The Cincinnati metro area is conservative, but the City of Cincinnati is not terribly conservative. Maybe compared to other cities of a similar size, but it is generally liberal.
People from Cincinnati can tell when someone is not from Cincinnati when they misspell the name of the city, btw, and just make random guesses about the politics, btw.
Mark Mallory is the current mayor of Cincinnati. He is a Democrat. He was preceded by Charlie Luken, also a Democrat. He was preceded by Roxanne Qualls, Democrat. She was preceded by Dwight Twillery, Democrat. He was preceded by Charlie Luken (1st term), Democrat. He was preceded by Arnold Bortz and Charlie Brush, both Charterites (Cincinnati had a “weak” mayor system until Charlie Luken’s second term, meaning the City Council member elected with the most votes was “elected” as the mayor. The Charter party is a strong local party in Cincinnati politics). Prior to Brush and Bortz the mayor was David Mann, Democrat.
You have to go all of the way back to 1979-80 to find a Republican mayor of Cincinnati, Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell was also a Charterite, but essentially Republican. Blackwell is also black, btw, and benefited in 1979 from Reagan’s popularity, the weak mayor system, and the black vote to become Cincinnati’s mayor.
Jerry Springer was mayor of Cincinnati from 1977-1978. He was most famous in Cincinnati politics for owning up to writing a check at a “house of ill repute”. He was afterwards elected mayor. Some say he was elected mayor for his honesty in this scandal; others say he was elected by those who were impressed by his ability to get a prostitute to accept a check.
I’ve only lived in Charlotte for 5 years, so I can’t report on historical politics, but the people I meet are overwhelmingly conservative. This is changing as many northern refugees move in.
As for 2004, “Conservative” and “Fan of GWB” are not necessarily the same thing. There is a lot of overlap, but a lot of separation of the two as well.
Wow, that’s worse than I thought. The district divisions in the rest of the state seem pretty reasonable, almost entirely following county lines. It is only in and right around SLC that it completely breaks down. And even there all the suburb cities appear to lie entirely within one district or another. Just Salt Lake is chopped in half.
I think Houston’s a conservative city, but it’s really more of a big business-coddling, government regulation-denouncing fiscal conservatism rather than the holier-than-thou, fire and brimstone social conservatism you tend to find in large swaths of the red states. As several other posters pointed out, though, you do find quite a bit of the latter in the suburbs ringing the city.
I swear I don’t get this. I grew up just outside of Charlotte but went to highschool and a little bit of college uptown, and spent a lot of time in the city. I know it votes Democrat sometimes but the conservatives must not vote or something. Everyone I met and knew in my 15+ years living there was conservative. It was overwhelming. My mind is completely blown away everytime someone refers to Charlotte as a liberal city. That does not match my experience there at all. Beyond being Old South/Dixie and Bible Belt, it’s a banking city for god’s sake.
I know little to nothing about CHarlotte, so these are just questions.
How large is Charlotte’s black population?
Do Charlotte’s bankers live in the city proper, or in nearby suburbs?
Are bankers automatically supposed to be conservative? Most of the people I know in the financial sector are pretty damn liberal, counterintuitive as that may sound.
It’s pretty astounding that Allentown, PA, the 12th most conservative city in America has a democratic mayor and seven out of seven of its city councilpeople are democrats. I realize the Republican brand is in the gutter even with ideological conservatives but you’d think they would manage to hold at least one office in the 12th most conservative city in America.
History isn’t totally relevant here, but it’s interesting that Portland, OR, now a greenhouse of leftism and leftish libertarianism, was for much of the 20th century one of the most right-reactionary cities in the USA. The legacy of the founding Yankee bluenoses and Oregon ranchers, a large German community unusually supportive of Nazi groups, combined with resentment at larger, richer, and more influential Seattle (long dominated by progressives), made Portland a rather insular, anti-big city city until well into the 1960s.