Daniel McCarthy: How Conservatives Can Save Chicago and Other High-Crime Blue Cities

A city that has a falling murder rate is usually able to celebrate. But that’s not true in Chicago: Even with a drop in homicides in 2022, the city was still the scene of 695 murders.

It’s a figure that would be appalling in a war zone, yet it was an improvement over the 774 slayings in 2020 and the more than 800 in 2021.

This is the record Mayor Lori Lightfoot hopes will be re-elected February 28th.

She is up against it, as are Chicagoans.

If she wins, this is the result. violent crimes, will be the new normal — statistics that pose no obstacle to an incumbent’s re-election.

Losing Lightfoot could mean that blue-city mayors in every state, from Los Angeles to New York will pay attention. A peace plan might be possible for war-torn Chicago.

Chicago is also a one-party metropolis. Its problems go beyond the small-minded mayor. Lightfoot will be replaced by another Democrat if she is forced to resign.

Chicago’s predicament is all too familiar in urban America. The same problem exists in cities such as San Francisco, St. Louis, Washington, DC, and others.

Crime is out of control, but politics is one party’s monopoly. It restricts the choices of other monopolies.

The GOP label in urban politics is so harmful that Democrats use it as a way to demonize others Democrats. According to polls, Lightfoot is in a close race against Rep. Chuy Garcia (D.Ill.) as well as former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas. Garcia has tried to brand Vallas a crypto-Republican — despite the fact Vallas was once the Illinois Democratic Party’s lieutenant-governor nominee.

Chicago could benefit from a true Republican like the one New York City elected in the days when murder rates were at their highest. Rudy Giuliani proved what a difference it can make to be a mayor of a GOP that is competitive.

Giuliani transformed a bloody and dirty New York City. Even though Michael Bloomberg became an independent after Giuliani’s death, he maintained the policies that led to Gotham’s revival.

What matters most is not the Republican name but real political competition and independence from the Democrats’ party machinery and ideological straitjackets.

What the cities need is intellectual diversity — above all in urban policy.

The secret to Giuliani’s success lay in part with an institution that was not, and is not, an organ for the GOP. New York City is home to something Chicago desperately needs: an independent think tank that promotes serious urban conservatism.

Bloomberg and Giuliani created the Manhattan Institute to help them with their policy decisions. It accomplished for New York City the same thing that a number of conservative think tanks did in all 50 states.

Organizations like Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Arkansas Policy Foundation don’t have the national profile the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation do — though, significantly, Heritage’s new president, Kevin Roberts, comes from one such institution, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

These think tanks have been a driving force in bringing conservative ideas to each state, with strong results for policies like school choice or protections for religious liberty.

As a think tank at the city level, Manhattan Institute is not typical. It’s home to some of the best urban-policy and policing experts in the country, including Heather Mac Donald, arguably the most single most important researcher countering liberal attacks on law enforcement today.

Conservatives have always recognized the importance of speaking to states and regions with their own accents. They also need policy frameworks that are tailored to local sensibilities.

Yet the same goes for cities — which conservatives have too often dismissed because urban America doesn’t resemble the red-state heartland.

After he attacked Donald Trump, Ted Cruz had to learn a very painful lesson. “New York values.” America’s cities are America, too. As the New York City success of an urban conservative think-tank demonstrates, conservatives have a lot to offer them.

It will not end the one-party stranglehold on Los Angeles, San Francisco or St. Louis, Chicago or Atlanta in a matter of hours. It will however open the doors to other options than murder-city mayors such as Lori Lightfoot.

Even the reddest state must be aware of the challenges faced by blue cities. Texas will turn blue if it has liberal cities like Austin, and liberal sensibilities in Dallas. If urban liberalism is not challenged, states like Georgia will turn purple.

Chicago doesn’t need Lightfoot-lite. It needs a Giuliani. Getting there starts by sending in the tanks — the think tanks.

Modern Age: A Conservative Review’s editor is Daniel McCarthy.

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