The Sun Interview: Al Wheeler

The SUN Interview : AI Wheeler

Ann Arbor: Black Mayor, Republican Council

"Once you've opened up channels for black people, you've got to see that whatever you've opened is effectively applied and used by the people-and that's a tough job, maybe tougher than the first one. "

By Joe Davis and Maryanne George

Apart from Ann Arbor's image of a tree-lined liberal utopia stands Mayor Al Wheeler, who has long found the university town a place where justice has had to be struggled for. Since Wheeler was elected mayor in April, 1975, he has faced in city government something more closely resembling a political dog-pit than a politician's paradise.

Nonetheless, as a 20-year veteran of the civil rights struggle and Ann Arbor's first black mayor, Wheeler has managed to keep the progressive faith. He still speaks of his dream for the city in terms which summon to mind the ambitions of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Yet it is difficult to understand how the city Wheeler presides over has earaed its progressive reputation. Th is April 's elections-in which a concerted mud-slinging campaign carried Ann Arbor Republicans to a 6-5 Council majority on a wave of bipartisan apathy-demonstrated that the Democrats' (and therefore Wheeler's) base of support is shakier than ever. Hardly a well-oiled machine, the Ann Arbor Democratic Party operates more like a confederation of anarchist splinter factions: a jerry-rigged alliance of liberals, radicals, students, teachers, poor people and minorities, feminists and environmentalists which has a hard time agreeing on the best way to cross the street.

Wheeler's power to govern Ann Arbor is further limited by its "weak-Mayor" city charter, which delegates much authority to a professional city administrator. Thus, to date, Wheeler has maintained a shaping hand in the building of his dream largely through use of his selective "line-item" veto power. For the rest of this year, that power may be Wheeler's strongest means of leadership.

Mayor Wheeler recently granted a four-hour interview to Sun reporters Joe Davis and a Maryanne George, from which the following conversation has been condensed. 

SUN: In a recent speech Coleman Young stressed the Importance of going beyond the "first black " syndrome and assuring that the recently-won power of blacks will not be jeopardized in future elections. How do you feel this relates to your political future and the city's future.

WHEELER: I don't deal in "firsts", and I guess I've forgotten half of them-like being the first black faculty member at the University of Michigan, after raising a lot of hell and the first black guy in this town to have AAA auto insurance. I think the only value in a first is that you try to make the second, the third and the 10th a lot easier to acquire. Coleman is in a community where maybe 60 per cent of the adult population is black. Hell, in Ann Arbor we're eight per cent.

Even though I was elected by a certain number of people in this town, I have to serve as mayor of all the folks. And I can 't deal with them unless l'm willing to talk with them -  and listen. When I was out raising hell, that was because there were no black employees in this building and people were forced-and I mean forced-to live in particular neighborhoods and they didn't have jobs in this city, except unskilled jobs with a rare exception.

So you do something to open up those channels, and once they're opened up you've got a different kind of job . You've got to see that whatever you've opened  is effectively applied and used by the people-and that's a tough job, maybe even tougher than the first one.

SUN: In your analysis, why did the Democrats lose control of the Council?

WHEELER: Part of the problem is the makeup of the party. The Republican Party is not too widely divergent on what they want. They put it together and say, Iet's go. The Democrats are made up of such an odd mixture of folks with so many totally different priorities.

 Also there are Democrats who really don't trust students. You know, they think they have the wildest ideas. Well, if you have got a community, and about half of your electorate is recently of voting age, then, dammit, you've got to listen to them, even if it shoves you up the wall sometimes.

SUN: Do the Democrats have a program for new incoming U of M students?

WHEELER: I don't think the Democratic Party, as a party, has any strong plans coordinated about anything. You know, we shoot out at that and we go after this. We have door-to-door voter registration, and some folks are working hard at it, but unless that becomes a real ferment across the city, we're just going on chance and luck. I think there are some plans now in progress for student registration in September, and that s one thing I think I can commend the party on.

SUN: Do you think there is "intellectual snobbism" in the Democratic Party?

WHEELER: Yes, I think that's a major part of the problem. I think we've got a good deal of intellectual and academie elitism in the party. I could be the very same guy that I am right now, but if I were a foreman in a plant, I couldn't have been elected in this office.

SUN: Why do you think the Human Rights Party failed as a third party?

WHEELER: It's hard to say. I think sometimes it was a global idealism that just didn't fit with a lot of people. And then everybody changed, in the late sixties, early seventies.

SUN: Do you think a third party can exist in this town-especially with the defeat of preferential voting?

WHEELER: Only as a sort of a balance-of-power thing. I don't think a third party can exist as one of three major parties. The several years that I was familiar with what HRP was doing, it seemed almost suicidal-the goals they wanted, the way they voted. For example, you'd get an area that would be close, like the Fourth Ward-sometimes that ward is won by 150 votes or less. They would run a candidate, when you know damn well they would be getting four or five hundred votes out of four thousand. Where are you taking these votes? You're taking 90 per cent of them away from Democrats, and the Republican candidate ends up getting elected.

SUN: What does the Republican majority on City Council mean for minorities and lower income residents in Ann Arbor?

WHEELER: They have legislative goals for the city that tend to exclude or give low  priority to the needs of minorities or poor people. To a large degree, that might also be true of young people. They've said to me privately, "We're going to do things that people can see," And that means they'd like a high priority on fixing streets and downtown development. They are interested in getting more business, industry, and commerce into the community.

I don 't have any problems with some of that as a goal, because we've got to do something to increase the tax base. I am concerned about a viable downtown. But we're caught up in a number of other things of a broader nature than just our downtown and our business . . . When I talk about human services, expanded housing, improved neighborhoods, those things directly affect people, more people-not just a particular segment of the communty or a limited self-interest groupf

SUN: How do you plan to deal with the Republicans? How far will you go in using your veto to stop them?

WHEELER: As we talked about the budget this spring, the Republicans were concerned about whether I was going to veto particular line-items. l'll use it as much as I have to, and I think they're convinced of that, because I did veto four different measures at one blow. And it will happen again, if we have to use it again.

SUN: What are your legislative priorities for the coming year?

WHEELER: At the top of my list, l'd put the establishment of a Human Services Department, combining whatever the city has in the way of health care, legal services, day care, and youth and senior citizens programs with job training and community development programs.

Next, we've got to look at the whole question of housing in this town: the adequacy and quality of housing, the rents that are charged, the blighted or deteriorating neighborhoods.

Then we've got to get our land use plan through the Planning Commission. They've been working on this for four or five years, and it hasn't moved very fast.

SUN: How woud you like to see Ann Arbor grow? And how do you think the city's growth fits into regional growth patterns?

WHEELER: I am for regional planning, but not for regional government or control. We have more than half the population of the state here in Southeast Michigan. We do share some common needs and share some concerns for how we are going to survive, and we ought to plan how to best use the resources of southeast Michigan in a coordinated way. [But] there are many risks in this whole regionalization bit.

There are a couple of bills in legislature: one is a proposal to have experimental regional government in the seven southeastern counties, where you would elect maybe one person from the whole seven counties to be the czar, and have a commission where each county would be allocated membership by population. Washtenaw County would be at the mercy of what the folks in Wayne and Oakland wanted, and would lose a great deal of local control.

The second bill is a seven-county tax-base sharing program, which says that the counties must participate in sharing 50 per cent of their expanded tax base with communities that are not growing. I sat in with representativas from a number of communities in Washtenaw County recently, and they, like folks in other counties, were calling this the "Bail Out Detroit Bill." And I wrote a resolution, which our [Ann Arbor] Council passed, which was not anti-Detroit, which recognized that you can 't lose Detroit and Grand Rapids and expect to remain a viable state.

We recognized that things are happening in these urban centers that are not healthy for their people or this state. You take a mayor like Coleman Young . . . Coleman 's concerned because he sees regionalization as diluting the power that the Detroit community has, That part of regionalism can't be ignored.

SUN: How do you feel about the lawsuit that the policemen's union has fled opposing the gun control ordinance?

WHEELER: I guess l'm not greatly troubled by that lawsuit . . . my position is that the Ann Arbor Police Department will not set policy for this city; and the Teamsters Union, which represents many of them, does not set policy for this city. I would try to get the State Supreme Court, if necessary, to make a decision on the case. l'm not going to sit around and watch the Police Department, where maybe half of them don't live in the city and are not accountable to the citizens and don't live in the neighborhoods where the incidents occur, set policy for the city.

SUN: Do you plan to run again for mayor?

WHEELER: I honestly don't know. Four days out of the week I say "no," one day I say "yes," and two days I don't know.

Joe Davis and Maryanne George are freelance writers based in Ann Arbor and Pinckney, Michigan, respectively.