Ann Arbor: What Went Wrong?

Ann Arbor: What Went Wrong?

Four years ago. it looked as though the mytlh of Ann Arbor as a liberal college town and a haven for young people of the "counter-cultural" persuasion might finally translate itself into political reality. The fledgling Human Rights Party (HRP) had staged a major coup by electing two of its candidates to City Council, and the combination of a progressive third party and a more progressive Democratic outlook seemed to herald a new era in the city's history.

Today, as a result of the catastrophic city elections of April 5, Ann Arbor's majority population of students, young people, blacks, and other liberally-inclined individuals is once again under the heel of the particularly obnoxious local Republican Party. The HRP, lately calling itself the Socialist Human Rights Party, is all but finished, and the Democrats are in disarray. Al Wheeler, the city's first black Mayor, faces a 6-5 Republican majority on City Council and any gains made by the city's lower and middle-income residents in the '70's are now jeopardized.

The primary responsibility for this state of affairs lies squarely with the chronically fragmented and disorganized Democratic Party of Ann Arbor, which waged a low-key campaign that blithely ignored the imminent danger of a right-wing takeover. There was no high-powered voter registration campaign, an essential effort in a city with such a large transient population, and no serious acknowledgement of the threat of a GOP upset in the First Ward-where, in fact, black Republican stockbroker Wendell Allen managed to defeat black Democrat Ezra Rowry and SHRP candidate Torn Owen for the decisive seat on Council.

The SHRP, in that race, repeated its historical role in every city election since 1972 -that of spoiler, pulling enough votes away from the Democrats to hand victory to the troglodytes. It was a fitting final chapter in the depressing history of the HRP, who could have been one of the most exciting political phenomena of the decade, but wound up falling prey to the abstract idealism, rhetoric, and posturing that characterized its Alice-in-Wonderland student-radical leadership. Instead of drawing into the political process the thousands of Ann Arbor residents previously excluded or alienated from it. he SHRP simply ended up giving them even more reason to be cynical about participation.

In the final analysis, however, the failings of the Democrat's and the SHRP can't be isolated from what should have been their mass base- a large part of which seems to consider the City of Trees a privileged refuge from the cares of the world at large, including politics. Large numbers of these students and younger citizens, apparently viewing their relative liberty in Ann Arbor as a gift of the gods, stayed home on April 5 for lack of any sexy ballot issue to rally around.

Partly as a consequence of this cavalier attitude, there is now practically no hope of any form of rent control, for example, in the next two years. And city government"s overall priorities can be expected to move away from needed social services and back toward the kind of unrestrained growth policies that gave us downtown McDonald's and Burger Kings a few years ago, not to mention the unsightly business strip developments that have sprung up left and right.

Now that the Democrats are unable to pass legislation. about the only effective tool left to them is Mayor Wheeler's veto power or compromise with the Republicans, something the GOP isn't known for.

Wheeler. who won the Mayor's chair by a slim margin, will have to face the voters again next year, and the next Council elections are two years away. Until then, we urge progressive Ann Arborites to seize the only remaining alternative- working within the Democratic Party to improve its organization, get it to take strong positions on social issues, and mold it into a force that can put the Republicans back into their place when the opportunity comes.

Among other things, that will mean building an organization that works hard to educate and involve each new incoming group of U of M students, as well as reaching those non-voters who take Ann Arbor's "mellow" climate for granted.