St. Louis’s poverty rate is 26 percent overall, and four-in-ten children live in poverty. Like Detroit, the city has experienced a major population decline, from 850,000 in the mid-20th century to 318,000 in 2013. Last year’s Annual Performance Report gave the city’s public schools a rating of 24.6 percent on a scale of zero to 100 percent. The city, which is also reeling from $640 million in unfunded pension liabilities, is currently rated the third most dangerous large city in the nation. St. Louis’s current mayor is Francis G. Slay, who has served since 2001. There hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since 1949.
Newark, New Jersey’s poverty rate is 26.1 percent. Its former mayor, Cory Booker, who was recently elected to the United States Senate, was the latest in a long, unbroken line of Democratic mayors dating back 106 years to 1907. Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James was convicted of five counts of fraud in 2008. Yet he is hardly an anomaly: with the exception of Booker, every Mayor of Newark since 1962 has been indicted for crimes committed during their tenure in office. Between 2005 and 2012, the city’s population declined from 281,063 to 278,906, while violent crime totals increased from 2,821 to 3,219.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 percent of city residents overall live in poverty, a number that balloons to 40 percent in terms of child poverty. Democratic voter registration outnumbers Republican registration by a six-to-one margin in a city where the last Republican mayor to hold office, Bernard Samuel, was voted out in 1952. Current mayor Michael Nutter is presiding over a city with the lowest credit rating of the country’s five most populous cities ($8.75 billion in outstanding debt) and a pension system that is only funded at a level of 47.6 percent. Last March, city officials voted to close 9 percent of the city’s public schools due to a five-year $1.35 billion spending gap.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin sports a poverty rate of 29.9 percent overall, including 42.6 percent of children under 18. Like Camden, Milwaukee boasts a track record of non-Republican mayors going back 105 years to 1908. But they weren’t all Democrats. In 2011, the city marked the 101st anniversary of the election of Emil Seidel, the first of three Socialist Party mayors of Milwaukee. Current Mayor Tom Barrett claims the poverty experienced in his city is a “regional problem,” but 71 percent of those who live in poverty in a four-county area were concentrated in Milwaukee.
You'll want to read the entire article to find out more about the failure of one-party-Democrat rule. No word yet on this article from establishment apologist Robert Dahl.
