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

HISTORY SAYS Nutter has little to worry about, even if a big chunk of black Philadelphia would prefer someone else as mayor. The last incumbent Democratic mayor to lose a reelection bid in Philadelphia was Richard Vaux, in 1858. More recently, Wilson Goode Sr. cruised past Ed Rendell and Frank Rizzo in 1987, just two years after the MOVE bombing, while Street crushed Katz in 2003, only a month after the FBI bug was discovered in Street’s offices. The emergence of a black challenger might threaten Nutter, particularly if that challenger could appeal to white voters as well. But nobody matching that description has publicly voiced an interest in running. And without that candidate, whether they approve of all his policies or not, blacks are likely to rally around Nutter again. Even in this so-called post-racial age, race remains the key factor.

“I do not believe there’s any white person in this city who can successfully challenge Mike Nutter for a second term,” says Goode, allowing a possible exception for Ed Rendell. “Given the demographics, and given the way the party is structured, and given the support that Nutter will get from other African-American leaders and elected officials, I think it’s impossible for a white person to beat him.”

A. Bruce Crawley, a leading black business owner and one of Nutter’s biggest critics, thinks the Mayor- has gotten over an infatuation with his post-racial image just in time. He says Nutter is now paying more attention to African-American advocacy groups, a view seconded by Bishop Audrey Bronson, president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity.

“He’s the devil that we know,” Crawley says. “We may not have been comfortable with him before, but we’re starting to have a sense that Michael Nutter understands what the job is about now.”

I think Crawley is mistaken, though, if he believes Nutter will return to the Street model of deliberately race-conscious governing. About a week after our interview in his office, Nutter had a staffer send me a clip of a Martin Luther King Jr. address. It was a variation on his often-delivered “What is your life’s blueprint?” speech. In part, King said:

“We must set out to do a good job. We must not seek merely to do a good Negro job. If you are setting out merely to be a good Negro doctor, or a good Negro lawyer or a good Negro teacher, or a good Negro preacher, or a good Negro skilled laborer, or a good Negro barber or a good Negro beautician, you have already flunked your matriculation exam for entrance into the university of integration.”