Category: Opinions

Window on the West
Some thoughts about local elections on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

by Mary Rupert

It’s time for Kansas City, Kan., to ask itself if it is time for a minority mayor.

As current Mayor-CEO Mark Holland has pointed out numerous times in speeches, the community is a majority-minority one. The population has a three-way split happening among white, black and Hispanic residents. If added together, the black and Hispanic population now outnumbers the white population.

The Unified Government’s position of mayor-CEO began with Carol Marinovich in 1995. Before the consolidation of the city and county into the UG, the city of Kansas City, Kan., traced its mayors back to 1886 when there was a consolidation of a number of cities.

Despite the current majority-minority population, and despite that throughout its history, it has had a large number of minority residents, Kansas City, Kan., has not had a minority candidate elected as mayor. It’s possible in the past that some forces were working against the election of a minority to the city’s higher offices. A speaker at one of the programs of the Wyandotte County Historical Society in the fall of 2013 traced the Ku Klux Klan’s presence to Kansas City, Kan., City Hall, where Don McCombs, the mayor with the longest term in the city’s history, 1927-1947, was a member of that organization.

There are some good reasons that a black mayor might be elected within the next few years, one community activist believes.

Alvin Sykes, a human rights activist, said recently that if the election system for mayor is changed here, the community probably would have a black mayor within the next two election cycles.

Sykes pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in late June that might make a difference.

“The ruling by the Supreme Court in the fair housing case, I think, will help us significantly as we move forward with our effort to try and change the process for election of mayors in KCK,” Sykes said.

“One of the hurdles that kind of slowed the pace of the review on the federal level in our actions was the concern about whether the Supreme Court would address or deal with the issue of disparate impact,” Sykes said. The court struck down some provisions in the Voting Rights Act a few years ago.

In states that had been overtly involved in discrimination, it left section 2, which said that whether or not discrimination was intentional, if there was a policy or procedure that had a discriminatory effect upon protected classes, that policy could be viewed as a violation, and therefore, it was actionable, Sykes said. The concern was that there were cases coming up, and there was a concern that the court would address them as in the Voting Rights Act.

When the fair housing case came up in late June, it dealt with a law that had preceded the Voting Rights Act in providing for discriminatory impact prosecution as opposed to any discriminatory purpose, he said.

Sykes said the court’s clear statement that the discriminatory impact document is both viable and constitutional, buttressed by the fact that the lower courts had ruled on the same side, has boosted his position on changing the procedures regarding the election of a mayor in Kansas City, Kan.

Sykes and others had asked the Justice Department earlier to look into the rules concerning the election of the mayor here, particularly the rule that did not stagger terms, so that certain district commissioners were always running for office at the same time as the mayor. This had an effect on commission District 1, where Nathan Barnes had to give up his seat in order to run for mayor, while in other districts, some commissioners did not have to give up their seats to run for mayor.

Initially Sykes was interested in discriminatory effects on the black community, but he also would like to expand that to the Hispanic or Latino community, he said.

“Our pursuit was designed to be as voluntary as possible,” Sykes said. “If we could get it done in a nonadversarial way, that was our preference, to have the UG see the light and change the charter without having to go to court and having to do it in an adversarial way.”

However, if the UG doesn’t do it on its own, Sykes said he and others feel more confident now about going to federal court and forcing it to change before the next election for mayor occurs.

Sykes said that through Sen. David Haley’s advocacy, they have found out about a Denver, Colo., model that has picked up some local support. In that model, anyone on the commission or council who wants to run for mayor has to give up his current seat to do so.

“That way, it takes the discriminatory impact out of it, without having to do much of a structural change,” Sykes said.

Another option would mean changing the whole structure of the UG and election process, with staggered terms.

Sykes said he feels confident there will be a change in the rules here that apply to the mayor’s election, and that the change will bring about the community’s first black mayor.

“I think that it’s going to make our KCK a greater city nationally and become a greater inspiration to other communities and cities around the country,” Sykes said.

The ideal candidate for mayor, he believes, would be someone who has either run a major not-for-profit agency or major business, and has elected experience as well, he said.

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].