A black ex-cop*, Eric Adams, won the Dem nomination for mayor of New York City, which apparently isn’t a big enough deal since New York City already had a black mayor, David Dinkins, and so he gets no victim points. But to get there, he won over the New York Times’ choice, Kathryn Garcia, and the AOC choice, Maya Wiley. Both are . . . women.
It was a constant refrain for the two leading female candidates running for mayor of New York City: The city has had 109 mayors, and all of them were men. It was finally time for a woman.
The two candidates, Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley, had experience in government. They had major endorsements from unions, elected officials and newspaper editorial boards. They raised millions of dollars and gained momentum in the final weeks of the campaign.
New York is one of a handful of major cities where voters have yet to elect a woman as mayor, along with Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia.
The NYT subheader reads “Many New Yorkers hoped the glass ceiling would finally be broken.” There was no need to break it. It was never there. Even the wildly progressive Wiley knew the sex card wasn’t going to play.
“We did shatter the glass ceiling,” [Wiley] said. “The glass ceiling that said that women could not be top-tier candidates. The glass ceiling that said women would be discounted. The glass ceiling that said we can’t be seen as leaders, and I think we demonstrated that is not true.”
Both Garcia and Wiley were taken seriously. They got endorsements, money and support. Nobody argued that they couldn’t be mayor because of their sex. The glass ceiling may serve as a useful characterization in other circumstances, but not in New York City. Heck, we elected Ed Koch even though everybody knew he was gay back when being gay was still criminalized, and nobody cared.
So why did Eric Adams win and the two women lose? Because he was the moderate people wanted to elect to be mayor. Garcia and Wiley didn’t lose because they were women or there ever was a glass ceiling. They lost because voters didn’t want to vote for them. That happens, whether man, woman or otherwise.
This is exactly what feminism meant to accomplish, to have women treated the same as men, to have everyone treated as people rather than distinguished by their sex. That happened in New York City, and Garcia and Wiley were treated just like any other person whose policies were rejected in favor of a better candidate. Equality doesn’t mean you get to win, but that you get to make a serious run. They did. They lost. That’s equality.
*Adams was a founder of 100 Blacks In Law Enforcement Who Care, which was a huge deal.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This reminds me of something comedian Chris Rock said years ago. He said when blacks are hired as coaches/ managers and eventually fired and then hired again elsewhere it could be seen as a sign of equal treatment
David Ben Gurion: “We will know Israel has become a normal country when Jewish thieves and Jewish prostitutes conduct their business in Hebrew.” (Ben Gurion did not comment on the language of their defense lawyers.)
PS I thought ‘Koch is gay’ was an Andrew-Cuomo-created slander. As was the claim that the mayor choked on pork in a chinese restaurant. Koch was just a bachelor, and I believe it really was something kosher like bean sprouts, even if nobody has ever choked on bean sprouts before or since.
That was Mario’s whisper campaign (“Vote For Cuomo, Not the Homo”) as I recall, and that’s just what we said about gay guys back then.
Wait . . . you mean voting for someone because of . . . merit or political experience or qualifications is not racist, sexist or misogynous, transphobic or homophobic, or Islamophobic? Huh. Who knew? It’s good to kno – oh, that’s right! These are Democrat voters, not those evil Republicans or, God forbid, Trumpistas, who everyone knows are evil Republican Trumpista Insurrectionists.
jvb
PS: it seems AOC’s political importance is greatly exaggerated because this isn’t the first time her chosen candidates have been rehected by her party.
This “elect a woman” thing is not the panacea it is made out to be. Chicago is the living proof.
Practitioners of identity politics argue that to reform society, we need greater diversity of race and sex, in police, politics and bench. So far, it hasn’t turned out that way at all, proving that we’re all just people.
Boss Tweed.
“ I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”
The Boss would not have cared for primaries. Not at all.
Our modern-day Tweed, the DNC, manages primaries just fine.
Chicago has had two female mayors. Jane Byrne was not a particulary good mayor, but not a really bad one, either. She was just never really a part of Da Machine, and so was mostly ignored, to the extent that she could be. Mayor Lori Lightweight, er Lightfoot appears to be a disaster in the making. Not that there is obviously anyone better on offer. Being female had nothing to do with the performance of either.
Regarding Detroit, the problem here (I reside in Detroit Metro) is that generally the likely female candidates who might emerge from a crowded primary have been, for the past 20 years that I have been observing anyway, loons. (Not that a lot of, or maybe most of,the male primary candidates aren’t llons as well.) There’s something about Detroit politics that seems to attract, and elect, a lot of loons.
In general the power structure usually manages to ‘elect’ at least someone reasonable. Kwame Kilpatrick was a huge disappointment to me and many others. He had the necessary ability. But . . .
Mike Duggan is quite able, if with the taint of having originally come out of the McNamara Machine.
Anyway, for the past 20 years the only names of potential female candidates have uniformly been loons. And that mostly continues to be the case. The one or two qualified females, currently, would almost certainly get elbowed aside by the loons.
What part of this post made you think it was regarding Detroit?
You’re very confused. Equality absolutely does mean you get to win every time.