The
first New York mayor I remember growing up was John Lindsay, who hailed
from what was called Manhattan’s Silk Stocking district.
He was also a Republican.
As, of course, was Rudy Giuliani. And Mike Bloomberg was a Republican when he succeeded Rudy.
Richard
Riordan was a Republican mayor of Los Angeles. George Voinovich was a
Republican mayor of Cleveland. Pete Wilson and Roger Hedgecock were
Republican mayors of San Diego. Jim McConn was a Republican mayor of
Houston.
Nowadays,
not so much. With some exceptions, such as Miami, the Democratic Party
pretty much has a lock on big-league city halls. (And even some of the
Republicans--including Bloomberg and Lindsay--later became Democrats.)
This
phenomenon, driven in part by demographics, is now front and center as
President Trump and Joe Biden trade incendiary charges over who is to
blame for a continuing wave of urban riots.
Trump, who just
visited Kenosha, routinely refers to Democrat-run cities, blames the
scourge of violence on such Democratic mayors as Ted Wheeler in
Portland, Jenny Durkan in Seattle and Jacob Frey in Minneapolis. Biden,
who goes to Kenosha today, avoids talking about these mayors while
charging Trump with exploiting the violence for political gain.
Cities
bear the brunt of major American problems: poverty, substandard
schools, gang warfare, drug dealing, crumbling infrastructure,
segregation. Many people escaped to the suburbs in recent decades,
leaving behind urban cores that are poorer, blacker and, politically
speaking, easier to ignore.
That’s especially true because so many
cities automatically vote Democratic in presidential elections, leading
Republicans mainly to focus on suburban and rural areas.
The New York Times
has an intriguing take, saying “Republicans have largely given up” on
the cities, and from the Trump vantage point, “rural and suburban
problems in America today are national problems — but urban problems are
Democratic problems.”
The article argues that Democratic mayors
don’t get credit for a quarter-century decline in the crime rate (before
a recent surge), while Republican county executives don’t take heat for
a surge in opioid deaths. (Reality check: Bill deBlasio, Eric Garcetti,
Lori Lightfoot and the rest are national figures who govern the largest
populations, while suburban and small-town officials are far less
known.)
The paper cites studies finding Democratic mayors tend to
spend a bit more than their GOP counterparts but there is not much
difference in the outcome.
The
Times has a valid point that those who run cities are often boxed in:
“Mayors are constrained in their ability to execute ideological agendas.
Cities can’t run deficits. States limit their authority to raise taxes
and enact laws on many issues. And cities lack the power the federal
government has to shape labor laws, or immigration policies that can
affect their population growth.”
Finger-pointing between
presidents and mayors is nothing new in American politics. After
Katrina, liberals blamed George W. Bush for the catastrophe and
conservatives heaped scorn on New Orleans’ Democratic mayor and
Louisiana’s Democratic governor. And Trump last year called Baltimore “a
disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess” when he was feuding with a
congressman from the city.
The reality today is that mayors,
whatever their limited powers, have primary responsibility for keeping
their streets safe. If their police departments are overwhelmed, they
can ask for the National Guard or other federal help--though that is
increasingly intertwined with politics.
When New York and
Washington were struck on 9/11, no one said that was an issue for those
cities; it was an attack on the United States. Urban problems are in
fact, American problems, and once the election is over, Republicans as
well as Democrats have a responsibility to help those who live there.
