Milwaukee Mayor Wrap

I have to get a few last posts online today before I take off and leave this blog in the very capable hands of frequent commenter here and The Post Game co-host Jeff. First, some final perspective on this whole mayor thing.

I started this series, if you will, on the mayor's race last December with talk about Milwaukee County Sherriff David Clarke, who was also in the primary for mayor. He, like finalist Marvin Pratt, is a relatively popular (with a certain Republican-leaning crowd--Pratt's base is Democratic) African American office-holder. But his campaign, which had national Republican money behind it, fell apart when it turned out he just barely got the necessary signatures to get on the ballot, especially after having bragged about more than tripling the minimum number. The media and other candidates had a field day with it. In retrospect, I think it may have meant something more than I thought at the time. But I'll come back to that.

In the end, Pratt and Tom Barrett--who won Tuesday--were the two to survive the primary. The trouble was that Pratt and Barrett were running the same campaign: There was little substantive difference on the issues. Reading about their ideas, visions, and proposals, you couldn't tell which candidate you were reading about without looking for a name. They were really different in only one way: Barrett is white; Pratt is black.

Then Pratt's campaign started coming apart, too: The DA filed civil charges related to campaign bookkeeping, Pratt knowingly broke the law by campaigning at a polling place on primary day, and, it turned out, he was delinquent on his water bill. Again, the media had a field day. Barrett was no better, taking advantage of the lapses--and implicitly tying Pratt to recent City Hall scandals, including three aldermen under federal indictment for corruption--to make a final push in a race that just ten days before the election was a dead heat.

In an race where your opponent may as well be you, those stupid, petty, and inconsequential things get magnified, because they are the only things up for debate, I figure.

But Pratt and his supporters have a good idea what really happened:

Sheila Payton, a local black businesswoman, talked about her disappointment with what she called the negativity of Barrett's campaign.

She first planned to vote for Barrett because of his background in Washington, D.C., which Payton thought could be an advantage for a new mayor.

Then, things got ugly.

"I was disappointed with the negative tone of Barrett's campaign," she said. "This is already a racially divided city. I think the tone of Barrett's campaign made things even more divided."

The night after the election, I was talking to an African American friend of mine who provided a perspective none of my other black friends had yet pointed out, perhaps because she is an active political maven. "It's so racist. It's another example of 'You can't trust that black man with your money,'" she said. And while I firmly believe that had it been Barrett who didn't pay his water bill, I would have endorsed Pratt, she said, "If Barrett didn't pay his water bill, it wouldn't make the papers." And she's probably right.

Pratt himself has not held back any criticism, making kind of the same point: "Pratt lashed out at Barrett, the news media and District Attorney E. Michael McCann, among others. [. . .] Pratt also accused the news media of racial bias in its coverage of the contest, though he didn't cite any specific evidence. He has previously said heavy coverage of his missteps was unfair. "

In the end, the city did prove pretty divided: "Pratt became a standard bearer for pride of black voters and played to that with his "It's time" campaign theme. Voting divided strongly on racial lines, with Pratt getting some 92% of the black vote and Barrett winning 83% of the white vote, according to an exit poll done for WTMJ-TV (Channel 4)."

But more interesting to note is this nugget from the bottom of that story on the exit polling data: "Clarke voters overwhelmingly went to Barrett, according to the WTMJ exit poll." Remember Clarke? He's the other high-profile African American whose campaign fell apart and was jumped on by the media (and, I admit, your humble folkbum). Reading that tidbit about Clarke made me realize that Clarke may very well have fallen prey to that same "You can't trust a black man" mentality. I mean, there were plenty of reasons not to vote for Clarke--his latent Republicanism in this non-partisan election being chief among them--but the reason I bashed him, along with much of the media, is that he couldn't be trusted.

Now, was that because Clarke was black? I'd like to think not. In the same way, I feel that my endorsing Barrett had nothing to do with race. (My endorsed candidate in the primary, Leon Todd, was African American. He also finished dead last of ten.) But it may very well be true that had Pratt not been black--or had Barrett not been white--the DA, the media, and Pratt's rivals would have made no bones about his finances in the first place.

Anyway, there will be some self-reflection on the beach next week by your humble folkbum. And, I hope, by the city. But not on my beach.