By that I mean why is it you don’t see anyone advance to a higher office, like governor, senator or president/vice president? Just from my experience as a New Yorker, the mayors of NYC like Lindsay, Beame, Koch and Dinkins went nowhere when their terms were done. Guliani may although I can’t see him getting the Veep nomination in 2012 because New York is heavily Democrat and his best hope may be attorney general if the Republicans win the election. I can’t think of any mayors from Los Angeles, Chicago, or any other big city who have gone on to success although I could be wrong. Is it because each state always has an urban vs rural aspect and the latter simply won’t go for any big city mayor.
As for Vice President candiates it is primarily governors or senators with an occasional House member like Miller in 1964 or Ferraro in 1984. I suppose Bush Sr was a former 2 term representative with stints as Ambassador to China and CIA director. And while
picking Vice Presidents candidates doesn’t have much real effect on elections (which is what George Gallup Jr told me when I asked him that questioned when he visited my college in 1977), they are apparently still chosen for “balance” and to appeal to a different geogrpahical, religious and sometimes gender group.
Just because it hasn’t happened in your limited sphere of experience doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
A two-term mayor of Nashville (Phil Bredesen) went on to be a two-term governor of Tennessee. The current governor is the former mayor of Knoxville.
And, who says not going for a broader office is a failure? A lot of politicians simply choose NOT to go for a broader office, and instead go into the private sector and make a shitload of money.
The (former) mayor of Denver won the Governor’s race in the last election.
My guess is that the skillsets needed to be a Mayor are far different than for a Senator or Representative. Mayors wield tremendous individual power in that they can hire and fire lots of people, award contracts, etc.
Members of Congress basically show up and vote, make speeches, and raise money for re-election.
It’s not exactly dead-end. Big city mayors like Dennis Kucinich and Emanuel Cleaver have gone on to Congress.
But I see where the OP is going, and part of the answer is the urban-rural split. In Missouri, it’s hard for even a suburban Republican to win statewide office. Hang someone with the tag “big city Democrat” and they have two strikes against them.
Well, there’s Sarah Palin, former mayor of Wasilla.
A WAG but I think it’s because anyone who gets elected Mayor of a major American city has had to put a lot of time and effort into the politics of that city. And that means you haven’t been putting that time and effort into state or national politics.
President Marion Barry. Has a nice ring to it.
Here is California in recent decades we had:
Pete Wilson: State Assembly> Mayor of San Diego>Senator>Governor
Dianne Feinstein: City Supervisor> Mayor of San Francisco > Senator ( and many pundits felt that she would have been a dominant front-runner in a couple of recent governor races had she been so inclined ).
So it can be a stepping stone. Of course current governor Jerry Brown did some time as a mayor as well ( Oakland ), but since that was between governor terms I guess he wouldn’t count.
Part of the problem is that being Mayor, you have lots of local, personal issues that affect people directly, and you are expected to solve them. Potholes, traffic congestion, city water issues, schools, police, fire, emergency response.
And many of these problems are quite intractable – or unsolveable without spending more money & raising taxes – which is then another problem blamed on the Mayor!
And the problem solutions often cause problems with other voters. For example, a group of parents wants a stop sign added to a corner, so it’s safer for their kids walking to school. But adding that stop sign then gets complaints from motorists, that there are too many stops on that street. (And traffic engineers can show that too many stop signs without much traffic cause a significant increase in drivers running stop signs.) So no matter what a Mayor does in this situation, he is bound to annoy one group of voters.
Multiply that by all the problems in a city, and any Mayor will have a bunch of annoyed voters, who can each point to specific examples of his incompetence, indifference, or inaccessibility, and who will support another candidate.
Gavin Newsom, the current lt. governor of CA, was also formerly mayor of San Francisco.
Ed Rendell, former mayor of Philadelphia, became governor of Pennsylvania.
Likewise, Martin O’Malley is the former mayor of Baltimore and current governor of Maryland.
Thanks for those filling in the gaps in my knowledge about some cities such as San Diego, San Francisco, etc. I did a little checking and found Grover Cleveland went from mayor of Buffalo to Governor of New York to twice being elected President. But that was about 130 years ago. I have heard some people speculate that governors do better in getting the nominations/elected President because they have “executive experience” in running a branch versus the “deliberative” branch of the Senate. The 2008 election threw a damper on that but before there were governors to president as Bush Jr, Clinton, Reagan and Carter. Many of those won the nomination and/or the election over senators. You would think one of these guys had started as a big mayor city but no. Apparently many state has a rural vs urban vibe.
Of course one former mayor who went on to even bigger things was a Cincinnati mayor named Jerry Springer.
One of the main duties of a successful mayor is to milk as much money as you can from the state into your city. Doing this can make you a popular mayor but it bites you in the ass when you then try to run for state office. A lot of voters are going to think that maybe you’re only running for Governor in order to divert more state money into “your” city.
Also Mayor and say Congressman don’t necessarily appeal to the same people.
Mayor has quite a bit of power (within a small space) and many day-to-day operational responsibilities. Congressmen lack both of those things.
I’ve always thought local politics are often pretty dirty, and it might be hard to be a long-term mayor and not get your hands into stuff you wouldn’t want public.
It’s also true that there’s less attention paid to local politicians, so a savvy, talented politician with a terrible scandal might stay a perpetual mayor because he/she knows they can’t run for a wider office and risk having more people looking into their background.
These things may apply to state legislators, as well.
And Jerry Brown, the current Governor was formerly Mayor of Oakland.
Of course, he was Governor before that too.
Because every Tea Party needs a Mad Hatter.
I think George Voinovich is a good example. Former mayor of Cleveland, governor of Ohio, then U.S. Senator. You don’t get to be mayor of a big city right away. He was a state rep, then a county auditor, then a county commissioner, then lieutenant governor, then mayor. You run out of time to move much further up the ladder–Voinovich was 63 when he first got in the senate.
What the original poster is likely noting is that a) few if any of the huge number of people who run for president are former mayors, and b) no one in Congressional leadership positions is a former mayor. The first is likely because only a NY mayor would get national attention, and the second is likely because you need a career in Washington to get that high in the party structure.