2013: The Year of the Mayor and the Wannabe

It seemed like a good idea at the time. An­thony Wein­er — by this point the New York City may­or­al can­did­ate more likely to wind up on Dan­cing With the Stars than in Gracie Man­sion — began shout­ing “bo! bo! bo!” on a float in the West In­di­an-Amer­ic­an Parade, look­ing like an out-of-place fig­ur­ine atop a Fourth of Ju­ly-themed cake. “Any­body here from Ja­maica-aaa?” he called out in something that could char­it­ably be de­scribed as a weak at­tempt at a Ja­maic­an ac­cent. Then came the dan­cing, a per­fec­ted vari­ety of the trot dads have em­bar­rassed their teen­age daugh­ters with since at least 1993.

“Fuck­ing An­thony Wein­er,” said the man film­ing this par­tic­u­lar time-cap­sule pot­pourri. “Hah.”

2013 was a ter­ribly strange time to be, or want to be, a may­or — es­pe­cially for the politi­cians with the highest pro­files. In a year that saw an of­ten un­be­liev­able parade of glob­al tra­gedies, may­or­al polit­ics fre­quently be­came a col­lect­ive clown show, something to laugh at or be shocked by when everything else seemed just too dark. For the vast ma­jor­ity of the United States, the may­or of Toronto means ab­so­lutely noth­ing. But for the vast ma­jor­ity of 2013’s late fall, Rob Ford held our Amer­ic­an eye­balls cap­tive, say­ing “Hey, wait and see what I do next.”

Ford has been the ul­ti­mate dis­trac­tion. It’s far more fun to watch a bel­li­ger­ent may­or knock down Toronto city coun­cil mem­bers than it is to scroll through pho­tos of the wreck­age in the Phil­ip­pines, or the re­ports of seem­ingly end­less Amer­ic­an mass shoot­ings. It should come as no sur­prise that Ford is now ap­pear­ing weekly on D.C. ra­dio to talk foot­ball. Be­cause, yes, D.C. could use a dis­trac­tion from its miser­able team, too.

Real pain and may­hem lurk be­neath the red-nosed ven­eer. (See Bob Fil­ner, the former San Diego may­or ac­cused of a lit­any of sexu­al har­ass­ment.) And the real­ity of Ford’s sub­stance ab­use isn’t really all that funny. But even the pair­ing of com­edy and tragedy is an en­ter­tain­ment for­mula as old as Shakespeare. Ford’s bum­bling de­cay is like that of a far more stu­pid Fal­staff. Huma Abedin, stand­ing by her hus­band’s side, is a re­mind­er of the very real hu­man cost of someone act­ing like a pub­lic fool. 

But bey­ond the sideshow, 2013 has ac­tu­ally held a very dif­fer­ent story about may­ors. This is the year that they were some of the only politi­cians in Amer­ica who ac­tu­ally got stuff done.

If you haven’t heard, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is a bit of a pro­ductiv­ity hell­s­cape these days. May­ors, says Bruce Katz, a vice pres­id­ent at the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion and coau­thor of The Met­ro­pol­it­an Re­volu­tion, have picked up the slack. May­ors are “the van­guard of policy in­nov­a­tion,” says Katz. He points to Chica­go’s Rahm Emanuel, who re­cently signed a trade agree­ment with Mex­ico City; to Phil­adelphia’s Mi­chael Nut­ter, who has been ramp­ing up trade mis­sions of his own; to San Ant­o­nio’s Ju­li­an Castro, who’s worked to ex­pand ac­cess to pre-K; to Louis­ville’s Greg Fisc­her and his bluegrass eco­nom­ic in­vest­ment plan.

The Bob Fil­ners and Rob Fords of the world are the ex­cep­tion to the rule. “This may be the only level of gov­ern­ment that is really step­ping up right now,” Katz says. And this is a trend that should con­tin­ue, in­clud­ing from the very power-perch that An­thony Wein­er failed so spec­tac­u­larly at se­cur­ing. The trans­itions of power from Bloomberg to de Bla­sio, from Men­ino to Walsh, prom­ise to make 2014 a fas­cin­at­ing year for may­ors, too. And this time, as the new crop of urb­an politi­cians looks to ce­ment a polit­ic­al iden­tity, the biggest stor­ies in the me­dia may just match the biggest stor­ies in the cit­ies.

“I am bullish on may­ors,” says Katz. Now it’s just a mat­ter of a few of the loudest of those bulls not crowding out every­one else.