Detroit Mayor Dave Bing used to be a record-setter when he was a major league basketball player, which is how us old-timers used to think of him. But he set a political record this year that's unlikely to be equaled. He won four elections for mayor in the space of nine months. That's a result of Detroit's nutty city charter, which is now, thankfully, about to be rewritten.
The charter required a special election to fill the last few months of the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick's term. So Bing had to win a primary in February and a general election in May.
Then he had to win another primary in August and a general election this week. This time, however, the term lasts four years. I hope the mayor doesn't have withdrawal symptoms when he doesn't have to face another election in three months.
But despite all that campaigning, the new mayor found the courage and the will to do something risky.
He took a stand he knew would be unpopular, because he figured it was hugely important. He stood up to entrenched interests and unions and lost support as a result. Yet he still won big.
And he can now say he has a legitimate mandate for his policies. Now, he was lucky in that it was far easier for him to do this than it would have been for most politicians.
Mayor Bing's toughest election battles occurred not in the general election, but the special one last winter and spring. After he knocked off acting mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. and Freman Hendrix, a longtime political heavyweight, the major leaguers backed off.
That meant the closest thing to a serious challenger he had was a man named Tom Barrow, who had been the candidate of reform when he ran for mayor twenty years ago. He lost twice, however, to the legendary Coleman Young.
Then things turned sour for him, and Barrow, who is an accountant, ended up going to prison for tax evasion and bank fraud, something you normally might not want on your mayor's resume.
In the August primary, Bing clobbered him by 74 percent to 11 percent. The election seemed to be over. Many politicians in Bing's place would have then run a safe campaign praising apple pie and motherhood. But instead, he took on the tough issues.
Detroit has horrendous financial problems. Some of these stem from the fact that it has a public workforce designed for a prosperous city of two million people. Today, it is an impoverished city with maybe eight hundred thousand left. Bing took on the municipal unions,
He demanded salary cuts and other concessions, because the city just isn't able to pay the way it once did. In retaliation, the unions threw their support behind Tom Barrow. They poured money into his campaign. But the voters, to their credit, turned out to be grownups. Barrow drastically improved his primary showing, but not enough.
Instead of losing 74 percent to 11 percent, he lost 58 to 42. That still amounts to a landslide win for Mayor Bing.
Now the mayor is in amazingly strong shape. He really did win a mandate for change, and intends to use it. Here's hoping the next statewide leaders we elect are willing to do precisely the same.
I will read time to time that...
Posted by: Imran Khan | November 20, 2009 at 02:39 AM