Black Mayors/White Mayors: Explaining Their Approval

Abstract

Performance models have been the norm in research on national and state executives, but oddly this model has rarely been extended to the next level of executive office, mayors. The increasing number of African American mayors suggests that race may complicate the performance model of approval at the local level. This research tests a performance model of mayoral approval that takes racial factors into account. The model is tested in two white cities with white mayors and two black cities with black mayors. Performance is measured by citizen evaluations of a variety of urban conditions, some of which citizens can observe firsthand. Findings indicate that (1) performance matters in evaluating black and white mayors, and its influence does not seem to be related to the race of the mayor; (2) performance has more explanatory power over mayoral approval than race, a pattern that holds for both black and white mayors; (3) race has more impact on the approval of black mayors than on white mayors; and (4) blacks in black cities have lower evaluations of local government performance in their cities than blacks in white cities. We conclude that the performance model is generalizable to the local level, even with the complications of race.