Can Republicans lead big cities again?
It wasn’t so long ago that pundits and policymakers were asking whether the GOP could make a comeback in America’s urban centers. More recently, I haven’t seen as much commentary on the topic. This likely highlights the steep uphill effort Republicans face to compete in deep urban areas. “Where Have All the Republican Mayors Gone?” is something Alan Ehrenhalt asks in Governing.
“Among the nation’s 32 largest cities, there are exactly three Republican mayors, all of them either in Texas or Oklahoma,” writes Ehrenhalt. “The GOP has virtually disappeared as a source of moderate influence on the urban side of the ledger.”
To go beyond Ehrenhalt’s piece, I think the disappearance of Republican mayors highlights several factors. One of the first examples that popped into my head while reading Ehrenhalt’s piece was William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. He ran on the Conservative Party ticket not as a Republican candidate.
Buckley’s run wasn’t so much a serious bid for office as it was an effort to articulate a clear statement of conservative principles. “Demand a recount” was Buckley’s famous quip when asked if he’d actually end up winning the race to be mayor. Buckley stuck to core principles and was often dismissive of the overall city bureaucracy, services, and pragmatic governing approach in a large metropolis. This isn’t a criticism of Buckley, he put forward many innovative reforms, some that are considered progressive even now, but it does reveal that the conservative brand was dismissed as a governing philosophy in big cities. He ended up with a little over 13% of the vote.
Buckley also entered the race to demonstrate that the Republican nominee, John Lindsay, was no conservative. That point was quickly validated: Buckley drew more votes from Democrat Abraham Beame, who was less liberal than Lindsay, and within a few years Lindsay himself would join the Democratic Party and make an unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination.
There were, of course, several high-profile Republican mayors who came after Buckley’s 1965 campaign. Few could be described as ideological conservatives, but several governed effectively in complex urban environments. Ehrenhalt mentions leaders such as Richard Lugar in Indianapolis, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, and Rudy Giuliani in New York.
While I’m no Agrarian, Thomas Jefferson and others did worry that urban expansion would breed dependency on government and weaken individual self-reliance. It’s something that some of the American founders were conscious of, at least. Still, given the competition for private investment and jobs, many urban areas need to show better pragmatic results at governing. We’ve seen the consequences when firms up and leave like New York for Miami or San Francisco for Dallas or Austin.
Today, cities face many of the same challenges that once tested mayors of the past but probably even more pronounced: one-party dominance, corruption, crime, high taxes, spiraling expenditures, cost of living pressures, and mounting debt. From a political perspective, the crime problem is one issue that President Donald Trump has worked to exploit nationally. Yet beyond the political maneuvering, there is genuine concern about rising crime in many urban areas, driven in part by lenient judges and prosecutors, as well as police departments struggling with morale and retention as they encounter the same repeat offenders again and again.
People want to and should feel to safe in their communities and it’s something many heavy Democrat enclaves are struggling with now. One easy argument for lack of federal intervention is a commitment to clean up cities of crime and restore the rule of law.
It’s possible Republicans could have some kind of opening in big cities if the ability to solve some of these problems becomes even bleaker but I think the likelier scenario is urban Democrats will have to moderate, as we’re increasingly seeing with Independent runs like Chris Cuomo against Democrat Nominee Zohran Mamdani. In his article, Ehrenhalt points out that “Pittsburgh, left-leaning Mayor Ed Gainey was defeated by Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, a moderate who campaigned on fiscal and public safety issues, but O’Connor could only win running as a Democrat.”
Ultimately, the future is up to the voters and pragmatic city leadership may come less from party labels, but from moderated Democrats and maybe even some Republicans running as independents against a Democrat nominee that is far to their left.
— Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat