Even in red states, liberal candidates are climbing into power in the nations cities
By David Weigel at the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/even-in-red-states-liberal-candidates-are-climbing-into-power-in-the-nations-cities/2017/08/20/a9deac66-850f-11e7-b359-15a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.6dd833c1b164
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Randall Woodfin is not going to talk about “change.” The 36-year old Democrat, a candidate for mayor of Birmingham, is running to unseat a two-term incumbent — and he is selling a vision of how his city, which had lost one-third of its population since the 1960s, could be economically transformed.
It just feels dangerous to boil that down to “change.”
“That word will trip you up,” said Woodfin, sitting in a campaign office covered in maps and volunteer walk lists. “This is not about that. Change for change’s sake is what got us Trump. This is about progress for everybody.”
Woodfin, a soft-spoken attorney and former school board member, has spent a whole year on his bid for mayor. In that time, Democrats have been locked out of national power, further diminished in state legislatures and wiped out in rural America. That has left the increasingly blue cities and suburbs as the obvious places for Democrats to attempt to rebuild.
In May, Philadelphia’s progressives helped civil rights attorney Larry Klasner win the Democratic primary for district attorney; if he wins a full term this November, the city’s top legal job will be held by a lawyer who defended members of Black Lives Matter and will refuse to seek the death penalty. In Jackson, Miss., progressive-backed candidate Chokwe Antar Lumumba won the mayor’s office, promising to make Mississippi’s capital “the most radical city on the planet.”
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