Chester, PA still has a Republican mayor and city council, while the city votes 80% Democratic for major races.
So it's either really good governance, or mass bribery. One of the two.
A city with a 27.2% poverty rate can hardly claim good governance. At least, not in the long term.
Helps that they have an institutionalized black Republican organization dating to the pre-Civil Rights era, of course.
Yeah, the latter must be the reason why they have a Republican Mayor and Council though I would have never guessed that they have either. Chester (the city) is a real disaster.
Even with a black GOP organization, I don't see how they have
Republicans in control locally. The Mayor isn't black (as far as I know).
The mayor is black, actually. Or he does a damned good impression of it in photographs.
http://www.chestercity.com/mayor_butler.cfm
Oh, wow. I didn't know Pileggi was Mayor there before he was elected to the Senate! How the hell did he become Mayor? That's insane.
By the way, how do you know Butler is a Republican? I don't see it in the biographyc.
He has won re-election twice as a Republican.
So basically Chester has something that no other major American city with a majority African-American population has.. a functional Republican organization.
