The decline of the party’s influence in urban areas is particularly shocking for how quickly it has developed. Outside of the machine politics of Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, Republicans were regularly competitive in most of America’s major cities until the late sixties. During that decade, cities like Detroit, San Francisco, New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles all had Republican mayors. Beyond the urban core Republicans in all of America’s big cities remained a potent, sometimes unchallenged force in suburban politics until the last few elections. As recently as 2001, half of the country’s ten largest cities were still governed by Republicans (New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Antonio, Phoenix). Even Jersey City had a Republican mayor. Now, not only have we lost all of the top ten, there are only two Republican mayors in the country’s 25 largest cities (Indianapolis and Fort Worth,). The party’s shift during the Sixties away from its Hamiltonian capitalist traditions toward a more rural, southern, Jeffersonian agenda began a slow erosion of Republicans’ urban heft. That situation has become critical in the past two decades as the party’s rhetoric has grown more divisive and its ability to enforce ideological discipline has increased. READ MORE
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:26:32 +0000
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