Anthony Williams' comments on police commissioner may prove foolhardy

File Anthony Hardy Williams' statements last week about firing Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey under "What Could He Have Been Thinking?"

It had everyone scratching their heads. Why would a candidate for mayor attack the most popular public official in Philadelphia? What tactical advantage could Williams get from such a maneuver?

Naturally, we have to consider it in the context of the Democratic race for mayor. Williams, the preeminent black candidate, can feel Jim Kenney's breath on his neck. In some insider polls, Kenney, a white guy, even has a lead.

The clear imperative of the Williams campaign is to secure and even build his base among black voters. He has to stop Kenney's encroachment, which is aided and abetted by black politicians from the city's Northwest.

The Williams campaign has decided to do this by attempting to tap into the anger of black voters over "stop and frisk" and the police in general. No need to go into the specifics. The words Baltimore and Ferguson will do.

It explains the Williams TV ad of last week that lacerated Kenney for comments he made (18 years ago) that were rabidly pro-police. The implication? If this guy becomes mayor, he is going to let the cops run wild.

It explains Williams' comments at last week's mayoral debate, where he withdrew his previous support for Ramsey and said the commissioner would have to go because he was the architect of the "stop and frisk" policy.

This is where the dissonance begins. Commissioner Ramsey is African American. He was appointed by Michael Nutter, an African American mayor. Both men defend "stop and frisk" as a necessary anticrime measure. Crime has gone down every year Ramsey has been commissioner.

Ramsey is held in esteem by the law enforcement community - a fact that led President Obama to appoint him cochair of a post-Ferguson commission on ways to improve modern policing. If he's good enough for Obama, why isn't he good enough to serve in a Williams administration?

In my early years covering politics, I used to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the Machiavellian reasons behind politicians' words and actions. I eventually came up with this rule: To start, never rule out stupidity.

Sometimes a maneuver isn't Machiavellian, it is just dumb. Williams vs. Ramsey strikes me as dumb.

In fairness to the Williams camp, it is hard to keep up with changes in the playbook. For decades, race has been the determining factor in elections in this city, and so important that talking about it has been taboo.

We've made peace with our ethnic- and race-based voting by deciding not to discuss it.

It may be OK for surrogates to play the race card, but not the candidates themselves. They must stay above the fray, even though every slip of paper their campaign handlers use to determine support uses race as the base.

Until a few years ago, it was axiomatic that a black candidate in a multiracial field would get at least 80 percent of the black vote. Conversely, a white candidate in a multiracial field could reasonably expect to get 80 percent of the white vote. That was the pattern set in 1983, when W. Wilson Goode Sr. became our first black mayor.

The only variations from this formula was when (a) it was an all-white field, at which point race was irrelevant, or (b) a multiracial field with more than one black or white candidate.

In 1991, for instance, Ed Rendell got 16 percent of the black vote in the city, but Lucien Blackwell (at 54%) and George Burrell (27%) split the black vote. In the same Democratic primary for mayor, Rendell got 83 percent of the white vote.

The pattern was disrupted in 2007. In a multiracial field of candidates, Nutter shared the black vote (at 34%), with Chaka Fattah (29%) and Dwight Evans (8%).

At the same time, two white guys - Bob Brady and Tom Knox - combined to get 28 percent of the black vote. And Nutter won because he became the favorite of white liberal voters - getting an average of 63 percent of the votes in 10 white-majority wards.

Was that the beginning of a post-racial era in Philadelphia politics? No, but the playbook did change. Race was a factor, but less so. Among black voters another factor entered the equation: economic class.

Think of Northwest Philadelphia as an example. It is a predominantly black and middle-class area. There are 497 police officers who live there (including Ramsey) and 797 public schoolteachers.

Are they going to support a candidate who is perceived as anti-police and anti-public education just because he is black? I think class trumps race in this case.

In 2007, Knox and Brady set the new base for whites' getting black votes at 28 percent. Kenney hopes to charge past that number this year. Williams is determined to rally his clan and block him.

They have one week left to achieve their goals.