Bob Kerrey has ended speculation that he might run for Mayor of New York City. He won’t enter the race, but he seriously considered it. Imagine that - a former Senator and Presidential candidate fighting crime, answering pot hole questions and shepherding developers through Byzantine corridors in the planning department.
Kerrey is smart and, as a former Navy Seal, no stranger to combat. Yet, he would have found mayoring quite different from the protective groves of academe and the stately manners of the Senate. Mayors are at ground zero in the political process.
Those who would never think of traveling to Washington, D.C. or the state capitol think nothing of coming to city hall and voicing their complaints. People who are contented don't show up. So the mood swirling around a mayor gets contentious -- many a mayor never makes it to the second term.
From the vantage point of high office, issues such as crime and jobs tend to be abstract statistics. Mayors deal with the concrete and the specific. You face a specific dead body on a well traveled street or the vacant lot that will soon become a condo tower or the school down the street where half the kids don't graduate. No theory here. Not much comfort from partisan rhetoric. Just hands-on reality with names and faces. Management at the human scale vs. pontification from on high.
In Oakland this week, we broke ground for a Whole Foods store in downtown, near auto row. It will be Whole Foods' largest store west of Texas and the first new major grocery store in this part of Oakland in decades.
For those who debate war and peace and the privatization of social security, this may seem like small potatoes. But it is a big deal. It is what we deal with in the city. And it is here that democracy, "people power," still flourishes.
Neighbors count and they make their voices heard. Higher up on the political food chain, neighbors get submerged into the demographics of market research and mass propaganda.
Kerrey's not taking the plunge, but there is always Bill Clinton. He would have a ball as mayor.
