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Mayoral races show 21st Century racial politics can be strange territory

October 27, 2009 — Like reflections in a funhouse mirror, race lingers as a factor in some of the big mayoral races across the South this fall -- but seldom in ways one might expect.

Exhibit A: Early on this year, one of the candidates in the mayoral race now counting down to a runoff decision next week in St. Petersburg, Bill Foster, said he wanted to be the Florida city’s “first black mayor.” Foster is white. He was talking about this is the sense that writer Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the nation’s “first black president,” but stumbled in that ambition recently when he suggested that blacks might be great contractors, but “lousy business owners as far as the entrepreneurial skills.”

Foster’s opponent, Kathleen Ford, got just as deep in the ditch when she went on the air with a radio shock jock named Bubba the Love Sponge Clem and quoted the famed African-American intellectual Cornel West.  That’s all you really need to know to spot a train wreck coming, but it gets worse. Criticizing Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis III, who is considered a power broker in the African-American community, Howard referenced West’s “HNIC theory,” which, politely put, stands for “Head Negro in Charge.”

Small wonder that St. Petersburg Times political editor Adam Smith has called this a race between “two of the most racially ham-handed candidates this city has seen in a long time.”

African-Americans make up only about a fifth of the city’s electorate, but have tended to vote monolithically and decisively in recent elections. With these choices, they’re more split this year, adding uncertainty to what appears to be a very close race.

This loose-lipped approach to race, in an election in which there’s not much at stake racially, stands in stark contrast to the mayoral election in Atlanta, where very little has been said and a lot is at stake.

City Council member Mary Norwood, who has consistently led in the polls, would be the city’s first white mayor in 36 years if elected. But so far the only open controversy over race flared in August when a memo by two Clark Atlanta University professors surfaced suggesting the possibility blacks might want to consolidate behind City Council president Lisa Borders, who was running second in polls at that time, to head off Norwood.

In the past week, two polls, including an InsiderAdvantage survey conducted last week, have shown another African-American candidate, state Sen. Kasim Reed, slipping past Borders for the second spot. But Norwood’s numbers have begun to look strong enough to suggest she could win this race without a runoff. And while race certainly has huge symbolic importance in this contest, its impact has so far been negligible: In our polling, Norwood has been getting a plurality of the African-American vote.

In the final week, there has been a major development, however. Outgoing Mayor Shirley Franklin, who has declined to endorse a candidate in the race, has gone public with her opinion of Norwood.

“Race nor gender are the issues for me. Competency is. Norwood has not demonstrated vision, competence or integrity in her public life as an elected official,” Franklin wrote in blog post to Jim Galloway’s “Political Insider” column on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s website, signing herself simply “Shirley.”

Reed is a Democrat while Norwood is on record generally voting in Republican primaries, but Atlanta, like St. Petersburg, has nonpartisan mayoral elections. That’s not the case in Charlotte, where Republican John Lassiter, who is white, opposes Democrat Anthony Foxx, who is African-American. Both have served on the Charlotte City Council.

From a distance, in any case, this race does not appear to have been racially charged. Nor was it close in the early going, with Lassiter leading by double digits in some polls. But the Charlotte Observer is reporting Tuesday that Foxx has overtaken Lassiter in money raised, and there are indications the race is tightening in the final week.

  With a wealthy white architect and city councilman (Peter Brown), a white, openly lesbian city controller (Annise Parker), an African-American former city attorney (Gene Locke) and a Latino county school board trustee (Roy Morales), the race for mayor in the South’s largest city, Houston, has as much diversity as any in the country. But with Brown and Parker coming to the finish battling for the lead, racial questions weren’t on the front burner until last weekend, when Locke, who has surprisingly failed to win solid support among African-American voters in the city, accused Brown of trying to buy black votes. As an example he cited a $150 contribution to a local church, whose pastor Brown later erroneously claimed was a supporter.

Whether the charge is true or not, it’s doubtful a $150 church contribution could have much affect on this race. It has become much harder to deliver black votes than it used to be.