In light of yesterday's election, we reprise a post from three months ago. We'll have more to say on the elections in the coming days, but we need to start thinking now about where we'll find the new faces and nontradtional candidates that we need for mayor in 2011.
Here's the post:
Every city is one great mayor away from being a great city.
It’s a mantra that we repeat often in cities where we work on issues that affect their competitiveness in a highly competitive global economy. We say it because time after time, we’ve seen it play out in city after city that has been transformed by inspired and inspiring leadership.
Because this is so, we think the pressing question to ask as we look at the announced major candidates, “Which one of these has the potential to be the great mayor needed so desperately in Memphis?”Sadly, when we ask the question, our answer ends up being: “None of them.”
Because of it, the most pressing priority for Memphis right now is to identify, develop, nurture, and motivate a new breed of candidates poised to enter the mayor’s race in four years.
The Power Of New Ideas
We are encouraged by the examples found in mayors’ offices across the U.S., and we are particularly inspired by the most exciting models of all – the many nontraditional candidates who have come forward, been elected and captured the imagination of their citizens.It’s hard for us not to think immediately of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and how we need to find his counterpart here. A geologist and a restaurateur, he went from a candidate with name recognition of less than five percent to a mayor who has now united the entire Denver region behind visionary plans for the future.
It illustrates the power that a new political leader with new ideas can have.
Memphis is about to launch the fifth term of the Herenton Administration.If the past eight years are any indication, the next four years of a Herenton mayoralty will be an era of marking time, and at the end of it, Memphis will have problems that may have reached catastrophic proportions - all the more reason to start now to find the kind of candidates who can be immediate impact players in 2012.
Here's The Irony
This is the golden age of great city mayors.
In Chicago, Richard Daley transformed “Beirut on the Lake” into one of the world’s great cities - sophisticated, vibrant, seedbed for an astonishing array of enlightened “green” programs.In Denver and San Francisco, two restaurateurs – respectively John Hickenlooper and Gavin Newsom – transplanted their customer service credo into city services and designed revolutionary programs for the homeless. Also, Hickenlooper’s determined regional fence-mending produced a 70 percent approval rating in the metro area, and he in turn used this reservoir of good will to lead seven counties and 31 cities to pass a sales tax increase to pay for 119 miles of new light rail and commuter trains costing $5 billion.In Atlanta, Shirley Franklin slashed 1,000 jobs as well as her own salary, convinced 75 companies to analyze city government at no cost and began a 22-mile linear park connecting 45 neighborhoods.
Through force of personality, Jerry Abramson convinced Louisville citizens to approve the largest government consolidation in 40 years; New York’s Michael Bloomberg turned a projected $6.5 billion deficit into a $3 billion surplus; Baltimore’s Martin O’Malley developed a unique computerized complaint system making city departments more accountable; Miami’s Manny Diaz moved the city bond rating from junk to A+ while rolling out a six-year program to rebuild the infrastructure; and Washington Mayor Anthony Williams delivered something thought impossible – stability.
He Not Busy Being Born Is Busy Dying
In other words, cities are in an epic period of rebirth, and great mayors are the reason.
Memphis has had great managers, great motivators and great speakers. But there’s no argument that Memphis has had a mayor who measures up to the standards of today’s great mayors.
Mayor Willie W. Herenton, contrary to critics who tend to blame him for everything from the economic downturn to global warming, flirted with a “Nixon to China” brand of greatness, but in the end, it was not to be and now seems as elusive as his being cheered at halfcourt at FedExForum.
In truth, the concept of Willie Herenton has always been more compelling than the reality of Willie Herenton. To his political base, he has special status as the city’s first African-American mayor, and the voter loyalty attached to that milestone will not be replicated again. With civic leaders, explanations for support have frequently begun with the sentence, “He’s better than….”
Outstripping Reality
When a political brand outstrips personal reality, it’s often a good thing for the politician. The formidable image silences critics, drives public opinion and overwhelms public discussions.In Herenton’s case though, it’s no longer fair to him, and it’s not now fair to the city, because it has mutated into a mythology that polarizes every issue he touches. The seminal example took place just over year ago when he convened a meeting to consider his innovative proposal for merger of the two local school systems.
On that day, he made the best researched and most detailed analysis by a public official of the $1 billion spent locally each year for schools, and he did it all without mentioning once that Memphis is the only major metro area in Tennessee where schools aren’t already consolidated.
And yet, none of the statistics, none of the projections and none of the historical trends were reported. Instead, the media fixated on the fact that the chairs of the city and county school boards – respectively, Wanda Halbert and David Pickler - were petulant no-shows at the meeting.
Losing The Bully Pulpit
It was a defining moment in the Herenton Era, because it was at that moment that it became unambiguously obvious that his personality, not his positions or programs, would be the overriding factor defining the news from then on.
In this way, it no longer mattered if he was right, because he was robbed of his bully pulpit.The sad truth of Memphis politics – and it is sad whether you like Herenton or not – is that the mayor no longer has the potential to be great, because the ultimate prisoner of the Herenton myth is now Willie Herenton himself.
Because of it, he’s denied the chance to emulate great U.S. mayors who are creating bigger dreams for their cities that every one sees themselves being part of, reaching across political and racial boundaries and inspiring all of their citizens with the confidence to move ahead together.
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5 comments:
Two people I know who used to live in Detroit during the Coleman Young years both expressed to me that they worried that Herenton would become another Coleman Young were he to win this election. Their feelings struck a chord with me because I was reading a book at the time that detailed the black elite. One chapter was dedicated to Detroit and went into some detail about the hostility that Young expressed toward the black professional class and the city's whites, both of whom he had alienated during his many years in office. The book implied that some of the decline the city experienced was traceable to this antagonism. The two people I talked to both worried that were Herenton to win, he would do so with virtually no white support and would be dismissive of white concerns because he had won without their support, just as Coleman had done in Detroit. Do you see similar such parallels between Herenton and Young?
I spent a number of years in Michigan and remember the Young years. I knew several people on his staff and one or two of his close political advisors. I am afraid I have to concur with the post above. I remember only too well the day Sam Riddle, a Young advisor and one who was a leader in the black student movement at Michigan State a few decades earlier, came out of a meeting with Young and his inner circle and remarked that he feared "they werer all on crack." This was to the media and it was probably at the peak of the period when the administration was spiraling out of control. All too familiar and as Yogi says "deja Vu all over again."
For real progress, we must reconcile the past with, raise up, educate and bring real hope to the contingency that got Herenton re-elected. Then and only then will we get a better Mayor. The fact that Herenton got re-elected only reflects the lack of healing between the two cultures here. Sadly, the only empowerment that the poor feel here is their vote for Herenton. It's a statement of their resistence and disdain for the other culture. Until one culture reaches out and ask for forgiveness by visiting and befriending the other, then forget electing any candidates with vision for how to make Memphis a a world class metropolitan city. The vision, in all it's facets, for this city must be shaped by reconcilation. The Mayor that grasps this and pays more then lip service to the vision will capture the hearts of many and restore Memphis.
"For real progress, we must reconcile the past with, raise up, educate and bring real hope to the contingency that got Herenton re-elected. Then and only then will we get a better Mayor." Aaron, I agree this must be done but it is my opinion that our first priority is to engage and challenge those Memphians who failed to cast a vote to help us carry the water on this. I don't know how we can do this most effectivelybut it must be done or the rest of us will simply be #@###ing in the wind.
Your right. Typically the multitudes are very inept at rousing themselves so it will require someone who is truly sold out to this vision- someone like a Ken Bennett at Streets Ministries who has dedicated his lifework to reconciliation. Someone like him could make it a focal point for the nature of what collaborations and developments occur. Thankfully,
inspite of the apathetic multitudes,
a large percentage of what moves our culture in either positive or negative directions is initiated by only a few people ( e.g. read "The Tipping Point"). It's just a matter of infecting enough people with a powerful inspiring message. Right now you are witnessing the effects of a culture that has been infected with a lot of negativity. It takes numerous positive innoculations to reverse this momentum into a positive direction. So, yes we need
to mobilize the apathetic but we need a very charismatic inspiring/infectous person who has and can demonstrate the positive effects of reconciliation based efforts.
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