The Democratic Party’s “Governance” Problem
Republicans loudly complain about problems in their neighbor's front yard, while not doing anything about problems in their own yard. Great as a campaigning strategy, not so much for governance.
Source: gettyimages.com
I thought I was done with my own 2024 election introspection, but I’m not.
There were plenty of reasons why Donald Trump was able to post his best electoral showing in 2024. Immigration policy, inflation, and just general economic insecurity despite what Wall Street and the unemployment rate say.
A case could be made, however, that Trump and the GOP made gains by making people forget all about the dysfunction of his first term, including his ineffective COVID response and brazen attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election results. Instead, he dug in with his supporters and amped up the culture war debate, with his “Kamala is for they/them, and President Trump is for you” rhetoric.
Another part of that is the case Republicans made against the Democratic Party’s governing abilities. Republicans noted the instances of corruption. They exploited the high rates of crime, both violent and property-related, in blue cities and states. They called out blue city and state dysfunction. It worked, and there is some validity to their case.
At the large city level, government dysfunction is real. New York mayor Eric Adams is facing five counts of federal charges related to fraud, bribery and the solicitation of foreign donations. Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass is facing scrutiny for her inability to solve the city’s housing affordability and homelessness crises. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has been catching it from multiple fronts; his handling of the city’s budget, the Chicago Public Schools, and the city’s high (but not highest) violent crime rate has resulted in low approval ratings and an uncertain mayoral future.
And that’s just the three largest cities in the nation. St. Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit are among the most-vilified cities nationally for their violent crime rates.
The common GOP complaint about Democratic city governance is that the Democrats are too soft on crime, and more interested in appealing to identity politics issues. They fault Democrats for decades of urban leadership, with few positive results. Democrats usually counter by saying the complexity of the challenges is huge and can’t be reduced to just “toughness” measures.
Maybe there’s another effective counterargument from Democrats, one I’ve rarely heard. It goes like this: “stop using urban issues as a point-scoring campaign tactic, and put some skin in the game. Stop behaving as if the problems aren’t at your doorstep as well, and do something about it.”
Republicans have successfully buried the challenges that exist in blue cities located in red states. In an effort to appeal to the suburban and rural voters in their base, they’ve mentally divorced themselves from urban issues. Democrats have not.
I found a chart at usafacts.org that illustrates this fact. The analysis they did examined 60 urban counties nationwide that host large core cities, and noted the number of homicides by county in 2022. Some reference points, from the website:
“There were 24,849 homicides in the US in 2022 — an average of about 7.5 deaths per 100,000 people. Homicide rates are highest in counties home to large cities, where there are an average of 10.5 per 100,000.
Rates are lower in medium-sized urban counties (7.4), small metropolitan counties (6.4), and suburban counties (5.1). Rural counties also have lower-than-average homicide rates.” (Note: no definitions were given for county size categories in the article.)
See below for the table that shows the counties, the core cities, the number of homicides in 2022. The counties are ranked by their homicide rate per 100,000 county residents:
Orleans Parish, the county home of New Orleans, topped the list in 202. It was followed by St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia (all of which are independent cities or coterminous city/county, not part of any other county) and Memphis. Detroit’s Wayne County and Chicago’s Cook County, both of which are mentioned prominently in out-of-control crime discussions, ranked 12th and 17th, respectively.
Two things of note in the table. The top 26 counties, in bold and separated from those below the bolded line, are counties with above average homicide rates – that is, those that are above the 10.5 homicides per 100,000 county residents that usafacts.org cites as the average for urban counties with large cities. You’ll also note the counties highlighted in red. Those are counties in states that have been under some level of Republican control, whether at the executive, Senate or House levels, since at least 2020. You’ll notice that 15 of the 26 above average homicide rate counties are located in Republican-led states.
It’s apparent that Republican-led states have cities that suffer from high violent crime rates, but they view it as a local problem, and state governments are not offering to help.
Three cities on the list stick out to me, for their lack of inclusion in violent crime discussions. Atlanta’s Fulton County, with more than one million residents, sits at the heart of a vibrant and dynamic metro area with more than six million people. Nashville’s Davidson County, coterminous with the city, constitutes a third of metropolitan Nashville’s 2.1 million people. Similarly, Indianapolis’ Marion County is also (nearly) coterminous with Indianapolis, and makes up almost half of the region’s population. Each city has been noted for leading the strong development trajectory of their respective metro areas. All are state capitals; surely state legislators who convene regularly for sessions are aware of each city’s issues. Yet each had above average homicide rates in 2022, with two counties – Marion and Fulton – exceeding the rate in Chicago’s Cook County.
It’s not solely a big city problem, either. See this excerpt from the article:
“Some less-populated urban counties also have higher-than-average homicide rates, particularly in the Southeast. Among the medium-sized metropolitan counties, the highest homicide rates were:
· 56.0 per 100,000 in Hinds County, Mississippi (home to Jackson)
· 34.0 in Montgomery County, Alabama (home to Montgomery)
· 26.2 in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana (home to Baton Rouge)
· 25.3 in Pulaski County, Arkansas (home to Little Rock)
· 23.6 in Caddo Parish, Louisiana (home to Shreveport)
· 20.3 in Richmond County, Georgia (home to Augusta)”
Jackson, Montgomery, Baton Rouge and Little Rock are also state capitals. All of the cities listed above had homicide rates higher than Cook County’s 18.2 in 2022.
It’s reasonable to talk about the problems that exist in many cities. However, Republicans can’t absolve themselves from crime in “Democrat-run” cities when many of those cities are in states long run by Republican governments.
Hi Pete: A better argument is in California. Looking at the 11 largest cities (four of which Fresno, Anaheim, Bakersfield, and Stockton aren't on the list), the only cities with Republican mayors (Bakersfield, Fresno, and Stockton) have by far the highest murder rates (10.2, 11, and 15 per 100,000 residents, respectively). These are also the cities with some of the greatest poverty and quality of life challenges in the state. The cities run by democrats, not only all have lower murder rates, but some have among the lowest rates for major cities in the US.
I was thinking about this issue in another way last week, but thinking about the governance in small towns, which tend overwhelmingly to be run by Republican mayors. The conditions in some of the towns I work with is shocking. In one - literally every building on its historic main street business block has been either demolished or in some state of collapse.
But I don't blame these mayors either as most of the problems they experience, as is true for the major Democrat led cities, generally aren't attributable to factors in their control (i.e., deindustrialization, opioid epidemic, etc.).
While I agree there may be a governance problem in many of the elite coastal progressive cities related to homelessness, general law enforcement and housing, I don’t know that I’ve seen any serious or effective conservative solutions to any major urban challenge with the possible exception of public schools and the charter school movement. I could wrong. If you or other readers have examples please share.
My sense is that the “conservative” movement of today is about scoring points and gaining or maintaining power vs any serious urban policy initiatives or desire to solve urban challenges problems. I can think of 5 or 6 examples of policies or programs implemented in the city of Milwaukee that are likely among the top 5 of any urban area in the US (green storm water infrastructure, municipal brownfields redevelopment program, use of BIDs, wastewater treatment, drinking water supply, urban river restoration, etc). But you will probably never see these (or innovative solutions to dozens of other urban challenges by other cities) acknowledged in conservative circles.
The narratives regarding schools and crime make an interesting example. I have the perspective of having helped try to launch two charter schools in Milwaukee but also being married to a public school teacher with a class of 34 underprivileged 2nd graders without an assistant and a third of whom have some type of learning or other disability. She (and many of her coworkers) are American hero’s in my opinion but former Governor Walker had not problem demonizing her and other public school teachers, eliminating their union, resulting in most (at least in Milwaukee) receiving essentially no wage increases for about a 7 year period. Imagine if all of the problems and failures of crime in urban areas was blamed on police officers and police unions, their unions were outlawed, and they received no pay raises for 7 years. While there is some blame they should share (as is true for some teachers and teacher unions as well) those politicizing these urban challenges aren’t likely to offer any useful solutions.