While political observers are focused on the outcome of the Nov. 3 gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey for early insights into the 2010 midterms, it's in City Hall where the most ominous trend is emerging. Some incumbent mayors have already lost their races. Others have held on to win--or are likely to win next week--with greatly diminished margins from their previous re-election bids. Either way, local incumbents are bleeding badly after being buffeted by the pressures of high unemployment, low tax revenues and a volatile, impatient electorate.
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Even for mayors who have survived re-election campaigns, the results haven't been pretty. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who beat an incumbent by 18 points to win the seat in 2005, won a second term earlier this year with just 56 percent of the vote despite facing no significant opposition.
In two more elections coming up next month, high-profile mayors are expected to prevail, though by considerably smaller margins than they've been accustomed to winning. Boston's Tom Menino, who barely cracked 50 percent in a September primary election, is drawing support from just 52 percent of likely voters in his bid for a fifth term. New York City's Michael Bloomberg, too, attracted just 52 percent of votes in a recent poll.
In 2005, Menino won by a 35-point landslide while Bloomberg won by close to 20 points.
"People are lashing out, have less patience with the elected officials closest to them," said Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, the longest-serving mayor in city history and a former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. "That kind of angst materializes either in walking away from the system or in deciding that whoever is up for election must have played some role, somehow, in some way, in the international financial crisis."
Abramson, who is running for lieutenant governor of Kentucky in 2011, doesn't have to face the voters this year. But for other mayors, the national environment represents a more immediate threat.