Goode's Intentions

By Amy Wilentz

After more than a decade of turbulence and decay, Philadelphia was basking in a revival under Mayor Wilson Goode. A year into his first term, Goode had persuaded his city's football team to remain in town, got the city council to go ahead with cable television, and worked wonders with both sides in what had threatened to become a drawn-out transit crisis. As a politician, he received national attention for supporting Walter Mondale over Jesse Jackson in the 1984 Democratic presidential race, and Mondale interviewed him as a prospective vice-presidential candidate. Goode was perceived as perhaps the most promising black politician of the late '80s.

For a time last week, it looked as though Goode's future might be as / devastated as the 6200 block of Osage Avenue. But the mayor showed considerable political dexterity in the days following the fire, taking care to distance himself from on-site decisions while accepting full responsibility for the bombing itself. He made himself available to reporters, met with people from the fire-ravaged neighborhood, and was gracious enough not to blame subordinates. His up-front attitude seemed to pay off. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Goode's standing in public opinion polls was nearly as high as it has ever been. One poll said 71% thought the mayor had done a good or excellent job handling the Move confrontation. Says Goode: "People like a decisive leader. They like the fact that a person stands up and takes responsibility even if things do not turn out the way they were intended. And the fact that he does not try to find scapegoats."

The antipathy toward Move also strengthened the mayor's hand. As Ernest Jones, executive director of the Philadelphia Urban Coalition, said, "Everybody wanted to get Move out of there. Even now, you don't hear people complaining about the lives that were lost."

Goode's popularity, however, rests on a lot more than just a few well-timed press conferences last week and a couple of politically astute statements. Throughout his mayoralty, he has performed a racial balancing act, epitomized by the appointment of a cabinet that is exactly half white and half black. (Goode won the office with 25% of the white vote and more than 98% of the black.) A graduate of the Wharton School, Goode has had an unusually long honeymoon with the business community, as well as with liberals and the press. He did away with Philadelphia's old-fashioned mercantile tax, which in effect imposed a sales tax on city goods no matter where they were sold, and replaced it with a more modern tax on corporate earnings. He helped create the current building boom downtown, where some 6 million sq. ft. of new office space is under construction. Says Ralph Widner, executive director of an association of Philadelphia's chief executive officers: "For the first time in 20 years, there is a warm, close partnership between the business leadership and city hall."

What is unclear is how far the city's goodwill toward Goode will stretch after last week's debacle. "I think people do not believe his handling of the situation demonstrated the kind of sensitivity to their neighborhoods they would have expected," said black Democratic City Councilman John Street. "I think he's going to hurt first and hardest in his own backyard." City Councilwoman-at-Large Agusta Alexander Clark, a Goode ally, is worried. "The brother was Mr. Teflon," she said. "He's been scratched now. The question is, Has he been scratched all the way down to the base metal?" Chuck Stone, veteran black columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, thinks he has: "The short-term rallying round by blacks and the business community will disappear as Goode begins to make mistakes." But Goode does not sound concerned. "I've had a charmed life as mayor because I've learned the arts of compromise and negotiation," he told TIME last week. "I will run again. There's work here that has to be done and that cannot be finished in this term. We have to rebuild the neighborhood."

With reporting by Jack E. White/Philadelphia