Why aren't more presidents former mayors?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(I debated between IMHO and GQ, but I figure answers are going to be speculative, so I opted for the former.)

Back when Giuliani was running for president, I started wondering what other presidents had been former mayors.

There aren’t many. Coolidge was the last president who had been a mayor (Northampton, MA) – though of course he’d served as Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts after that and before being elected president.

John Lindsay, also a NYC mayor, ran for president in '72. Very unsuccessfully.

It’s conventional wisdom these days that governors fare better than senators in presidential contests because of their executive experience. I get why not many mayors can leap straight to a viable presidential candidacy – I can’t imagine many cities other than New York or maybe LA could claim a viable level of experience – but why aren’t more former mayors with subsequent higher-level experience running for president? Do they not run for (or achieve) governorships in high numbers? Do most mayors not run for higher offices than that? What’s up?

2

Marion Barry?

3

[QUOTE=Interrobang!?]
(I debated between IMHO and GQ, but I figure answers are going to be speculative, so I opted for the former.)

Back when Giuliani was running for president, I started wondering what other presidents had been former mayors.

There aren’t many. Coolidge was the last president who had been a mayor (Northampton, MA) – though of course he’d served as Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Massachusetts after that and before being elected president.

John Lindsay, also a NYC mayor, ran for president in '72. Very unsuccessfully.

It’s conventional wisdom these days that governors fare better than senators in presidential contests because of their executive experience. I get why not many mayors can leap straight to a viable presidential candidacy – I can’t imagine many cities other than New York or maybe LA could claim a viable level of experience – but why aren’t more former mayors with subsequent higher-level experience running for president? Do they not run for (or achieve) governorships in high numbers? Do most mayors not run for higher offices than that? What’s up?
[/QUOTE]

I once took a college course on state and local government taught by a local state rep. I recall that he once commented that mayors seldom advance beyond a local level because local politics tend to be so contentious and personal. Also, lots of cities are basically one party towns. So as mayor you have all the rancor and bitterness typical of any governmental body - but all your city council members are the same party as you. It makes it harder to move on from that.

“seldom advance” may be an overstatement, and it’s not a direct quote from my state rep professor anyway, but his point was that it’s not a great stepping stone to higher office.

From personal experience, I live in a small city that hasn’t elected a Republican to local office in over a decade. In spite of this, there’s no shortage of acrimony and about half the city council is ever ready to gloat about any bad news for the mayor or generally cause trouble. So I suspect that many mayors simply never go on to higher office.

4

It’s a good question. In most professions, people start at the bottom and work their way up. Why wouldn’t politicians start out as city council members, then mayors, then state legislators, then governors, and eventually on to the presidency?

[QUOTE=Napier]
Marion Barry?
[/QUOTE]
When did Marion Barry get elected president?

5

[QUOTE=Chareth Cutestory]
“seldom advance” may be an overstatement, and it’s not a direct quote from my state rep professor anyway, but his point was that it’s not a great stepping stone to higher office.
[/QUOTE]
That’s interesting – I was wondering if the breakdown came from few mayors becoming governors. (This whole question was partly prompted by a plotline on The Wire, where Baltimore’s mayor makes some decisions prompted by his desire to run for governor in the future.)

Do a lot of mayors run for governor unsuccessfully, or do they not even bother, generally speaking?

6

>When did Marion Barry get elected president?

  1. Well, in a manner of speaking…
7

[QUOTE=Interrobang!?]

Do a lot of mayors run for governor unsuccessfully, or do they not even bother, generally speaking?
[/QUOTE]

Using California (a state with quite a few large cities) as a test case…

Sam Yorty, Tom Bradley, and Richard Riordan (who, between themselves, held the Mayorship of Los Angeles from 1961 to 2001) all ran for Governor of California, but the only one to win his party nomination was Bradley, and he lost (twice).

Pete Wilson went from being Mayor of San Diego to the Senate and Governorship, but he’s the only San Diego Mayor to even try to advance.

The last Mayor of San Francisco to become Governor of California was James Rolph in 1930. Of the three mayors to try after him (George Christopher, Joe Alioto, and Dianne Feinstein), only Feinstein won her primary, and she lost in the general election.

The only San Jose Mayor to move upward was Norm Mineta, and he has not yet (and probably never will) run for statewide office.

An ex-Governor has become Mayor of Oakland, but the last time the reverse occurred was when George Pardee was elected in 1902.

Most of the remaining cities of size in California have, to the best of my determination, never produced a serious statewide candidate, due to the combination of lack of exposure, power (many of our cities are run by city managers), or ambition.

8

[QUOTE=Governor Quinn]
The last Mayor of San Francisco to become Governor of California was James Rolph in 1930. Of the three mayors to try after him (George Christopher, Joe Alioto, and Dianne Feinstein), only Feinstein won her primary, and she lost in the general election.
[/QUOTE]

But of course she went on to win a Senate seat and is in her, what, third term?

<checks Wikipedia>

Third full term, plus the partial unexpired term she served upon being elected in 1992.

9

[QUOTE=Otto]
But of course she went on to win a Senate seat and is in her, what, third term?

[/QUOTE]

True, but the question was asking about governors specifically.

10

In New York, the only mayor who tried to run for governor recently was Ed Koch, who, despite being considered a shoo-in, lost badly to Mario Cuomo.

DeWitt Clinton managed to become govenor of NY, but that was in 1817. According to Wikipedia, the last NYC mayor to be elected to another office was Ardolph Loges Kline, who was elected to House in 1921 after being mayor for three months in 1913.

Part of that is the disconnect between New York City (heavily Democratic) and upstate (more Republican). Lots of upstaters don’t trust NYC politicians, and the stink of Tammany Hall made it difficult to get a NYC mayor elected to statewide office.

11

[QUOTE=Governor Quinn]
True, but the question was asking about governors specifically.
[/QUOTE]

True, but the thread in general is about mayors attaining higher office.

12

[QUOTE=Interrobang!?]
That’s interesting – I was wondering if the breakdown came from few mayors becoming governors. (This whole question was partly prompted by a plotline on The Wire, where Baltimore’s mayor makes some decisions prompted by his desire to run for governor in the future.)

Do a lot of mayors run for governor unsuccessfully, or do they not even bother, generally speaking?
[/QUOTE]

I’m a huge fan of the Wire. It’s interesting, in my own state, Ed Rendell has gone from District Attorney of Philadelphia to Mayor of Philly to DNC Chairman during the 2000 election to his current office of Governor of Pennsylvania. I often hear that he’s on a short lists for VP but they must be the longer sort short lists where nobody is necessarily seriously considering you. So clearly it’s not too hard to find an exception to my theory.

If you look at Carcetti though, they do really nail home to him the point that he’s a potential candidate because he is young and inspiring and had garnered regional/national attention by virtue of winning an office that had long been inaccessible to white candidates. Their advice to get on the gubernatorial ticket was to keep crime down, get something big named after him by the waterfront and not mess with the schools. It’s a far cry from “accomplish as much as you can locally, you’ll need the cred to be realistic statewide”. Most of all, I’d sad that the Wire won’t be on long enough to really show us what happens. I know it’d be statewide election and Carcetti would need to be all over the state - very unwirelike. But I’m not ready for it to end. :frowning:

13

Here in Missouri, when the big city mayors run for statewide office they don’t usually make it past the primary. Part of it is Chareth Cutestory’s observation that they have a lot of enemies in their own party, part of it RealityChuck’s popint about the disconnect between the big cities and the rest of the state.

14

Grover Cleveland and Andrew Johnson were also mayors, as mentioned in this thread from last October.