Jonathan Shazar: The improbable run of America's mayor

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Election Day is less than two weeks away, and the race that was supposed to go down to the wire clearly won't.

I'll be perfectly honest: at no point during most of Ed Rendell's quixotic run for governor of Pennsylvania did I ever think he had a hope of winning even the primary.

Rendell is a native New Yorker, an urban liberal, a Penn grad and a high-powered lawyer and partisan. He faced, in Bob Casey Jr., a much more conservative Democrat from a Pennsylvania dynasty. The early polls weren't encouraging.

In the extremely unlikely event that he beat Casey, he would face the anointed successor of the state's extremely popular governor, a distinguished civil servant from one of Pennsylvania's Democratic bastions, Pittsburgh.

Then there's the real problem -- Ed Rendell is a Philadelphian.

The anti-Philadelphia bias in this state is by no means a case of Democratic Philadelphia against a strongly Republican Pennsylvania. An enormously important Republican constituency are Philly's suburbs, while Democrats are prevalent in the southwest.

But however little it has to do with partisan alignment, a profound distrust of Philadelphia and Philadelphians exists outside of the five-county area, and in Pennsylvania, this is a unique problem for Philadelphia candidates.

In Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties live slightly under than 4 million people. In Pennsylvania's remaining 62 counties, there are more than 8 million.

Thirty percent to 70 percent is a staggering disparity. Nowhere else in the Northeast do big-city candidates face these kinds of odds. Of Massachusetts' 6,349,097 residents, some 3,398,051 -- 53 percent -- live in the Boston area. Over 60 percent of Rhode Island's million people live in Providence County alone. In Maryland, the Baltimore area falls just short of a majority of the state's population; if the D.C. suburbs are added, almost 90 percent of Marylanders live in metropolitan Baltimore-Washington.

And in New York State -- where the regional distrust is real and probably most similar to that faced in Pennsylvania by Rendell -- there are 5 million more downstaters than there are upstaters. In a straight regional competition, the New York City area wins hands down, with some 65 percent of the state's residents.

This is not to say that Philadelphia candidates cannot win -- Senator Arlen Specter, like Rendell a former Philadelphia district attorney -- has done quite well for himself statewide. But it's been nearly a century since that last Philadelphian, Edwin Stewart, won election as governor.

And in spite of all of this, the polls make it clear: Ed Rendell will be elected governor Nov. 5.

How did this happen?

The answer, as Mark Alan Hughes, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and fellow at Penn's Fox Leadership Program, wrote, lies not in Rendell's politics, but in Rendell himself.

After the Penn men's basketball team's loss to Brown at the Palestra last year, Hughes, who was sitting behind Rendell, recalled the former mayor giving "the most insightful and enthusiastic play-by-play" he had ever heard. When the referee made a mistake, "Rendell harangued the guy. He simply would not let the injustice go unchallenged. He pushed the limit.... But I also thought to myself, man, this is the guy I want in my corner."

The American political scene is filled with people like senators Specter and John Kerry of Massachusetts, governors Gray Davis of California, George Pataki of New York and Mark Warner of Virginia, former Vice President Al Gore -- admirable public servants all of them, but also keenly afraid of honesty every now and again. Each means well, but I can't imagine having a genuinely good time with them over cheesesteaks and beer. They're too polished -- too perfect, really. They're a lot like Mike Fisher.

No one would call Ed Rendell polished. Habitually late, often flustered, frequently seen wolfing down ungodly amounts of food in public, he is a real person. He's the kind of guy you could hang out with.

And he lacks the polished politician's occasional aversion to the truth. I had the privilege of taking Rendell's Urban Studies seminar my freshman year. We watched a video of a remarkable encounter at a town hall-style meeting, early in his first term as mayor, about Philadelphia's dire fiscal straits.

After hearing a long litany of requests for more money for this and increased subsidies for that, Rendell made the situation plain. There simply wasn't any money. Period. The unvarnished truth. And in spite of the drastic measures he took to make Philadelphia solvent once again, he was the most popular mayor in recent history.

That's the real reason Rendell is winning this race -- he's the kind of politician we don't see very often. Through sheer force of personality, he has transcended petty regional politics.

Hughes wrote in his column that it was charisma and enthusiasm that he most cherished in a candidate. "The ideas are the easy part," he wrote. "Conveying a passion for the work is the essential ingredient."

I could not agree more.

Jonathan Shazar is a senior History and Political Science major from Valley Stream, N.Y., and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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