Mayor Eldridge Hawkins Biography
December 2011

Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. (born July 25, 1979) is the Mayor of Orange, New Jersey, a city of 33,000 residents with an annual $53 Million operating budget. Mayor Hawkins is a law enforcement professional and businessman. He ran on an ambitious agenda of plans to make Orange safer, stabilize property taxes, spur redevelopment, improve the quality of life and assure the honesty and integrity of government.

Mayor Hawkins assumed office on July 1, 2008 just as the U.S. economy was entering the worst economic recession since the 1930s. His initial acts as mayor involved major improvements to the Orange Police Department. He appointed a new police director, instituted community policing, conducted gun buybacks, modernized police technology, and established an elite street crimes unit. In the process, he reduced crime by 23% compared to the prior administration.

Mayor Hawkins spurred redevelopment despite the difficult economy. He demolished the Walter G. Alexander Houses, a deteriorated high-rise housing project and replaced it with a neighborhood of mixed income and market-rate town houses. He won designation as a “Transit Village,” triggering state technical and financial help for development around Orange’s train stations. To promote Orange as a shopping, dining, and entertainment destination, Mayor Hawkins secured funding for the city’s Valley Arts district, publicized the city’s historic Italian neighborhood and developed a plan to revitalize the city’s commercial corridors.

While he inherited a budget with an 18% tax increase and a large structural deficit, over a period of three years, Mayor Hawkins succeeded in digging the Orange out of its deep financial hole and achieved a current budget with no tax increase, the first time in over a decade that taxes in the city are stable.

Major cuts in state aid combined with mandated increases in employee benefits forced New Jersey’s cities to lay off employees. Mayor Hawkins responded to this crisis by organizing his fellow mayors to successfully fight for reduced costs through pension and health benefit changes, civil service and collective bargaining reforms, and relief from unfunded mandates. As Chairman of the Management Reform Committee of the NJ League of Municipalities, he helped change state laws in order to reduce the cost of local government and prevent employees from losing their jobs.

Faced with declining revenues, Mayor Hawkins created public/private partnerships to stretch the city’s tax dollars. He partnered with the Barnabas Health Care System to provide health care services to residents of senior citizens’ housing; recruited the Heinz Foundations to develop and finance a program of low cost prescription drugs and created a partnership to provide technical assistance and loans to Orange entrepreneurs.

Mayor Hawkins’ success in reducing costs and rehiring laid off workers through changes in state mandates, negotiated work rule changes, and aggressive pursuit of federal grants won attention for Orange in the national news media.

Named to “Cambridge Who’s Who Registry of Executives and Professionals 2007/08 Edition”, Mayor Hawkins is the President of the New Jersey Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees). He is the founder of the Orange-Essex Jaycees, the first chapter in a New Jersey urban community. In 2009, he was selected as one of Ebony Magazine’s Outstanding Young American Leaders.

Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. was a decorated officer in the West Orange Police Department holding three commendations as well as the Essex County Police Benevolent Association Distinguished Service Award. He served as the Director of Operations for the Carl Lewis Fund, Inc. placing inner city youths in corporate internships. In the private sector, he was named Vector Marketing’s “Number One Salesman” and worked as a Licensed Realtor Associate for Jordan Baris, Inc. He manages his own real estate investments.

Raised in neighboring West Orange, Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. graduated from Seton Hall Prep and Rider University, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. He is presently pursuing an MBA at Seton Hall University with an anticipated graduation date of May 2013.

Mayor Hawkins is Chairman of the Orange Democratic County Committee and a member of the Maplewood & Oranges Chapter of the NAACP. He is the son of former State Assemblyman Eldridge Hawkins Sr. (D-Essex), a prominent Civil Rights attorney and Linda Cofer-Hawkins, a business executive and community leader.