John Brummett: Where Have All The Liberals Gone?

Editor’s note: The author of this article, John Brummett, is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The article first appeared in the latest magazine edition of Talk Business & Politics.

A few days after the completion of the Republican revolution in Arkansas – this would have been sometime last November – one of Little Rock’s most active and insightful progressive Democrats, political science professor Jay Barth, announced to no one in particular what he was going to do.

He said he was going to work on making Little Rock the most progressive city possible.

Implicit was the admission that the state as a whole was lost for now for progressive Democrats, also known, of course, as liberals.

Barth’s was an interesting assertion, managing to blend resignation and hope and tactical thinking.

Sometime after that, one of the few remaining center-left members of the Arkansas Legislature, second-term Democratic state Rep. Warwick Sabin of midtown Little Rock, got asked about his political future by a local newspaper columnist.

Sabin said he enjoyed legislative service, even in the minority, and, unlike others, had not given up on the Democrats’ competitiveness statewide. But he said there was, in fact, a non-legislative political office that interested him.

It was mayor of Little Rock, next open in 2018.

In fact, Sabin said he had given no serious thought to the looming state Senate opening in his neighborhood with the decision of David Johnson not to run again in 2016. You see, he couldn’t take a four-term state Senate term in ’16 and run for mayor in ’18.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES

Even with Little Rock’s unique and odd hybrid government structure that features both a full-time elected mayor and a full-time city manager, the mayor’s office could provide the liberal or the progressive, or the mere moderate Democrat, with political and policy opportunities not nearly as accessible in a Republican-overrun General Assembly.

City elections are nonpartisan, of course. But that doesn’t mean they are non-philosophical. That a candidate runs without a “D” beside the name doesn’t mean he isn’t a “D” or prone that way. The same goes for the “R.” We’re kidding ourselves to say local public office is civic and not political.

As Sabin saw it, a Little Rock mayor could lead by leaving the administrative role to the co-existing city manager and working full time to maintain high visibility, set a progressive agenda, engage the community, reach out to neglected neighborhoods, encourage downtown and technological development, protect the environment and look for innovative localized ideas for a fairer tax structure and addressing crime and incarceration issues.

‘SAD STATEMENT’

Any implied criticism of the current mayor, Mark Stodola, who could always run again, is unintended or at least unfortunate. Times and circumstances and landscapes change.

It is a “sad statement,” Sabin said, that state legislative service is generally considered superior to the job of leading the state’s largest and capital city. It speaks to our “diminishment” of a job that should be valued more highly, he said.

(Perhaps it also speaks to the absence of true home rule, or local control, in Arkansas, where city and county governments exercise only the authority expressly delegated by state government. We’re full of irony in Arkansas. We say we support local control, but we don’t. We say we oppose centralized government, but we don’t.)

Mayor is a bona fide major office in a national context, held currently by such prominent, high-octane political forces as Rahm Emanuel in Chicago and Mitch Landrieu in New Orleans.

An op-ed article in a recent Sunday New York Times explained that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the socialist Democrat firing up liberals in his surely quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, got his start as a credible political player by getting elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., and performing well.

The op-ed article pointed out that the civil rights movement had been accelerated by leading African-American politicians who got elected mayors of major American cities – Andrew Young, Maynard Jackson, Harold Washington and Tom Bradley.

With Vermont and perhaps a few other curious places excepted – Eureka Springs, for example – modern-day America is conservative and Republican in rural areas and liberal, or at least Democratic, in urban centers and university towns.

James Carville once said Pennsylvania was Philadelphia and Pittsburgh surrounded by Alabama.

STATE NOW TYPICAL

So Arkansas is now wholly typical. Its rural expanse is Republican. For concentrations of liberal and Democratic thought and action, it has one of each, meaning urbanized Little Rock and university-town Fayetteville.

You could say that Arkansas is Little Rock and Fayetteville surrounded by Oklahoma.

So Barth was on to something with his musing about emphasizing Little Rock. And Sabin was on to something with his consideration of the mayor’s office, so much so that Kathy Webb – the social activist who, while openly lesbian, rose to the co-chairmanship of the Joint Budget Committee in three successful terms as a state representative, and who now sits on the Little Rock City Board of Directors – also is giving thought to that race.

Sabin and Webb have shared Starbucks coffee to talk about how it probably wouldn’t work for both of them to run, since they are like-minded friends coming from the same part of town and sharing some of the same key constituencies.

Webb said in an interview that she was struck by this fact: Upon learning a few weeks ago that David Johnson would not seek re-election, it took her only a matter of minutes to realize that, while she had loved her service in the Legislature, she was not nearly as interested in seeking Johnson’s vacated Senate position as in pursuing political and policy objectives in the context of municipal politics and activism based in Little Rock.

She accepts, she said, that the state, generally speaking, belongs to the Republicans for a while. But she said progressive aims can still be achieved on a local level and spring from there.

So let’s go back to Jay Barth, at lunch in July at Community Bakery in downtown Little Rock, one of the few places in town, he pointed out, where blacks and whites hang out together.

DIFFERENT PATH IN FAYETTEVILLE

Speaking this time as less the activist and more the analyst, Barth explained that Fayetteville had a more direct route than Little Rock to being this kind of progressive Democratic refuge. Little Rock’s problem, he said, is the same malignancy that has plagued it forever – the racial divide in a city now about 48 percent white and 42 percent black.

Fayetteville is 82 percent white, which means only that it doesn’t confront the kind of racial chasm stifling Little Rock. Fayetteville’s progressive coalition can form – and in fact has long existed – without the natural and lingering distrust of polarized and nearly equally divided communities of black and white.

In Little Rock, Barth said, a politically victorious progressive coalition must merge the interests of the historically poor, neglected and resentful inner-city African-American neighborhoods with those of white progressives. Many of those white progressives are young professionals who advocate revitalization of downtown areas (like the River Market and South Main), high-tech development, historic preservation and eco-friendly lifestyle advancements, like bike lanes.

That is not an easy or natural coalition, which gets demonstrated nearly every time the Little Rock Board of Directors meets and Erma Hendrix, the representative of east Little Rock in Ward 1, espouses a politics of black resentment. It’s a style of politics for which she has plenty of substantive justification, thus one to which she seems thoroughly entitled. Younger black leaders less resentful themselves, at least by style, tend to defer to her out of personal and generational respect.

KEY ELEMENT

Barth himself got a vivid lesson in the unnatural coalition when he sought a state Senate position from a downtown district covering black neighborhoods. He lost the Democratic primary in May 2010 to Linda Chesterfield, who is African-American, and who ran a late radio spot happening to mention that Barth was white and gay.

A major element of the progressive Little Rock coalition that Barth, Sabin and Webb talk about is the gay, lesbian and transgender movement, one not naturally or easily allied with the African-American community.

For one thing, many blacks resist the notion that the gay rights movement rivals in moral urgency theirs for civil rights. It’s a point that Webb acknowledges when she says she has experienced job and housing discrimination for being gay, but that, yes, she always had “the privilege of skin color” not available to African-Americans.

And there is a religious element. Black church-goers in the community are about as apt as white church-goers to believe homosexuality is a sin not to be encouraged.

All of that is not exactly like, but in some ways akin to, the tensions that have flared on the national campaign trail for Bernie Sanders. He tends to draw large and enthusiastic crowds of white liberals cheering his message of economic justice. He has been heckled, though, by people saying his color-neutral message of economic justice gives insufficient attention to the distinct and deeper problem of racial injustice.

That brings us to Frank Scott, 31-year-old African-American native of Little Rock who graduated from the University of Memphis and returned to his home and wound up working on Mike Beebe’s gubernatorial staff. He got appointed by Beebe to complete a term ending in 2017 on the powerful state Highway Commission. He also works as an executive with First Security Bank in Little Rock.

COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT

Scott merely stares at you with maybe the slightest grin when you suggest that the best way to bridge this divide is with a black mayoral candidate galvanizing the black community but appealing at the same time to whites with Beebe-trained and bank-flavored establishment credentials. As it happens, Scott will leave the Highway Commission in 2017 and the mayor’s office is next up for election in 2018.

Scott also is an ordained Baptist preacher who believes and preaches that homosexuality is a sin. But he said in a recent interview that, in public life, it is important that everyone communicate and try to work together on policy. And that means the black community must not isolate itself from the gay community, but seek common ground. He said the city can make progress only if we have effective lines of communication between the sinners we all are.

In fact, Scott is among about a dozen young leaders, black and white, who meet irregularly at Barth’s house in the Governor’s Mansion district under the name of “One City.” They try to forge lines of communication and keep them open. Sabin regularly attends. Webb was recently a guest speaker.

Both Sabin and Webb said the prerequisite for any white political leader in Little Rock seeking to forge a coalition with blacks is to attend to that objective genuinely long before announcing for office and finding oneself with a sudden vested interest.

Both pointed to their work in the black community. Both, for example, mentioned a coming project to retrofit a donated Central Arkansas Transit bus as a mobile farmers market offering fresh produce and running regular routes in black neighborhoods mired in a “food desert,” meaning an area without a major supermarket or any grocery source offering much more than processed options.

NEW KIND OF MAYOR

The Arkansas Innovation Hub that Sabin heads is pushing the project and Webb is advocating it through the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance she heads.

So what Sabin and Webb portend is an emerging progressive emphasis in politics and policy in Little Rock. They signal a new kind of mayor who is more visible, engaged and proactive – and perhaps more bold – than the last two supremely nice and competent if understated mayors, Jim Dailey and Stodola.

Scott may portend the same thing, though he is less established politically than Sabin and Webb. He might be more of a consensus figure than a personally bold one. He might combine African-American and business backing in a compromising way more typical of the modern history in Little Rock, where nearly everything has been a business-citizen activist negotiation. Instead of having a mayor or city manager, we have both. Instead of having ward or at-large representation, we have both.

Webb pointed out that many big-city mayors lead governments that have control over the public school systems. She said that we can’t or needn’t do that in Little Rock, but that the city political leadership must become more engaged in championing the public schools.

And Sabin said that a model for the kind of mayoral leadership he envisions is the ongoing performance of Baker Kurrus as the state-appointed superintendent of the Little Rock public schools.

He cited Kurrus’ high community profile and his reaching out successfully to now-supportive teachers, parents, staff and students. He pointed out that Kurrus is winning plaudits even before any actual accomplishments in improved student performance can be quantified.

Sabin thinks Little Rock needs a mayor like that – meaning not necessarily a liberal, which Kurrus isn’t, but a highly engaged and visible leader.

For decades Fayetteville has been something along the order of what Barth, Sabin and Webb imagine for Little Rock.

But it is an entirely different landscape.

An almost all-white university town with vibrant public schools, it is dominated by a different kind of liberal politics and governance, one unburdened by Little Rock’s challenges in race relations and racial justice.

So it spends its time on the kinds of issues white liberals worry about – social justice for gays, lesbians and transgender persons, and quality of life, or what’s called “new urbanism.”

“New urbanism” mainly means eco-friendliness with walking paths, biking lanes, jogging trails and high-density development that takes up less land and uses fewer and hidden parking spaces so that people will walk more, or ride a bicycle, or pile in a car together.

It seeks a return to neighborhoods as they existed before cars.

Fayetteville has ordinances limiting what one can do on the portions of one’s own residential property that bound a stream or extend to a hillside. It has “canopy” policies requiring tree plantings on otherwise barren industrial park land.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN FAYETTEVILLE?

Fayetteville’s challenge seems to be merging the mainstream liberal with the zany one.

But there is this other challenge: Conservatism is creeping in on the western side of town, which just elected a Tea Party type to the city council. And the affluent northeastern section has elected full-throttled conservative Republican Charlie Collins three times to the state House of Representatives.

So here’s what’s happening in Fayetteville right now:

·   By a 6-to-2 vote, the City Council has referred to the voters again a more tightly written ordinance to ban discrimination against gays, and the Chamber of Commerce has endorsed this version after opposing the last one. At this writing, passage was expected.

·   The Fayetteville Planning Commission has voted to relax a parking-space requirement for new commercial development. The premise is that a merchant ought to be allowed to build to street-side and forgo parking space if he believes his enterprise can succeed that way. When the local newspaper editorialized that the grand purpose of such a relaxed policy was to encourage walking and biking to the store instead of taking the car, those of the “new urbanist” persuasion in Fayetteville replied: Why, yes, exactly, that’s the idea – because it creates a better quality of life.

The theory is that, in the new economy, the progressive concept of “new urbanism” can be golden. That’s because job development is now as much about individual talent as brick-and-mortar. Talented people can now live anywhere and do their work remotely through technology. So new jobs will go to a place with 35 miles of trails, which Fayetteville offers, and with street-side shops in neighborhoods suitable for walking and biking. And that’s especially so if the community welcomes cultural diversity with a ban on discrimination on account of sexual orientation or gender identity. Or at least that’s the progressive thinking of Arkansas’ university town/liberal refuge.

To come full circle: Let’s mention again Charlie Collins, the conservative Republican state legislator who champions tax cuts and guns on college campuses.

He said public policy in Fayetteville as a university town – and probably in Little Rock as a capital city – is influenced by non-natives bringing outside ideas. And he says those kinds of people don’t bring liberal ideas exclusively. Not all quality-of-life ideas come from “new urbanists,” he said. They can come from Republicans.

Collins intends to seek re-election to the Legislature in 2016, but, for after that, he declares himself open to whatever opportunities to influence public policy the ever-changing landscape provides.

He mentioned Congress. He also mentioned mayor of Fayetteville.