Today's Daily News also features an op-ed by a "former newspaperman" named Don Harrison who was "deputy editor of the Daily News opinion pages for almost 20 years." In his glowing, almost man-crush-esque, recounting of former mayor Frank Rizzo, Harrison describes Rizzo's time as mayor as "not quite as bad as many of us expected" and cites the disappointment of the 1976 Bicentennial celebration as Rizzo's greatest mistake.
Rizzo can be a study in leadership but we should be careful in giving him this near mythic status. As the generations that knew the former mayor firsthand begin to fade away and Rizzo's performance becomes the subject of history books rather than legend, the dominant thought on his mayoralty may change.
Consider this thread your chance to break down the legacy of Frank Rizzo (since someone decided to an op-ed about him). Since I'm not an historian, I like to play the counterfactual game. So let's also pose the question, what if? What if Bill Green had won the primary in 1971 and served two terms as mayor in the seventies? How might the city be different today?
Thoughts on Rizzo, from those who knew him firsthand and those who only know him from books and newspaper stories, are welcome.
(Oh and for the record, a correction to the op-ed. It says:
Rizzo changed his registration to Republican in order to challenge Goode's second-term candidacy. He lost, but four years later, he launched another effort. Early in the GOP primary campaign, however, he was fatally stricken - still in his 60s.
The newspaperman who wrote this op-ed is probably aware that "16 years ago this week" was well after the GOP primary election, which Rizzo won without the backing of the Republican party machine. This marked the second time Rizzo had won a primary without his party's backing, the first being in 1975 during his re-election campaign. Also, Rizzo was 71 when he died.)
(Edited to add: Apparently this Mike Mallowe from The Evening Bulletin really thought Rizzo was a great man. I guess we know which side he'd come down on. Via Philaldelphia Will Do)
Comments (2)
I lived in this city when Rizzo was police commissioner. It was a scary time and the police were a law unto themselves. It was open season on gays and interracial couples.
Given some of things I personally experienced at that time, I have little patience with Rizzo revisionism.
However, I acknowledge that he evolved. The Rizzo of the 1980’s was not the same person as the Rizzo of the 60’s. He evolved like many others of his generation as the country evolved and racism became much less overt, the society less segregated, with more people having personal contact with co-workers of another race.
Also, Rizzo was above all a politician. African-Americans had become a major political force and he had to retool his image and gets at least a slim slice of the African-American vote. Remember, even George Wallace reinvented himself when he realized that the hard core racist polices of the 60’s were becoming an electoral handicap.
Posted by karen | July 22, 2007 10:28 AM
Rizzo was by far the worst mayor Philly ever had, and to this day the city still has deep wounds because of him. But with that much said, it wasn't all Rizzo's fault. In many ways Rizzo was an innocent, a stooge, most particularly when he became a perfect pawn for Nixon. As such, ironically, he most harmed the people who supported him most, the white, blue collar constituency. As time itself would prove, he wasn't an evil man, quite the contrary. But he was very very naive. And the city suffered terribly as a result of his naivete.
Philadelphia lost all its major manufacturing during the Rizzo years plus its prominance as one of the world's most active seaports. And it completely lost its prominance in the art world, in the realm of medicine, higher education and so forth. And Rizzo's rise marked a major downward turning point for Philadelphia's park systems. But again, as I say, it wasn't all his fault. Rather, Rizzo was used, and his only major flaw, beyond his control, was that he didn't know that he was being used, and how. As a high school dropout he was too dumb to know this.
As for his views on Philadelphia, as cities go, he thought we were invincible. He believed that if any entity felt disgruntled by his political and economic policies, just let them up and go away if they wished to, for entities identical would be quick to take their place, for this was Philadelphia, after all. That was his outlook.
But his theory in this regard could not possibly have been more off base. Entities did up and go -- in droves -- during the Rizzo years. And they were replaced all right, just as Rizzo theorized. But in a way that he appeared to have been totally blind to, by some of the sleaziest, crookedest operations around -- the only thing that would consider setting up shop in Philadelphia by that point.
And all the racial crime Philadelphia is seeing today, that all goes straight back to Rizzo. Prior to Rizzo's coming to power, Dr. Martin Luther King's dream was becoming a reality here in this city, what with the success of Bill Cosby and so on. I know, because as an educated white I was part of that wave, and it was all evolving beautifully when suddenly wham! The city was hit with Rizzo. But this I far more attribute to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy three years before Rizzo came to office, plus the assassination of Dr. King himself. Rizzo was just the consequence when great leaders are downed.
And of course when Rizzo was Philadelphia's mayor it was the worst possible combination -- Rizzo as Philadelphia's mayor and Nixon as America's president. I mean, that's almost as bad as John Street as mayor and George Bush II as president. Particularly when you toss in Ed Rendell as governor. Under that trifecta what else could we all expact but the high murder rate Philadelphia is seeing now? But that's just the calm before the storm. For there's the two big casinos to be coming here next -- which at least everyone is talking about -- and the soon to be introduced nonstop flights between here and China -- that no one is.
Not that Philadelphia hasn't had any relationship with China up until now. We've had one tracing all the way back to the time of Nixon and Rizzo. We all remember the famous Nixon shakes hand with Chairman Mao photo don't we? Mao, the mass-murderer, or, Nixon's kind of guy. And to what Nixon wanted to open the door to, Rizzo served as the perfect dupe. He didn't mean to, he didn't know that was the case, but that was how it played out. All setting the stage many decades ago for what is about to come next. As I say, to this very day, Rizzo's damage lives on.
Posted by Steve W. | July 25, 2007 3:05 AM