Yo, Frankie’s Back : Philadelphia’s Original Hard-Hat Mayor Is Gunning for His Old Job

It’s 2 p.m. on a sweaty Saturday, and the crowd at Smitty’s Bar is getting antsy. They’ve been waiting for Frank the Tank since 1:30 and there’s no sign of him. Where is the big guy, for crying out loud?

“He’s comin’,” says a restless patron, knocking back beer chasers and brooding under a Phillies cap. “I know Frank Rizzo 40 years. He’s comin’.”

Outside, there’s a burst of honking cars and cheers from the sidewalk. Suddenly, an old metal door swings open and sunlight streams into the darkened bar, followed by a hulking, stoop-shouldered man in a Size 52 suit.

He’s perspiring, his thinning gray hair is mussed and he seems a little out of breath. But there’s no doubt about it--The Rizman has arrived.

“Hello everybody! How ya’ been? “ Rizzo says, plunging into the crowd and making his way around the triangular bar. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m running for mayor and I need your help. So how ya’ been?”

The response is electric. “Yo, Frankie!” shouts a woman, putting down her beer and raising a fist. “Frankie, baby, we love you!” Others push forward to slap him on the back, starting a chant of “Rizzo, Rizzo,” that drowns out Mick Jagger on the jukebox. “It’s killer time!” yells a construction worker at the back of the room. “This time, we’re gonna win.”

Warning: This is April, 1991, not a flashback to 1967. We’re in Northeast Philadelphia, and the guy shaking hands at Smitty’s is the same Frank Rizzo who once ran America’s toughest police department. The same guy who served two terms as mayor, palled around with Richard Nixon and bragged one election night: “I’m gonna make Attila the Hun look like a faggot.”

To many people, Rizzo is a political timepiece that’s best forgotten. But like it or not, he’s back. Indeed, veteran political observers here say the former mayor has an outside chance of reclaiming his old office in this year’s election. His first hurdle is the May 21 Republican primary, where he faces two lesser-known opponents.

As in the past, Rizzo draws much of his support from white working-class voters in the Italian, Irish, Polish and German neighborhoods that have traditionally formed his political bedrock. Although some of his backers make openly racist comments about Wilson Goode--the city’s first black mayor--Rizzo says his campaign does not exploit racial themes.

“I gotta shot and we’re going all the way,” he tells the cheering crowd at Smitty’s. “We’re gonna take back this city from the bleedin’ hearts.”

But no hard feelings, OK? Rizzo says he’s loosened up since the good old days, and people should give him a break. After all, everybody changes.

“I’m more mellow now,” he says. “I’ll listen more. Usually, if somebody says something I don’t like, now I sit and listen and smile and show ‘em my chicklets. I remember the day I wouldn’t do that.”

Remember Frank? He was the original hard-hat mayor--the man who wore a nightstick in his cummerbund and once threatened to beat up black revolutionaries if they came to town. With his enormous head, two-fisted temper and fingers the size of frankfurters, he was a character only Hollywood could dream up. And even then, it would take some doing: If Ralph Kramden ran full tilt into Jake LaMotta, Frank Rizzo would rise from the wreckage.

During his years at City Hall, 1971-79, he was always good for a snappy quote, and even his worst critics said Rizzo was a charming guy with a sense of humor. More important, he could point to some real achievements. He helped spur a building boom that transformed Philadelphia’s once-shabby downtown into a modern business district with new high-rise buildings and hotels.

But when it came to policing the nation’s fourth largest city, Rizzo was a disaster. In 1979, at the end of his second term, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against him and other top city officials, saying they encouraged a climate in which police brutality was out of control. The unprecedented federal lawsuit was dismissed for procedural reasons, but it led to key reforms, like stricter guidelines on police use of firearms.

On Rizzo’s watch, there were about 1,200 citizen complaints filed each year against the Police Department, compared to 179 last year, according to newspaper reports. Through it all, the tough-talking mayor defended his cops and told liberal critics to jump off a bridge if they didn’t like his policies. He ran the city with an iron hand, earning headlines from coast to coast.

But then Rizzo wore out his welcome, like a punch-drunk Rocky Balboa. He seemed all but washed up in 1978, when voters rejected a controversial ballot measure that would have allowed him to seek a third consecutive term. He hasn’t won a general election since then, and the national press began paying less attention to Rizzo, finally ignoring him altogether.

In Philadelphia, however, it’s been a different story. Although his political star faded, the big man never quite disappeared from view. He’s run for mayor twice since 1979, in 1983 and 1987, and is now in the middle of his fifth campaign. Four years ago, he lost a cliffhanger to Goode by less than 17,500 votes. It was the city’s closest race in 20 years.

Since then, Rizzo has remained in the spotlight by hosting “Frank Talk,” the city’s highest-rated afternoon radio show. Itching to get back into the political ring, he insists that his native city has gone downhill in the last 12 years and that only he can save it. It’s an open race, he says, because Goode is barred from seeking re-election and Philly wants a familiar face.

“The city is a basket case,” he tells the crowd at Smitty’s. “I drive the city. No cops. The dirtiest streets. Corruption everywhere. They’re stealin’ everything that isn’t nailed. I can make it better, with your help.”

In short order, Rizzo ticks off the rest of his platform: Get the homeless off the streets and into treatment centers for drug abuse and psychiatric care. No new taxes. Cut the fat at City Hall, and let the cops do their job.

When he’s finished, the crowd reaches out to grab his hands and begs him for autographs on wet cocktail napkins. Outside, a caravan of cars honks again, and people cheer as he re-emerges onto the sidewalk.

It’s just another day in Rizzoland.

As he has before, Rizzo spends much of his time pounding the pavement in South Philadelphia, the Italian area where he grew up, and in gritty neighborhoods like Kensington, where Smitty’s Bar is located and the old elevated subway rumbles through the streets.

The script hasn’t changed much since he first sought office in 1971. But this time there’s a difference. Rizzo turns 71 this year, and he says the current contest, win or lose, will be his last hurrah.

The story of his 1991 campaign says much about the continuing importance of ethnic politics and neighborhood power in urban America. In an age of television advertising, blow-dried candidates and slick brochures, Rizzo is waging an old-fashioned shoe-leather crusade that looks, smells and sounds like a political revival show from 50 years ago.

By all accounts, it’s an uphill struggle. The former mayor is running against the machine-backed candidate of the Republican party and is viewed as a long shot. Meanwhile, the media have criticized Rizzo’s free-swinging campaign, during which he has called his chief GOP opponent, former Dist. Atty. Ronald D. Castille, a “mental case” and a “drunk.”

To win, Rizzo must persuade thousands of Democratic voters to switch registration and back him in the GOP primary. He changed parties to run against Goode in 1987 and desperately needs Democratic support to overtake Castille, who is leading him in several polls by 5 to 10 points.

Four years ago, Rizzo convinced roughly 50,000 Democrats to cross over, a margin that helped him win the GOP primary. But fewer than 15,000 voters have come forward this year, and some observers doubt there will be many more.

“This guy is just an out-of-work cop looking for a job,” says Ron Javers, editor of Philadelphia magazine. “I think many people see Rizzo as a symbol of the politics of the past. But I also think many people are disgusted with the politics of the present. So he can’t help but be a polarizing figure.”

Even if he wins the GOP primary, Rizzo will face a greater obstacle in the Nov. 5 general election. Although there is no clear Democratic front-runner--and Goode’s hand-picked successor has fared poorly in the polls--Democrats have a 3-to-1 registration edge in Philadelphia. And blacks, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, compose 40% of the electorate. In Rizzo’s 1987 race against Goode, he won only 3% of black votes, and it is widely thought that he cannot win a citywide race without a better showing in black precincts.

Today, as in Rizzo’s mayoral years, Philadelphia is in a state of political upheaval. The city faces a $500-million budget deficit, violent crime is increasing and Goode never recovered from the 1985 MOVE incident, in which the city bombed the headquarters of a back-to-Africa cult, killing eleven people, including five children. There is widespread disillusionment with City Hall, a feeling among Democrats and Republicans alike that the city is out of control.

Yet others say this unease is not enough to sweep Rizzo back into office. Spencer Coxe, who ran the local American Civil Liberties Union while Rizzo was mayor and police chief, charges that his former nemesis is a has-been:

“He’s boring people to death. . . . He doesn’t offer voters anything new. He’s like a broken record and refuses to accept that fact.”

But even Coxe hedges his bet when asked if Rizzo will lose.

“Who knows?” he says. “Nixon fooled us, and this guy could fool us too. People are always counting him out, and he always keeps coming back.”

It’s a common view. Although Rizzo’s white-ethnic base of support is believed to be no more than one-third of GOP voters, it has traditionally turned out to support him in huge numbers. In 1987, for example, an amazing 85% of Italian voters went to the polls; the overwhelming number of them voted for Rizzo. That kind of turnout can make the difference in a primary in which a candidate needs only a plurality to win.

“Right now, I’d say it looks tough for him,” says Temple University Professor Michael Hooper, who has conducted several polls in recent months.

“But Rizzo is one guy for whom the polls mean less than other candidates. He’s got an unbelievably strong base of support, and these people adore him. They could pull off a surprise, because everybody knows him.”

Without question, the former mayor is a local institution. His name identification is higher than that of any other office-holder, including George Bush, and more voters have opinions about him--pro or con--than they do of the President, Hooper says. Few city politicians in America have such visibility.

The phenomenon becomes clear as Rizzo strolls the crowded sidewalks of Kensington, a mixed bag of Irish, Italian and German residents. Here, nobody’s talking about polls or post-mortems. They’re talking about taking the city back--and kicking butt.

“We have terrible crime in this neighborhood,” says Kathryn Simpson, a mother of four. “Just last night, they come down our street and tear our American flags down. Drug dealers. The coloreds. They trample flowers and broke windows. I don’t think he (Rizzo) would allow that if he gets in.”

Morgan Halder, a contractor wearing blue jeans, hands out campaign brochures to his friends and says flatly: “Frank’s gonna save this town.”

The question is, who’s he going to save it for?

With little prodding, the folks crowding around Rizzo on the sidewalk insist that he is their candidate and doesn’t court “the other half,” meaning blacks. They can’t wait for Goode to clean out his desk.

“It’s our turn,” says Elizabeth Smith, a longtime Rizzo supporter. “The coloreds got their own man, and we got ours. If you ask me, the whites are just too damn lazy. I pray on the bus every morning that he’ll get in this time.”

There are plenty of critics who say Rizzo is a lightning rod for racism, but others take a more moderate view. Charles Bowser, a black attorney who twice ran for mayor, agrees that Rizzo has angered minorities. Yet he doesn’t believe the candidate singled them out for rough treatment.

“He was heavy-handed before, but he was heavy-handed with everyone,” says Bowser, a Democrat who has clashed with Rizzo but retains a grudging respect for him. “There were perceptions that he didn’t adequately control police abuses. But I think everyone changes, and he’s changed too. They’re always trying to hang this sensational racist thing on him, and I don’t buy it.”

Has Rizzo changed? At first glance, he seems to be the same old Frank.

When he walks through Kensington, men and women rush up to the candidate, telling him that their fathers, sons, brothers and uncles once worked in the Police Department with him. He reminds people about his roots: The city’s first Italian-American police chief. The city’s first Italian-American mayor. The son of a cop who served for 45 years. The father of two kids.

All the while, advance men and bodyguards watch him carefully, viewing outsiders with suspicion. One aide, incredulous that an out-of-town paper is interested in Rizzo, insists that no questions be asked about police brutality and the uproar over the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

“Don’t get into that baloney out in California,” he warns. “That’s threadworn. It’s over. I mean it. None of that stuff about brutality.”

To some observers, however, Rizzo’s track record cannot be dismissed so easily. Peter Binzen, a journalist who co-authored a critical biography of the former mayor, says the former mayor and police chief had a knee-jerk tendency to back up his cops in virtually all incidents, no matter how brutal.

“I don’t see how he’s changed, to tell you the truth,” says Binzen. “He’s not offering anything new, and feelings about him here are very deeply ingrained by now. If you ask me, it’s the same old stuff.”

But others give Rizzo more credit, saying he has tried to accommodate himself to changing political realities.

“I think he’s more politic, and that’s either because he’s mellowed or has decided to be pragmatic,” says Mark Segal, a Philadelphia gay activist.

“A lot of people don’t know that he made calls to the state legislature for us when there was an attempt to add sexual-orientation protections to a bill on hate crimes. So that’s a difference. That’s a change.”

New or old, hard or soft, Rizzo talks and struts the same. Several hours after shaking hands at Smitty’s, he winds up his hectic campaign day at a small park in the nearby Mayfair neighborhood.

Kids gather around him, while curious adults wander in from the softball field and basketball courts. Grabbing a microphone, Rizzo tells the crowd not to write his political obituary until all the votes are counted.

“Let me tell you a story,” he says. “I was being interviewed by Mark Segal . . . he’s the guy that runs the gay press . . . and he asks me, ‘Mayor, what do you think your enemies want chiseled on your tombstone?’ And I says, Mark, they can chisel in: ‘He’s really dead. He’s really dead. ‘ “