Haslam needs urban middle-class progressives
by Matt Edens
Haslam in 2003, Bush in 2000. The comparisons were obvious, perhaps inevitable: a family fortune made in oil, a well-known family name and prodigious prowess as a fundraiser. They even each had a baseball team in common. At times it seemed that Haslam courted the comparison. During the debate televised on Channel 10 he borrowed a line from the 2000 campaign and referred to himself as a "uniter, not a divider."
Then, on election night, came one last parallel. Not, thankfully, a Florida hanging chad fiasco. It was clearly a win even if, with six percentage points separating Haslam and Madeline Rogero, it was tighter than some pundits among the old guard expected.
What I'm talking about was the map, which the News Sentinel ran the next day, of the precincts each candidate carried. There, in a solid block centered on downtown, were the precincts Rogero won. And, surrounding them like suburbs—which is precisely what most of them are—were the precincts Haslam won. It was strikingly similar to the map of the 2000 electoral results. The Democrats carried the central "heartland" and the Republicans the surrounding "coasts" (yes, I know, city elections are non-partisan, but we all know which party each candidate was closely identified with).
Most precincts were actually quite close—a few points in either direction. A handful weren't. Haslam's largest percentage victory was Deane Hill (by 42 percent). Rogero's was Fort Sanders (by 55 percent). Neither was really much of a surprise. But Haslam losing Bearden Elementary by 18 percent startled some supporters. And the Rogero camp was surely pleased to lose such supposedly blue-blood bastions as Sequoyah and Holston Hills by something less than a blow out. And they certainly enjoyed clobbering Haslam in Old North and Fourth and Gill more than two to one. Taken together these facts reflect the same demographic trend that produced the sharp divide in 2000—a liberal middle class that is becoming more and more concentrated in older urban centers and the upscale inner suburbs that surround them.
It's a trend that George W. Bush and Karl Rove can pay heed to as they court the growing number of voters in the suburban sunbelt states. But Knoxville's equivalent of the sunbelt is outside the city limits. So if Haslam hopes for a second term it would be foolish to ignore the implications. Four years is plenty of time for hundreds of voters to cross over the city limits, particularly since conservative voters are also more likely to respond to tax and school zone pressures, vote with their feet and head for the county. Or, in the case of elderly voters, just plain "cross over" in the euphemistic sense. In either scenario chances are the folks who replace them will be more liberal in their outlook—perhaps even more so in affluent areas where voter turnout is high. The trend could come back to haunt the mayor-elect in key precincts like Gresham Middle in Fountain City (which he won by a razor-thin 11 votes).
Now a traditional politician would see that election night map as a blueprint for payback (care to wager if Fourth and Gill voting for Randy Tyree in 1999 has anything to do with why the neighborhood's currently battling TDOT without Mayor Ashe in their corner?). But Haslam can't afford such self-indulgence. For, not only is the demographic trend that contributed to the close race bound to continue, it's in the city's best interest that it do so.
The reason, as Haslam himself bluntly stated at that same Channel 10 debate, is simple: after sinking $160 million into the convention center, the city's ability to tackle more big budget capital projects will be limited. Yet it's important that the city continue to pursue downtown and center city redevelopment if that $160 million investment is going to pay off.
So, by default almost, the city's redevelopment efforts must get leaner, more cost-effective and more dependent on private dollars. Haslam's business connections and track-record as a non-profit fundraiser give him a leg up, but perhaps not enough to climb out of the city's budgetary hole. Which makes coming to terms with the urban middle-class progressive folks who made up a big block of Rogero's support crucial. Not only are they bound to remain the city's key source for new middle and upper-income homeowners, but they also represent a small, but growing, source of in-house investment potential that the city has yet to capitalize on in any significant fashion.
As the map proved, the gulf between Haslam and the urban progressives is real. But it's not unbridgeable. Haslam made center-city redevelopment and reinvestment one of the primary themes of his campaign. His supporters obviously didn't reject the idea and neither could his opponents, since it's a drum most of them have been banging for years. Instead, when confronted with Haslam's strong support for center city redevelopment, most of the center-city progressive folks I know (and I know lots of them) answered with the same refrain: "he's just saying that."
Prove them wrong, Bill, and you'll go a long way towards truly uniting this city.
November 6, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 45
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
