Bright City Lights

By Jack E. White

The last revolution in America's city halls began in 1967 with the election of Carl Stokes as Cleveland's first black mayor. In the next two decades, hundreds of black mayors were swept into office by a tide of black pride, white-liberal optimism and the hope for an urban rebirth. As veterans of the civil-rights wars, these pioneering politicians saw themselves as crusaders for racial justice. For many voters, black and white, that was enough. As Jesse Jackson crowed after Harold Washington's 1983 triumph in Chicago, "Our time has come!"

And gone. A generation after Stokes' breakthrough, black mayors are no longer a novelty, and the high hopes that their arrival would usher in a new era of urban revival have long since faded. Hobbled by age, ill health and ! frustration, three of the longest-serving black mayors -- L.A.'s Tom Bradley, Detroit's Coleman Young and Atlanta's Maynard Jackson -- have declined to seek re-election. Several cities where black mayors once reigned -- Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles -- have reverted to white control, and New York City may be about to join them. But the big turnover at city hall cuts across racial and party lines. Even in cities like Atlanta and Detroit, which are so heavily black that no serious white candidate even bothers to run, a new breed of black mayors is emerging. They have more in common with their white contemporaries than with their black predecessors. Call it the nonvision thing.

It amounts to a back-to-basics approach to governing, putting more emphasis on delivering services, fighting crime and balancing the budget than delivering lofty speeches. Unlike earlier mayors who carried the combative style of the civil-rights movement into office, the new breed tends to be hands-on managers and conciliators who served long apprenticeships on city councils and in business. They tend to seek private-sector solutions to long- festering urban woes instead of advocating big programs from Washington. As Minneapolis Mayor Donald Fraser, who is stepping down after four terms, puts it, "pragmatism has pushed ideology out the window."

Nowhere is the new style of urban leadership more apparent than in Cleveland, where Mayor Michael White, 42, is running for a second term. He cut his political teeth as a volunteer in Stokes' historic campaign, but his approach is vastly different. "Our generation traded jeans and large Afros for the use of the halls of power," says White. "We know that standing outside throwing bricks can only go so far."

Since his election in 1989, the self-described "pragmatic idealist" has sought to persuade Clevelanders, from the white economic elite to the poorest blacks, that they have a mutual interest in the city's prosperity. One of the first calls White made after being sworn in was to Richard Pogue, a prominent white lawyer who headed the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. "I know you didn't support me," White told Pogue. "You know you didn't support me. But I'm the only mayor you'll have for four years. You're the only growth association I'll have. So, it's in everybody's interest to work together." The resulting cooperation with Pogue and the rest of Cleveland's blue-chip business community has paid off in a burst of economic development and thousands of jobs.

Even so, some blacks, who make up 40% of the population, derisively call the mayor "White Mike" for spending so much time with business leaders. But White is willing and able to play hardball on behalf of the city's poor. When one of Cleveland's banks sought to merge with another Ohio institution, the city filed an objection to the action after months of negotiations about a development plan. White withdrew his city's opposition only after the bank agreed to invest $100 million in neighborhood development. "I tell the banks that it is right, moral and religious to invest in the neighborhoods of Cleveland," says White. "And then I say, 'If you haven't been to church, are amoral and have no religion, I can guarantee you that by investing in Cleveland, you're going to make a lot of money.' "

A moderate Republican version of that pragmatic approach is being tested in L.A., where newly elected Richard Riordan is trying to run the government in a businesslike manner. As befits the corporate lawyer and entrepreneur he was for 40 years before entering politics, Riordan's first priority has been to get his priorities straight. At the top of the list: putting more cops on the street. Riordan's rationale is that L.A. cannot work out of its economic slump unless it can attract more investment. And that, he says, will be impossible as long as the city is dangerous. Riordan pounds the message home at every opportunity: "We will not turn L.A. around until it is safe for business and safe enough to stop the flight of young families." With police chief Willie Williams, he has devised an ambitious plan that would add 3,600 officers to the 7,600-member force.

Riordan believes the money to finance that change can be found by ruthlessly paring other city departments. As a private-sector problem solver, says Riordan, "I can approach things without an agenda. I can come in and solve problems without having to kiss ass with this interest group or the other." Despite the brusque rhetoric, his administration is as politically correct as any liberal Democrat's. Of his 199 appointments to city commissions, 97 are women, 33 are black, 27 are Latino and 14 are Asian, an almost perfect reflection of L.A.'s demographic breakdown. That reflects the surprising fact that Riordan got 45% of the Latino vote and 15% of the black vote against Democrat Michael Woo, a left-leaning former city council member who ran in former Mayor Bradley's footsteps.

So far the pragmatic approach has been most successful in cities where white voters are in the majority. In two upcoming elections, the strategy is being tried by black candidates in heavily black cities that have long been ruled by legendary urban chieftains: Detroit and Atlanta.

The contest in Detroit is an abrasive referendum on Coleman Young's often combative 20 years ruling a city marked by chronic unemployment and rampant crime. Dennis Archer, a 51-year-old former state supreme-court justice, is trying to put together a biracial coalition on the Michael White model, while Sharon McPhail, a former local prosecutor, is running with Young's endorsement. She has appealed to the sentiments of some of the city's 75% black population by painting Archer as the favorite of suburban whites. Archer's reply is right out of the pragmatist playbook. Says he: "I do have a cooperative relationship with those who live outside the city. Anybody thinking about leading this city needs that kind of relationship."

In contrast, the virtual three-way race to succeed Maynard Jackson has been conducted with almost classic Southern politeness, perhaps because Atlanta is in such bad shape. The city's population has dwindled from 495,000 in 1970 to 394,000, as the middle class of both races fled to the suburbs, leaving behind a large residue of poor people. In addition, preparations for the 1996 Summer Olympics are behind schedule.

Both front runner Bill Campbell, a gregarious city councilman, and his main opponent, former Fulton County commission chairman Michael Lomax, are running as nonideological innovators. Campbell has promised to "rip the system apart and replace it with something that works," in part by shifting more cops to foot and bicycle patrols in high-crime areas and refinancing municipal debts. Lomax, an aloof former English professor, has called for the privatization of such city landmarks as the Omni arena to raise revenue to help finance his civic programs. If elected, he says he'll put up a billboard for Olympic visitors near the airport reading "Welcome to Atlanta -- a real city with real problems and real people working real hard everyday to solve them." That is a description of politics at its best, with or without a vision.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles, Michael Riley/Atlanta and Elizabeth Taylor/Cleveland