Little Rock had two short-term ceremonial black mayors--Charles Bussey and Lottie Shackelford--in the politically anemic city manager system instituted in 1957.
Now the city operates with an adapted but still-anemic hybrid system. The mayor runs citywide, draws a full-time salary and presumably shares authority somehow with the city manager whom we've retained.
Little Rock's ruling establishment has been deathly afraid since the 1950s of conventional politics. Whether that has had to do with dread of black people gaining numbers in the corporate limits ... well, let's be charitable and say that at least some city fathers simply have believed that a business model would be more efficient.
At any rate, Little Rock has resisted a politically empowered mayor. It also has insisted on reserving three city board seats for citywide election rather than ward election, presumably to stifle provincial focus on neighborhoods in favor of broad superficiality.
The aversion to conventional representational politics in Little Rock hasn't done much demonstrable good. The city is stagnant at best. It has done a decent job in recent years improving "areas," such as the River Market, South Main and the old warehouse district east of Interstate 30. White people have more places to go now for expensive pizza and craft beer. But it hasn't done so well improving lives in the neighborhoods where the poor--and mostly black--have been isolated.
Now the mayor's office is becoming more politically defined and muscular, though not by any change in government format. It's happening organically by the strength of three candidates--Frank Scott, Baker Kurrus and Warwick Sabin.
Scott looked me square in the eye a few weeks ago and said he didn't want me emphasizing that he might become Little Rock's first popularly elected black mayor.
He is leery of that narrative. Apparently, offering seminal racial advancement for Little Rock is a potential negative with white voters.
Alas, I cannot oblige Scott's request. I must emphasize, not downplay, that he might be the first popularly elected black mayor. In fact, I celebrate the possibility. If I vote for him, that'll be the tiebreaker.
A millennial-age lawyer asked the other day that I please stop emphasizing Scott's race. She said it insulted him. She said he was more than that, although apparently not enough for her, since she supports Sabin.
I've thought about what she asked. And I dismiss her request.
All the city's problems--crime, schools, stagnant economy, neglected and rundown neighborhoods--arise from race prejudice or race separation or race insensitivity or race misunderstanding or race denial or race oblivion.
A young black mayoral candidate hailing from south of I-630 and offering experience as a banker, preacher, highway commissioner and top aide to Mike Beebe's governorship, and offering a message of unity by which he tactically downplays race ... that's a compelling basis for me to stress the very factor he sees a tactical need to downplay.
Scott might be the most establishment candidate of the three contenders. Banker, highway commissioner, governor's aide, Baptist preacher--you don't get more establishment than that. It's the strength and credibility of his unity message.
Meanwhile, most of Little Rock's white liberals are pondering, or even sniping about, whether to support Sabin or Kurrus. One of that competition's more hilarious subtexts is fighting among local Democratic Party regulars--old Clintonites who resented Sabin's initial challenge to outgoing Mark Stodola and who have rallied behind Kurrus, and, in turn, Sabin supporters who love to tell me things such as that you'll only find Kurrus signs on Republican lawns.
That's manifestly not so. A neighbor's signs on my street endorse Jared Henderson, Clarke Tucker and Kurrus.
When you don't have much left to fight over, as is the case with local Democratic regulars, then the eye-gouging and kicking and scratching can get a little intense.
Many white liberals in Little Rock say they'd love a black mayor but not a Baptist preacher who promises only "tolerance" on gay issues.
Scott got his ears burned one night taking his turn in a liberal salon when he offered gay "tolerance." His listeners didn't want any patronizing tolerance. They wanted an advocate.
Alas, race and sexual orientation don't always mesh easily in the contemporary Democratic Party.
It is the spunky Sabin who offers the most conventional liberalism and the best chance to shake up the tired and insular status quo in City Hall. And that's positively scintillating.
And it's the energetic Kurrus who offers the best chance to blow past the city manager and run the city more expertly and vigorously, which also is scintillating.
Modern electoral politics has become based almost solely on fearing and even despising one of the choices. The confounding thing in this choice for mayor is that there's nothing to fear or despise.
It turns out that positive choices are hard. Or maybe we're just out of practice.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/09/2018