He unites his foes
Vote white," implored Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo at a recent ward meeting. There was no reaction from his white working-class audience, which took the remark as a matter of course. But next day, despite Rizzo's insistence that he did not intend to be taken seriously, black leaders seized on it as further evidence that the combative former cop is a racist at heart.
Indeed, in almost seven years as mayor, Rizzo has infuriated almost every voter bloc in the city except the blue-collar ethnics who helped elect him in the first place. He has angered liberals by defending his police department against charges of brutality. He has outraged businessmen and many homeowners by increasing taxes 30% in 1976, the largest boost in the city's history, and by running a projected deficit that portends further tax rises.
Now Rizzo's foes—he calls them animals, bums and cockroaches—have formed an unusual coalition that gives new meaning to the phrase City of Brotherly Love. The mayor has brought them all together by pushing for approval at the Nov. 7 election of a change in the city's charter that would allow him to run for a third term next year. His opponents include the Black United Front Against Charter Change, the liberal Committee to Protect the Charter and the businessmen's Committee for the Defense of the Charter. Says Banker R. Stuart Rauch Jr.: "Rizzo is a master at fragmenting the opposition, but now he's running against the most organized, best-financed, toughest opposition he's ever had." Businessmen have raised $200,000 primarily for radio and TV ads. Black leaders have conducted a registration drive that signed up about 100,000 new voters. Says the Rev. William Gray III, a Baptist clergyman: "Black people are mad—mad as the dickens. Rizzo has gone from being a subtle racist to an overt one."
Replies Rizzo: "When they throw garbage like that racist bull shit on me —that's not me. That upsets me. I like all people. I put my life on the line for all people." It is the blacks, he charges, who first introduced race as an issue in the charter fight. Rizzo is concentrating his campaign on the working-class sections that have solidly supported him in the past. At Palumbo's Cafe in South Philadelphia, he told a group of a hundred or so supporters: "In Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, Newark, there is no limit on mayors' terms. That's the American way. I'm a full-time mayor. I don't play tennis. I don't jog. My whole life is dedicated to this city."
Afterward he confided: "My enemies think they can beat me with this racist bull shit issue. But they can't. They tried to do it in '71. They tried in '75, I was elected both times." Still, the city's black voters have grown to 34% of the total electorate, and even Rizzo realizes that he faces an uphill battle. The most recent Gallup poll has him trailing nearly 2 to 1. But the mayor is confident. Said he: "We're going to win by 50,000. Philadelphia wouldn't be the same without Frank Rizzo." -