We Don't Need a Cool Mayor
Many of the hopes -- and fears -- about Antonio Villaraigosa revolve around the notion that he represents the ascendancy of a new, radical, labor-led Latino alliance. But Villaraigosa's political campaign suggests a very different aspiration. He did not beat James K. Hahn by being further to the left, or by being "ethnic," but by being, for lack of a better word, "cooler" than the dour (some even said dull) man from San Pedro.
In listening to the mayor-elect and his supporters, one hears repeatedly that he will be "active," "exciting," "visionary," a fittingly charismatic representative for what is, after all, the home of Hollywood.
In this respect, Villaraigosa represents the latest trend in big-city mayors: the cool chief executive. The world is now filled with such characters, usually handsome and telegenic, who often seem more like celebrity endorsers for their cities than tough-minded chief executives.
For the most part, the media love these mayors, who, after all, generally share their often stridently secular and multicultural worldview.
In many places, these new chief executives represent cities that peg their future to their coolness.
In Europe, there is the example of Paris Mayor Bertand Delanoe, who sees the City of Light as the capital of cool.
Even more glaringly evident of the new trend is Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin. Like Delanoe, he embraces tourism and cultivated bohemianism as the source of the city's future greatness. The city, with high unemployment and a stagnant economy, sells itself as an adorable waif -- "poor but sexy," as Wowereit describes it.
Hip, cool mayors are also proliferating in North America. Some of the most celebrated of the newest crop are engaging media figures who were elected, like Villaraigosa, more for their style than their substance.
Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick, for instance, was elected in part because he sold himself as "the hip-hop mayor" who would turn the Motor City into the next "cool city." Kilpatrick's recent missteps -- such as having family members use a luxury SUV leased at public expense -- have somewhat tarnished his appeal. The city's continuing descent into the later stages of municipal collapse has not helped. But other "cool" mayors are still getting good reviews, from the media and, in many places, from voters as well. Indeed, several of these -- Denver's John Hickenlooper, Baltimore's Martin O'Malley and San Francisco's Gavin Newsom -- were recently among Time magazine's top U.S. mayors.
