Mayor Cory A. Booker offered sweets to a poll worker as he campaigned for Senator Barack Obama in Newark this afternoon. (Photo: Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times)

Updated, 8:12 p.m. | NEWARK –­ The first thing that MayorAdrian M. Fenty of Washington did when he walked into the poster-slathered campaign office for SenatorBarack Obama in downtown Newark was to survey the sparse group of campaign workers and ask: “Where is everybody?” One campaign worker replied, “They’re all out working for Obama,” and Mr. Fenty said, “That’s the mark of a good campaign.”

A few moments later, Newark’s mayor,Cory A. Booker, entered the room and called out to a group of reporters, campaign workers, and a handful of supporters that had arrived from Maryland (one of whom was wearing a “Sho’ ’nough Obama” T-shirt). “So has Hillary Clinton given her concession speech yet?” Mayor Booker asked. Someone in the crowd called out: “I think she’s writing it.”

Mayor Fenty and Mayor Booker, two rising African-American political stars, said that they shared with Mr. Obama, who is also black, a political vision that transcends race. “This really is a new generation in politics,” Mr. Fenty, 37, said, offering as examples himself and Mayor Booker (38) and also Mayors Gavin Newsom (40) of San Francisco and Byron W. Brown (39) of Buffalo. (However, Mr. Newsom and Mr. Brown are, in fact, supporting Mrs. Clinton.)

“We’re a new generation of leaders that wants to value pragmatism over patronage and run a city like the private sector would,” Mr. Fenty added. “They have a private sector mentality. I not only think Obama will be the best ideas candidate, he would also be the best C.E.O.”

Mayor Booker jumped in, saying he was “running on adrenaline, as if he’d shot six bottles of jolt.”

“There’s a different spirit here,” Mr. Booker said. “It’s what Barack Obama called a Joshua generation, a new group of leaders who have gotten where they are because of the sacrifices of the previous generation.”

Mayor Booker said he had spread Obama fliers so heavily around his city that the city’s sanitation department was complaining about how it would never be able to get them all down. When asked to comment on the historical significance of two black mayors of major cities campaigning for another black man for president, Mayor Fenty said: “You never say that race isn’t a part of anything, but what stood out about Obama’s campaign is that he’s gone through every region of this country, reached out to every race and ethnicity, and every kind of person.”

Mr. Fenty added, “What people really want is results. If you don’t show them results they won’t be satisfied with your performance, no matter how much you have in common with them.”

Around 7:30 p.m., the pair of mayors rounded off their whirlwind tour of Newark. All told, Mr. Fenty and Mr. Booker stopped at more than ten locations throughout the rundown city — whizzing through red lights on avenues lined with bodegas and shops selling bail bonds, shaking hands and passing out Nutri-Grain bars at middle schools, Baptist churches, Starbucks cafes, and firehouses where Mr. Booker greeted many poll workers by name.

At a low-income senior living center on Broad Street in downtown, Booker asked for man’s vote in Spanish. He announced to all present, about twenty adults in wheelchairs, “I’d like to introduce you to my friend – the mayor of Washington D.C.!”

At his home polling station, in the South Ward of the city, Mr. Booker lifted up the young son of district manager for the Obama campaign and brought him into the poll booth. Then the entourage sped off to West Orange, N.J., to attend an election night party by Obama supporters.

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