A mayor’s power is often seen, even when compared to a governor’s or prime minister’s/president’s power, as having the highest potential of actually being appreciated, as the latter positions come with having a bunch of invisible pieces and filters to tend to, even supposing you decided to be dictatorial about things. Despite this, or maybe in spite of this, whenever I see very loved and communal individuals, they see it as above their area of motivation to run for local office. There isn’t a single city, town, or village I’ve been to where the mayor’s level of connection to the people around them isn’t overshadowed by that of at least some of the citizens, in fact I see the mayor, district attorney, sheriff, town judge, etc. in my own area as being visibly condescending blowhards who are bedfellows with the local activists who are known to have no issue ruining childrens’ lives the Ally Bank way. Even to you I’d recommend running for some form of town office, though with you too, I doubt the challenge would be stepped up to. You could make a difference in your own little fragment of the world.
So considering most people I talk to wouldn’t take up the suggestion to run for something like mayor, district attorney, sheriff, town judge, etc. what is your local government scene like? And are you different from those who won’t step up to the challenge?
Our mayor is a lesbian who was chief of police. Conservative Democrat. We seem to flip between democrats, who improve the storm drains and try to do things to help citizens, then Republicans who are focused on superficial beautification of the city and paying businesses to come here. All have historically been in bed with developers and there hadn’t been much planning. It works ok.
Some of the “city” functions are run by the county not the city - education, transit, health. The county is much more backwards and conservative than the city. Those things are in much worse shape.
Historically you don’t hear a lot about Baltimore’s mayor unless they’ve done something really awful. In the early 2000s we had some riots that broke out from police brutality (Freddy Grey), The mayor at the time said some very non-choice words and ended up becoming very unpopular very quickly. She was followed up by a mayor that was taking bribes, she was found complicit in businesses having to order a large quantities of her book to receive preferential treatment, ended up with a 3-year prison term. She was followed up by somebody who was okay but short-lived, The current guy that’s in there is relatively young, he just turned 40. He’s good for the city and he doesn’t tend to make controversial decisions, as long as you’re a Democrat I suppose.
We don’t have a mayor, we have a first selectman. She’s a woman but still calls herself first selectman. I can’t decide of that’s anti-feminist or feminist AF, it is her choice after all
Our local Mayor is a millennial. Everyone on the city council is boomer or older. The boomers are children playing highschool politics with obvious smear campaigns, audience plants, and are clamoring about “disrespect” that the mayor showed when forced by the media to make a statement about the councilman doing something so egregious in a meeting it made national news.
I feel bad for the Mayor and hate those city council fucks. But I live outside the city boundary so even though we’re affected by their policies we can’t vote or anything.
It’s horribly shameful.
Our current mayor complained bitterly because voters expected him to be at his office during a flooding emergency that affected swathes of the city, even though he had a tennis match scheduled. Pretty sure he’s not getting a second term.
The funny thing is he might be the one in the right, if we examine with logic.
A mayor probably has no particular skills or abilities to help personally in that sort of situation, and if he was doing his job correctly in the past, then everything in his power to do would already have been done. The appropriate experts are ready. Emergency plans are in place. There’s backup plans, and backup plans for the backups, all carefully considered and planned by the best people the mayor could get to do them in the past.
But humans are weird and have stupid ideas, so we want to see the mayor in his office, giving interviews, or even better, at the site of the disaster, helping. Except the most the average mayor is likely to do in an emergency situation is get in the way and be a distraction.
That’s the sad thing - your city’s mayor may or may not have done a good job, I have no idea, but the average mayor will definitely be attacked if this happens and he doesn’t make a show of ‘helping’.
The mayor’s job is to co-ordinate public information and make press releases during an emergency. He’s an authoritative source. Better for people to get info from him than from rumours and hearsay.
A former ice hockey magnate. Very much a boomer. People either like him or dislike him for his antics.
Currently driving through a change in policy that would disallow closing streets for construction. Which is a good thing because the city has been too lax in this regard.
I live in NYC. As is tradition, no one likes the mayor. Though this one is among the worst in recent history.
Being mayor of a city like this is so far away from my capabilities. I think you need to be kind of sociopathic or narcissistic to believe you can do this job.
Soooooo, about that indictment…
I know! As I commented on a post about that, I’m sure it was done with great care. You don’t criminality indict the sitting mayor of the largest city in the country on federal charges unless you are sure a crime was committed.
I personally don’t understand why the five boroughs (there even being precisely five or six of them, which would make this all the better) don’t adopt a system of governance similar to the five Iroquois tribes which once lived right next door to it. It was quite designed against the possibility of totalitarian rule.
Because that kind of federal system doesn’t work well when you run a city.
It’s not much of a scene, we’ve only got the one.
We have a mayor, some people complain a out her, others don’t. I sat next to her at the airport once. That’s all I know.
Recently arrested for DUI
Our mayor has been a mixed bag. He has been fairly progressive in terms of improving public infrastructure, but has had a poor track record on social issues.
Currently, he is courting a scandal involving a violent altercation at a safe injection site where someone got bludgeoned to death. His response was a rather draconian closing of the facility (he claims it’s only temporary) and essentially telling the homeless in the area to get lost. As you might imagine, this is not going well.
I have no interest in running for any political office, though if I did, the city council would likely be highest on my list. I actually enjoy watching them in session from time to time on the local cable channel, as there is less partisan bickering at the municipal level and, as you say, the decisions they make are more likely to affect your day-to-day life.
I am sort of half-heartedly angling to get on a committee involving the city’s cycling infrastructure, but that’s about the extent of any political ambitions.
What is a mayor?
Good people do not, as a rule, seek personal power for themselves, and a drive to do so is a prerequisite for seeking public office. The result is that the best you can hope for in electoral politics is a psychopath who shares your values, because they are all psychopaths, and most of them don’t see the rest of us as human, much less their equals.
I prefer the council/manager scene myself, although that’s probably less common.
One of the bigger cities in Germany.
We have a mayor for our district, who is basically a blank slate to 95% of people. It doesn’t help that he lives together with his family in a different district. He is a member of one of our political parties and specifically one I don’t particularly like.
For some reason I was in the same school class with his son, who was pretty chill, but got very annoying when it came to politics (of course).
So basically the mayor does a lot of city management stuff but the average person has no clue who he is or what exactly he does.
I would imagine that’s very unique compared to most other countries but I’m not sure.
