TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/092589/09258900.053

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 8KB | 149 lines

NATION, Page 20

Hope, Not Fear

New York may be the next city to elect a black mayor

By Richard Lacayo


    For American racial and ethnic groups on the way up, gaining
control of city hall is confirmation of emerging political clout.
So it was a triumphal moment last week when Manhattan Borough
President David Dinkins defeated three-term incumbent Edward I.
Koch to win the Democratic Party mayoral primary in New York City.
Since Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 1, Dinkins became an
instant choice to prevail over the Republican challenger, former
U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, and become the first black chief
executive of the nation's largest city.

    Dinkins' chances for a November victory were bolstered by the
fact that he won almost a third of his party's white voters, the
largest share of white support ever racked up by a nonincumbent
black candidate in a mayoral primary in any major city. Dinkins'
victory was widely credited to his quiet, conciliatory manner,
which many voters hope can heal the racial tensions in a city
shaken by several racial incidents, most recently the murder of a
black teenager by a gang of Brooklyn whites. "You gave this city
something special," Dinkins told his cheering supporters last week.
"You voted your hopes and not your fears."

    If Dinkins succeeds, New York would join the growing ranks of
cities with black mayors. African Americans occupy just 1.5% of
elective offices at the federal, state and local level, though they
account for 11% of the voting-age population. But 22 years after
the ground-breaking 1967 elections of Carl Stokes in Cleveland and
Richard Hatcher in Gary, more than 300 American cities have black
mayors, including 25 with populations over 50,000.

    That political triumph has been tempered by the fact that those
same cities are often plagued by crime, drugs and deteriorating
schools. Black mayors have had much success in fostering the growth
of a black middle class, dispensing thousands of city jobs and
using minority set-aside programs to direct a portion of city
contracts toward black-owned businesses. Unfortunately, they have
fared no better than their white counterparts in solving the
intractable problems of the growing black underclass.

    Many of the first black mayors, like Stokes and Hatcher, were
charismatic veterans of the civil rights movement who became
national spokesmen for the plight of the inner cities. For their
constituencies, long denied access to political power, the mere
election of one of their own to offices from which they had long
been excluded was a reward in itself. "Early on, black voters'
expectations were not necessarily tied to material gains," says
William G. Boone, a political scientist at Atlanta's Morehouse
College. "It was more of a psychological gain."

    But black takeovers coincided with the deterioration of the
economies of American cities, especially in the industrial areas
to which many blacks had migrated from the South. Places like
Cleveland and Detroit suffered a dwindling of the well-paid
manufacturing jobs that had pulled generations of unskilled workers
into the middle class. Many whites, fearing black government, fled
to the suburbs, taking their taxable incomes with them. The
financial bind worsened under the Reagan Administration's cutbacks
in urban aid. "It's like getting the prize and seeing that the
prize is hollow," says Linda Williams, policy analyst at the Joint
Center for Political Studies in Washington.

    Even when they presided over healthy local economies, some
black mayors became preoccupied by the needs of the middle class,
black and white, at the expense of poorer constituents. During
Maynard Jackson's two terms as mayor, from 1974 to 1982, Atlanta
became a symbol of New South prosperity. In the 1970s, however, the
number of black households in the city classified as poor actually
increased by almost a fourth, to 31%. But Jackson jolted the local
white establishment by aggressively demanding that black businesses
get a share of city contracts. As a result, his tenure is so fondly
remembered that when he decided to run for mayor again this year,
he quickly piled up such a huge lead in the polls that his only
challenger, Fulton County Commissioner Michael Lomax, withdrew from
the race.

    Mayors who presided over less fortunate cities had even less
to offer their poor constituents, and have suffered accordingly.
In 1986, Gary's Hatcher and Newark's Ken Gibson became the first
black mayors to fall to challenges from a new generation of black
aspirants less interested in national podiums than in the
unglamorous day-to-day management of their cities. Many of the new
generation of urban leaders, such as Baltimore's Kurt Schmoke, a
former prosecutor, have backgrounds in business or the professions.
"There is a growing respect for the intractability of urban
problems," says analyst Williams. "Some of the new black mayors
have learned from the old black mayors not to promise too much."

    A classic battle between old and new is the one shaping up in
Detroit. Last week four-term Mayor Coleman Young, 71, finished
first in the city's nonpartisan primary in a campaign in which
opponents hammered at Detroit's drug and crime problems. (The
mayor's image was also tarnished when paternity tests forced him
to acknowledge having fathered a child out of wedlock six years
ago.) If Young is getting on in years, it has not cramped his
boisterous style. At a victory rally last week, he urged his
jubilant supporters to "go home, get some rest and come back
tomorrow to kick some ass!"

    Young's toe will be aimed at Tom Barrow, 40, a black
businessman the mayor defeated four years ago by painting him as
a pawn of white suburbanites. But Barrow has been blasting at
Young's predilection for sparkling downtown development projects
over measures to help the city's devastated neighborhoods. A cousin
of the heavyweight champion Joe Louis, Barrow also derides the
mayor as a holdover "from an old era" who naively granted sizable
tax abatements to Chrysler and General Motors for plant
construction projects that did not create as many jobs as promised
or that cost taxpayers too much. Barrow promotes himself as wise
in the ways of business and administration.

    A crop of hopefuls cut from the same professional cloth is
lining up to challenge Washington's Marion Barry, who has been
weakened by continuing allegations of drug abuse. Barry's dilemma
worsened last week when a grand jury heard testimony from a witness
who said she saw the mayor in a Virgin Islands hotel room last year
with convicted drug dealer Charles Lewis and a quantity of cocaine.
If Barry is forced to resign or decides not to run for a fourth
term next year, Jesse Jackson may enter the race.

    Even the most successful black mayors can also fall prey to
the arrogance and corruption that have dogged many of their white
counterparts. Last week the city attorney of Los Angeles concluded
that five-term Mayor Tom Bradley "clearly stepped into that gray
area between factual innocence and a chargeable offense" after
Bradley's phoning the city treasurer last March on behalf of a bank
that employed him as an outside "adviser" led to a city deposit of
$2 million. The city attorney also filed a civil suit accusing
Bradley of failing to disclose on city conflict of interest forms
six investments totaling up to $420,000. Bradley now faces the
prospect of stiff civil penalties as well as continuing
investigations into his financial affairs.

    David Dinkins has been in politics for almost as long as
Bradley, but he seems newer to many New York voters. He has
garnered far fewer headlines than Giuliani, who made a name for
himself with high-profile cases against Mafia chiefs and Wall
Street cheats. Last week elated black voters were greeting Dinkins'
victory with tears and shouts of celebration. But some had also
already reined in their expectations about what any mayor, black
or white, can achieve. "With the Dinkins victory, there is hope,"
says Utrice Leid, managing editor of the City Sun, a Brooklyn-based
newspaper aimed at a black readership. "But so much is desperately
wrong."


-- Janice C. Simpson/New York, James Willwerth/Los Angeles and Don
Winbush/Atlanta