The first session of the 99th Congress was a year of wrenching institutional and political realignment. Facing monstrous structural budget deficits in excess of $200 billion a year. Congress struggled to adjust its distributive urges to the unpleasant realities of a redistributive era. Unlike previous budget crises that were caused by economic events beyond Congress's control, the current problem was created by an unwillingness to raise sufficient revenues to pay for the nation's defense and social program commitments. Frustration, gridlock, and partisan warfare eventually ended in surrender to the Executive Branch: a balanced-budget act was adopted that could radically alter Congress's power of the purse.

During the 99th Congress, many Democratic members also continued to realign their policy positions in accordance with contemporary economic and political forces. Democrats in Congress searched for an appealing formula that would ensure political survival and continued control of the House. But the strain of reconciling their traditional public philosophy with conservative trends left Democrats demoralized and in disarray.

The election of black and Latino mayors in big cities during the past five years has provided the opportunity to critically examine the role of minority mobilization and coalitions. The focus of this study is on the election of four minority mayors, Henry Cisneros in San Antonio in 1981, Federico Peña in Denver, Harold Washington in Chicago, and Wilson Goode in Philadelphia, all in 1983. The pioneering study by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb (1984) highlights the significance of minority mayoral elections in the context of the struggle for political equality. We have placed our analysis in the context of the three central questions underscored in their theory of political incorporation: How open are urban political systems to minorities? How does minority political incorporation occur? Does political incorporation make a difference for minority interests? Although the four cities we examine are different in some respects from the Northern California cities covered by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, their findings are generally applicable with modifications.

Chicago

How open is the system? Machine politics have dominated Chicago for over fifty years with decidedly mixed results for the city's black population. Black political power remained disproportionally small and subordinate throughout the machine's existence. Thus, Harold Washington's election in 1983 marked a structural transformation of the electoral system as well as a political coming of age for blacks. Washington inherited a city council divided along ideological and racial lines. Although Washington could not command a majority of the city council when he was first elected, the 1986 council races left him with an even split. Of the 50 council seats, 25 represent liberal votes and 25 are identified with the more conservative Democratic party machine, 16 are black and 4 are Latino. Washington, as mayor, holds the deciding vote.

In January 1986 Bruce Boiling, a member of the Boston City Council, became the first black president in the council's 166-year history. Boiling's presidency marks the culmination of the slow, but steadily growing empowerment of blacks in Boston politics. While blacks have always been present in Boston politics they have more often been observers, rather than participants as the Yankees and the Irish have dominated the political stage. In order to understand the role of blacks in Boston it is necessary to have some background knowledge of how Yankee paternalism retarded black political development and how Irish displacement of the Yankees resulted in the exclusion of blacks from Democratic party politics.

Historical Antecedents

Boston politics has its roots in the historical relationships among the Yankees, the Irish, and the blacks. Under Yankee domination colonial and pre-Civil War blacks experienced racial harmony in an atmosphere where they could enjoy civil and political rights. Wealthy Yankee traders viewed free blacks paternalistically, as a low income class of people (Lupo, 1977, p. 124). Since Yankees were members of the political and cultural elite they did not perceive blacks as an economic threat to their position. Consequently, blacks could freely operate businesses, buy property, and run for office (Horton, 1979).

As slavery became an increasingly important issue in the 1850s free blacks and Yankee abolitionists formed integrated organizations to end slavery. Abolitionist organizations provided an opportunity for free blacks to learn organizational and political skills. Yet, blacks often found that their efforts to become leaders were thwarted by white patrons who expected blacks to work only as obedient followers. A notable case among many was the conflict between white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, a former slave, over the crucial issue of the future role of blacks in electoral politics (Quarles, 1969). Frederick Douglass broke with Garrison who felt that blacks should not be encouraged to vote in a political system where the Constitution protected the rights of slaveholders (Horton, 1979, p. 86). Douglass adamantly advocated electoral participation and pulled some black abolitionists from Garrison's ranks. Douglass felt that participation in the electoral process was a necessary step in the political development of blacks. To affirm his convictions Douglass ran on the Liberal ticket for an office in New York state.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the legislative process is not an efficient or speedy one when it comes to major legislation or significant policy changes. According to Price (1985, p. 162), “Congress is often difficult to mobilize, particularly on high-conflict issues of broad scope.” The multiyear effort to enact Medicare legislation and the inability of Congress to enact comprehensive energy legislation in the 1970s are but two examples of the deliberate pace of the deliberative process.

Yet in 1985, a major reform of the budgetary process, popularly known as Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, was enacted in a relatively short time without the benefit of extended subcommittee and committee deliberation. This “fast track” legislation, on the heels of other accelerated decisions since 1981, makes it difficult to draw the conclusion that Congress is unable to act quickly on major policies. In fact, the nature of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings debate suggests that modifications to our theories of the legislative process are needed.

No one who has watched Congress would labor under the misconception that legislation routinely follows the process outlined on those neat charts in introductory American government textbooks. There are all too many examples of major bills that were approved as riders to minor legislation or that bypassed the normal committee process. For example, portions of President Carter's energy package were approved as amendments to tariff bills on bicycle parts and bobsleds. Furthermore, there are many examples of steps taken to bypass a powerful committee chairman, such as the drafting of the 1963 civil-rights bill so that it would go to the Senate Commerce Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee where it would be killed by Chairman James Eastland (D-Miss.).

Blacks hold governmental power in Atlanta. They have a two-to-one majority on the city council, and Andrew Young is in his second term as the city's second black mayor. Moreover, blacks are a substantial presence in the civic life of Atlanta. They have held the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce, and are to be found among the membership of every important board and commission in the public life of the community. The political incorporation of blacks in Atlanta is now strong enough for Mayor Young to entertain the possibility of city-county consolidation. Even with such a move, blacks presumably would remain at the center of public life in Atlanta.

How such a seemingly strong form of political incorporation came about is in part a familiar story. Key facts in the city's political history are widely known:

1. In 1946, Georgia's white primary was invalidated. A voter-registration drive in the black community brought nearly 20,000 new voters onto the rolls, making the black community more than a quarter of the city's electorate (Bacote, 1955).

2. Atlanta's mayor at the time, William B. Hartsfield, recognized the potential for taking on Atlanta's black community as junior partners in a coalition built around the mutually reinforcing themes of economic growth and racial moderation. He and his successor, Ivan Allen, Jr., profited electorally from that coalition over the next twenty years (see Jennings and Zeigler, 1966).

3. Atlanta's black community entered a new and more assertive phase in 1960 as direct-action protests signalled the end of the era of quiet accommodation between established black and white leaders (Walker, 1963).

4. The 1970 census reports show that Atlanta's population balance had tilted to a black majority, and, in 1973, Maynard Jackson was elected as Atlanta's first black mayor. Jackson was reelected by a comfortable margin in 1977, and he has been followed by Atlanta's second black mayor, Andrew Young. Mayor Young was reelected in a landslide in 1985.

While slightly unconventional, the earnest request of Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Quayle's six-year-old daughter (Conconi, 1985, p. B3) is nothing new to Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.). Indeed, Majority Whip Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) has said that the senators Dole must lead are “like children lining up in the elementary school classroom asking when they can go to the bathroom” (Granat, 1983, p. 1429). They are all impatient, and they all want their way.

When Quayle was elected in 1980 no one suggested that it would be a 9-to-5 job. And it has not been. Late night sessions, filibusters, endless quorum calls, repeated and repetitive votes numbering in the hundreds, crowded schedules, and yes, even the plaintive request of a six-year-old daughter conspire to make life difficult for a senator. On this particular night, Quayle could make his daughter's performance. Not so much because of the note she had sent to Dole, but because Dole and other Republican senators were scheduled to roast Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and then quickly return to the House to hear President Reagan report on his Geneva summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev.

As majority leader, Dole must play to at least five closely related constituencies and overcome numerous obstacles to succeed. He must represent Reagan. He must represent his Republican Party colleagues. He must protect the interests of the 22 Republican Senate seats at risk in the 1986 election—including his own. He must represent and to some extent promote the interests of the entire Senate. And, of course, he must represent the people of Kansas. It need hardly be added that the interests of these constituencies frequently conflict.

On March 20, 1986 many South Florida Hispanics were disappointed yet politically emboldened by the result of a close U.S. House vote on President Reagan's Nicaraguan Contra aid bill. Although the proposal was defeated in a 222–210 vote, the outcome was viewed locally as a Latin victory because Miami's moderately liberal Democratic delegation broke ranks with House leadership by voting three to one in support of the President's proposal. It is apparent that pressure felt from Miami's Cuban and Nicaraguan exile communities, as well as from the Florida Commission on Hispanic Affairs and the Cuban-American National Foundation, was decisive in compelling locally elected Democratic House members to support the President over their party.

Two days after the vote, 200 protestors gathered in downtown Miami in a demonstration against Contra aid. Alpha 66, a militant anti-Castro organization, called a counter-demonstration attended by about 2,000 angry Hispanics who threw eggs, rocks, and insults at the smaller group of protestors. Miami riot police escorted the anti-Contra demonstrators away from the scene in buses in order to prevent their injury. The fractious counter-demonstration was broadcast live by a Spanish language radio station and was attended by several local and state officials, including the three Cuban-Americans who constitute a majority on the five-member Miami City Commission. These events underscore an increasingly visible phenomenon in Miami's volatile politics.

On a drizzly late afternoon, soon after the November 1984 elections and well before the start of the 99th Congress, I slogged into the Cannon House Office Building for an interview with a real, live congressman. This was not a new experience. As a television reporter for a decade, I'd interviewed dozens of representatives and senators along the way. This interview was entirely different, however, because this time I was looking for a job, and the member was looking for an APSA Congressional Fellow to help out in his office.

After the usual half hour wait in the lobby, I was ushered in to meet the member. It was football season and before settling into the couch, he was bragging about his alma mater's quarterback. Fortunately, my home team had a hot quarterback too, so we debated quarterback's arms instead of the nuclear or conventional variety. I was scheduled for 20 minutes with the member, and half the time expired before the member abruptly turned to the real subject at hand—hockey. About the time I'd run through the last fact in my hockey memory, the member actually picked up my resume and scanned it.

One fact leaped from the page and got him even more worked up than his quarterback's passing percentage. “So you're a TV reporter, huh? I've always liked having TV guys around.” By now the 20-minute interview time was up, but it would be another 1½ hours before I got back out into the rain, with my first real insight into politics and TV news, from the other side of the camera.