A Tale of Two Cities

A number of blogs have called attention to the precinct map of San Jose from the Election for Mayor on November 4th.  That visual presentation reveals a harsh reality better than any lengthy text.

The image shows a city as divided as if a Berlin Wall had been constructed down its center. Almost all of the precincts in the whiter and more affluent West half of the city voted for Sam Licardo. The lower income and more diverse East overwhelmingly backed Dave Cortese.

The blue shading represents votes for Dave Cortese, green is for Sam Liccardo

The blue shading represents votes for Dave Cortese, green is for Sam Liccardo

The divide represents something other than geographic parochialism. Voters in District 7 or in District 9 don’t identify themselves as part of East or West San Jose.  What the image shows is divisions based on race and class.

Several critical comments need to be made about this stark division.

First, it isn’t an old and ancient pattern based on centuries of animosity like the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.  In fact, the deep division is an extraordinarily recent phenomenon. Modern San Jose (post fruit orchards San Jose) had always been a highly diverse city. But it could legitimately pride itself that it combined diversity with a healthy and vital political pluralism. Compared to East Coast cities, San Jose was not highly segregated. It had some mixed income neighborhoods.  Once district elections had passed and grassroots democracy could occur, San Jose showed a decided preference for openness and flexibility and the seeking of common public purposes.

Of course, alliances and coalitions formed. But they also rearranged themselves as groups shifted their preferences in order to pursue broader objectives. When Susan Hammer ran against Frank Fiscalini in 1990, the union movement split between the two candidates. Later, Mayor Hammer appointed Fiscalini to be her Vice-Mayor.  Politics was about setting and achieving goals for all of San Jose, not about defining half the city as an enemy whose hopes and needs were to be overpowered.

How, then, did that collaborative San Jose become transformed into the divided city pictured above?

The answer is in my second comment. The division wasn’t bad luck, nor did it result from impersonal demographic or economic forces.  It was deliberately created, and its architect was Mayor Chuck Reed. Reed made the Machiavellian calculation that it was in his personal, political interest to induce divisiveness in the city.  No matter how painful the Great Recession of 2008 might be, voters would not be blaming him if they were busy blaming each other. Reed can hardly be considered unique in deciding that fomenting discord can lead to political gain. But he brought that approach with intensity to a city unaccustomed to its virulence.

It took work.

Reed had to create scapegoats. Public employee pension plans, battered by the recession, became tempting targets. Because the public liked and respected cops and firefighters and librarians, he had to fearmonger – incessantly, furiously – threatening one phony apocalypse after another.

City government had long been a unifying force in a decentralized, sprawling metropolis. So the city itself had to be delegitimized. Previous city managers had resolutely defended their workforce, knowing San Jose compensated for its low staffing level with personnel of extraordinarily high quality. Reed needed a city manager who would break with that tradition and support the disgracing of city employees en masse. He found one in Debra Figone.

Perhaps the biggest problem was that San Jose’s ethnic constituencies and low income workers, and even their unions and advocacy organizations, didn’t want divisive politics. So Reed determined they had to be pressured relentlessly. They had to be convinced they could never secure a level playing field or a fair compromise from city hall and that their only option was to fight. The minimum wage campaign in 2012 is a striking example of what they confronted. Oakland just passed a $12.25 minimum wage; San Francisco’s will be $15.00 in 4 years. Reed stridently opposed $10.00, knowing full well that no one could survive in San Jose on the then current level, $8.00/hour.  Reluctantly, the city’s working families came to understand the nature of those who opposed their well-being and that a new kind of politics would be needed.

No one creates this level of division by themselves. Reed required allies. He built a city council coalition that would reject the needs of the city, the interests of their constituents, and even their own values and wisdom to follow his lead.  The local print media ran from the truth like it was a neighbor with Ebola.  They defended every falsehood the Mayor promulgated, and if they doubted he would prevail, they manufactured lies by the bucketful on their own. Those business groups that placed their ideological animosity to workers over their interest in prosperity could be counted on too.

Third, this division is damaging, badly damaging. Lincoln’s homespun observation, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” is as true today as it was 150 years ago.  Currently, the groundbreaking analytical work of Dr. Chris Benner and Dr. Manuel Pastore provide compelling evidence that regions are much more likely to prosper if conflicts between constituencies are “attenuated by recognition of a common future” and win-win strategies are pursued.  Large cities with complex economies require collaborative strategies to thrive. Discord is costly, and it blocks moving forward on projects that require broad agreement. In 2012, Santa Clara County passed a general tax increase. The Open Space District just passed a parcel tax with a 2/3’s supermajority. Despite poll numbers indicating large majorities of voters support a badly needed sales tax increase for San Jose, the City’s political infrastructure is paralyzed, unable to reach agreement. Reed’s chickens of divisiveness have come home to roost.

My last comment is by far the most important one.  The politics of discord can and should be fought – and that mode of politics can be defeated.  Before the public had experienced the full effects of Reed’s drive to divisiveness, he gained supermajorities at the polls – 65% or 70%. In this last election, preliminary returns show the campaign proposing ongoing discord winning by a majority of only about 2%. In District 3, the key central city district including downtown, the city council candidate who campaigned most aggressively in defense of Reed’s agenda, failed decisively.

The writing is on the wall.

Increasingly, San Jose residents will demonstrate their rejection of the disturbing map from November, 2014 and of the ugly and selfish politics that created it. They will work to pull down the wall that Chuck Reed has left as his bitter legacy.

 

 

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