How conservatives can save Chicago and other high-crime blue cities

When the murder rate drops, the city usually has something to celebrate. But that’s not the case in Chicago: even with a drop in homicides, the city still had 695 homicides in 2022.

That’s a number that would be appalling in a war zone, but it’s better than 774 kills in 2020 and over 800 in 2021.

This is the record that Mayor Lori Lightfoot hopes to be re-elected on February 28.

She has a fight on her hands, like the Chicagoans.

If she wins, such numbers, as well as worse numbers for other violent crimes, will become the new normal—statistics that won’t stand in the way of the incumbent’s re-election.

If Lightfoot loses, blue city mayors across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, will take notice. And during a war, Chicago might get a peace plan.

Again, Chicago is a one-party city. His problems are much greater than his miniature mayor. If Lightfoot loses, another Democrat will replace her.

Chicago’s predicament is all too familiar to urban America. Cities as diverse as San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, DC are all in the same mess.

Crime is out of control, but politics is the monopoly of one party. This limits choice, as other monopolies do.

But the GOP label in city politics is so toxic that Democrats use it to demonize other Democrats. Polls show Lightfoot is in a tough race with Rep. Chui Garcia (D-Illinois) and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Wallas. Garcia tried to label Wallas a crypto-Republican, despite the fact that Wallas was once the Illinois Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.

Chicago could use a true Republican who was elected in New York when the country’s murder rate was near its peak. Rudy Giuliani showed the difference a mayor from a rival GOP can make.

Giuliani turned dirty and bloody New York upside down. If his successor, Michael Bloomberg, ended up rebranding himself as an independent, he nonetheless continued the policies that brought a resurgence to Gotham.

More important is not the name of the Republican, but real political competition and independence from the democratic party machine and ideological straitjackets.

Cities need intellectual diversity, especially in urban politics.

Part of the secret to Giuliani’s success lay in an institution that was not, and is not, an organ of the Republican Party. New York City has what Chicago needs: an unbiased think tank dedicated to serious urban conservatism.

The Manhattan Institute was the forge of politics for Giuliani and Bloomberg. It did for New York what so many conservative think tanks in the 50 states have done.

Organizations such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan and the Arkansas Policy Foundation do not have the national profile that the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation do, although, remarkably, Heritage’s new president Kevin Roberts comes from one such institution, the Texas Public Administration. . Foundation.

However, these think tanks are at the forefront of adapting conservative ideas to individual states, with impressive results for policies such as school choice and the protection of religious freedom and Second Amendment rights.

However, the Manhattan Institute is unusual as a city-level think tank. Some of the best urban policy and law enforcement experts in the country live here, including Heather McDonald, arguably the most important researcher countering liberal attacks on law enforcement today.

Conservatives have always recognized the need to speak to states and regions with their own accents, with political frameworks, and with politicians themselves adapted to local circumstances.

However, the same goes for cities, which too often are dismissed by conservatives because urban America doesn’t look like the core of the red states.

Ted Cruz learned a painful lesson after attacking Donald Trump for “New York values”. Our cities are also America. And conservatives have a lot to offer, as evidenced by the success of a lone urban conservative think tank in New York.

The Manhattan Institute in Los Angeles or San Francisco or St. Louis or Chicago or Atlanta or Philadelphia will not break the one-party stranglehold overnight. But it will open the door to better alternatives to killer city mayors like Laurie Lightfoot.

Even the reddest states need to take blue city issues seriously. If Texas ever goes blue, it will be because of the rise of liberal cities like Austin and liberal sentiment in places like Dallas. States like Georgia go purple or go all the way to the Democrats when urban liberalism goes unchallenged.

Chicago doesn’t need Lightfoot Light, it needs Giuliani. To get there, you need to send tanks – think tanks.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.