If the Republican Party has an ounce of sense 2021 will be the year they start taking back the cities. It is a year for local elections - cities, boroughs, townships and counties. It is an opportunity for the Republican Party to start fielding credible candidates who run on a common theme - law and order.
Many cities across America are seeing elevated levels of crime, record numbers of murders. And that's before factoring in the rioting, looting, burning and generally obnoxious behavior by the Antifa and Black Lives Matter types. At the same time this has been going on, Democrat officials have endorsed defunding police Departments and Democrat District Attorneys have refused to prosecute individuals for looting and rioting.
The coronavirus pandemic, and resulting lockdowns and restrictions, has been masking the economic damage this has caused to cities - the loss of businesses and jobs, along with people moving out of the cities to safer environs, resulting in a significant loss of tax revenue.
The majority of the people and businesses who have not left the cities don't want to live in fear, never sure when they might get shot or find their property looted and burned. They want safety for themselves, their families and friends. They want jobs, good safe schools, and to have available shops and businesses to meet their needs.
Now is the time for Republicans to put together solid slates of candidates in every city. Candidates who believe in bringing back law and order and safety for all residents and businesses in the city and restore their city environs as a place where people want to live and work and visit. Temper that message with promises to adopt reforms to police practices and make available staff with social work skills to supplement police for certain types of situations. There can be other messages that surround that central theme like promoting low cost housing and encouraging businesses to start or return, creating jobs and tax revenue.
Good candidates, people from the communities who truly care, could resonate with other citizens looking to restore their cities to being safe and prosperous.
Democrat city officials who have endorsed defunding police will have to defend those positions and explain to voters why they are safer with fewer police and not prosecuting rioters and looters. Or Democrats will have to abandon those positions and try to adopt the same position as Republicans, which will erode their national base.
Being realistic, one should not expect Cities to magically elect entire slates of Republican candidates and turn Republican overnight. But every position the Republicans don't challenge with a quality candidate is an opportunity lost.
There are two reasons I am making this call, one mercenary and one humanitarian.
The mercenary reason is simple. In the Presidential election the majority of the questionable behavior with ballots occurred in Cities. Republicans not being allowed to watch the counting of ballots, people being tossed out of the room, suitcases pulled from under tables, trucks outside the building with boxes of ballots being passed inside, and more. All of those took place in cities. That won't stop until Republicans have a bigger voice in those local governments.
The humanitarian reason is that cities have become mini-versions of the Hunger Games. There are rich well off sectors and a lot of sectors where people struggle to live. A small group of people living in million dollar condos while too many people are living either without a roof over their head or a roof that leaks. Students whose parents are not rich are stuck in schools that fail to educate. It's tragic the number of kids whose only quality meal of the day is the free lunch they get at school. Far too many killings occur, some gang related, some people just being killed by random shots. Businesses boarding up their windows and doors, shutting down before they are looted and burned.
The people living in these cities are Americans. And no American should have to live like this. You can believe in people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making a better life but living in conditions like what I describe gives people little opportunity to pull themselves up, to rise above. City governments and elected officials, predominantly Democrats, are failing their people. It's time the Republican Party stop rolling over and conceding the cities to the Democrats and instead provide a real alternative for the people of our cities, an alternative that offers hope for a better future.
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