prepared her for that deposition, but that she read the two most important documents: the plan and the supporting study.

On one looming political issue - the Camden County freeholders plan to privatize the county jail - Redd, as mayor, may soon have a chance to prove either her independence or her party loyalty.

She said she was adamantly opposed to putting the jail on Mount Ephraim Avenue, where one private jail company is looking to buy, and would "prefer not to have it in Camden" at all.

Redd has other policy objectives, including a "Clean Camden Campaign" to clean streets. She wants to reform City Hall bureaucracy, attract middle-class residents to interior neighborhoods, and to go after absentee landlords who leave properties abandoned.

Redd said she would use her three appointments to the school board to influence educational policy, and she has "100 percent" support for Police Chief John Thomson, who has presided over a recent reduction in crime while drawing the ire of some officers for his management style.

In reality, Redd has little power. She will earn $103,000 as mayor, but because the state took the city over in 2002, an appointed chief operating officer controls most city operations.

Redd said she hoped that the Legislature would soon transfer more power to her office while retaining a state presence in City Hall.

Unfailingly polite, Redd is a self-described introvert who is single and has no children. A lover of music who takes long car rides alone to meditate, she is described as hardworking.

"What I have been most impressed about and what I'm most worried about is how much work she does on her own," said Wendell Pritchett, the chancellor of Rutgers-Camden and cochair of Redd's transition team. "We really need to get her staffed up, because the things that she's facing, she's not going to be able to do on her own."

Redd vowed transparency with the press and said she would "reengage" nonprofit foundations for funding help.

"That's going to be a large part of my job - trying to restore confidence in Camden and its leaders," she said.

Three of her five predecessors were indicted for corruption - a stain that symbolizes the city's long decline.

"People who have wings fly out of Camden, and those who have broken wings come back to it," said Doyle.

"Dana grew wondrous wings," he said, "but she's choosing to take on her city, the city of her childhood, the city of her parents, the city of her grandparents, taking it on when she could have a life easier than that."