It is historically significant that America’s four largest cities have Black mayors. Eric Adams of New York, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Sylvester Turner of Houston run municipalities where 18 million of us live. They are chief executives in charge of some of the most complex bureaucratic organizations in the United States.
We’re more than a generation removed from when Harold Washington became Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983 or when David Dinkins made history in New York in 1989; cities and their racial and constituent ethnic communities have made major strides since then. But it surely still matters that African Americans — who continue in many ways to bear the brunt of poverty, crime and underperforming schools -- are now in the driver’s seat of setting U.S. urban policy.
What matters more is that Adams, Bass, Lightfoot and Turner all won office and have so far sought to govern not through identity-based appeals, but by promising more effective government that through incremental improvements deliver safety, economic opportunity, quality education and better municipal services to all. All four mayors have vocal opponents on their ideological left flanks who wish they were hewed more to the pure progressive line.
It’s no coincidence that Adams and his mayoral peers put more emphasis than many fellow Democrats on beating back the crime increases that have gripped their cities since COVID-19 hit. It’s Black and brown communities who suffer the most from shootings, homicides, robberies and felony assaults — and while many in such neighborhoods also revile abusive policing and over-incarceration, few believe that dialing back policing is a responsible path forward. Indeed, many underprivileged communities have wrestled over the years with chronic underpolicing.
These Black men and women are, more than anything, occupants of four rare elected offices where results really matter more than posturing and rhetoric. Lightfoot could lose her primary next week, the ultimate proof that no matter what a mayor looks like, no matter his or her background, performance is what ultimately determines one’s political fate.
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