Feature: The Problems of the Post-Racial Politician Operating in an Economic Downturn and Facing an Electorate Still Largely Segregated Along Lines of Class and Skin Color

Outside of City Hall, though, away from the lectern, Nutter can seem like a different man. He can be warm and relaxed, as at Oliver’s party in East Oak Lane. In that mode, he is undeniably capable of connecting with Philadelphians, including, yes, many 
African-Americans.

One day in November, for instance, when he was looking at the site of a future low-income housing development in Nice-
town, some neighborhood kids shyly approached him. One of the younger boys was wearing a football uniform, so the Mayor — edging away from the security detail and throng of dignitaries he was with — asked if he had a ball to toss around.

Soon he was playing catch with the kids in an abandoned lot. A few parents watched from their front porches, and with campaign season approaching, Nutter went around and shook their hands. One woman told him she was tired, so tired, of looking after all the kids and trying to hold the neighborhood together. He sat down next to her in a white plastic chair, and she collapsed into his arms. Her health was terrible, she told him, it was the lupus. Nutter told her to hold on, that it would be okay.

But can Nutter’s underrated ability to connect with black voters one-on-one overcome the policy leanings of his administration? On November 4th, the American Civil Liberties Union and famed local civil rights attorney David Rudovsky sued over the Mayor’s stop-and-frisk policing policy. According to the suit, Philadelphia police made 253,333 pedestrian stops in 2009, and more than 72 percent of the people stopped were African-American.

State Rep. Jewell Williams was one of them. He was driving home in his black Chrysler 300 after picking up some suits at the dry cleaner. The police had pulled over another car ahead of him, Williams says, and were patting down the occupants, a pair of 65-year-old black men. The police had taken some cash out of one man’s pockets during the pat-down and placed it on the car, and the wind began blowing it away. When some passersby started grabbing for the bills, Williams got out of his car and told the opportunists — his constituents — to “get away from that man’s money.”

Williams, who is one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU suit, says a cop barked at him to “get back in your fucking car.” When Williams asked to speak to the officer’s supervisor, he was cuffed and — he claims — roughly shoved inside the police car.
“I’m a guy who supports the Mayor, who supports the police, and I still get my ass kicked,” says Williams, himself a former Temple University cop. “Now, think about that. I still get rousted up. I like the Mayor a lot. He has a tough job. But he has to deal with this.”