Hoboken is tiny. It has 55,000 residents and takes up a little more than one square mile of the New Jersey waterfront.
But this week's mayoral election registered around the world.
It was a racist flyer that caught everyone's attention, one that blared the word TERRORISM right next to an image of candidate — and now Mayor — Ravi Bhalla's face.
The timing was important too. It was one year after the 2016 election and the same week that another racist message titled "Make Edison Great Again" targeted Asian-American candidates in a neighboring town.
Political scientist Brigid Callahan Harrison thought the flyer especially alarmed millennials who have recently moved to Hoboken.
"For some people, this kind of drove them to the polls and made them more cognizant of the responsibility to vote," said Harrison, a professor at Montclair State University.
That's not the sort of attention Bhalla was seeking. He prefers discussing climate change and mass transit. But he recognizes that he's part of an important generational shift: the children of immigrants from India and other places who are now acquiring power.
"We're not in a position where we're asking for something to be done. We're now becoming the decision-makers," he said in his office.
Is that threatening to some people? He said he hopes not. "I hope becoming a decision maker means executing good government," he said. "And I think if I can represent the community well, I think that will be met with gratitude."