Small-Town Mayor Tackles Big Task

One of six children born to a family of farm workers in one of the poorest towns in rural America, Clarence Anthony seemed destined to be swept up in the migrant stream. First his father abandoned the family. Then Anthony became a father himself at age 17.

But he managed to buck the current.

Now 39 and in his 15th year as mayor of South Bay--where more than 90% of the 4,000 residents are black or Latino and nearly a third live below the poverty line--Anthony has a larger mission, as president of the National League of Cities.

What could a small-town mayor possibly know about running the nation’s largest, most influential municipal lobbying group, considering South Bay’s annual budget ($10.8 million) is less than Los Angeles spends each year on animal control?

Anthony was elected unanimously to the post in part because he has shown an ability to find common ground among rural and urban, hamlet and megalopolis. “The size of the city or village we come from doesn’t matter,” said Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. “We share the problems of crime, housing, transportation--all of the quality of life issues. And Clarence Anthony is a very energetic, very focused spokesman.”

Although the mayor’s schedule will keep him in Washington and on the road for much of the year, he insisted he won’t neglect the citizens of South Bay, whose perennial concerns include trash pickup and mosquito control.

But there are bigger problems here. Even with a new state prison, unemployment hovers near 30%. And almost 60% of adults have less than a high school education.

Anthony was first elected mayor at 24--and reelected six times. An affable man who prefers public policy to party politics, he has turned down several Democratic Party invitations to run for statewide office.

While vowing to work for all 17,000 of the league’s member and associated cities, including Los Angeles, Anthony said he also plans to use this year to bring jobs and improved housing to South Bay. “That’s my priority,” he said.

As a child, Anthony toiled in the fields and canning factories before his family settled down long enough for him to get serious about school. He put himself through Florida Atlantic University while working in a supermarket, and went on to earn a master’s degree in public administration.

He and his child’s mother never married, but the son they and their extended families raised has his own success story. Reidel Anthony, now 22, is a star NFL wide receiver, who, in 1997, signed a six-year, $7.3-million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

As mayor, Anthony’s annual salary is $3,800. He also has an income from a consulting business.

“After Reidel signed that contract,” recalled Anthony, “the first thing I did was help him set up a foundation to provide scholarships and attract private sector money for the people here at home. You have got to learn to give back, especially to those where you came from.”

One recent afternoon, the mayor surveyed his hometown, nestled against the south rim of Lake Okeechobee, surrounded by acres and acres of some of the richest, black-muck farmland in the country.

“We have a lot of substandard housing,” said Anthony as he drove through the dusty residential streets, with their mix of wood-frame houses, drab apartment buildings and vacant lots.

Anthony lives with his wife, Tammy, and their 10-year-old son, Clarence Jr., in a house just behind his mother’s. But the home with which he most identifies is about a half-mile down the road in a housing project called Okeechobee Center, the encampment of shacks featured in Edward R. Murrow’s muckraking 1960 television portrait of migrant life, “Harvest of Shame.”

The mayor says he didn’t realize how poor he was until he was in college and first saw the documentary that depicted his old neighborhood as the epitome of deprivation. “It was a shock because as a kid I didn’t know we were bad off,” he said. “All kids had to work.”

The low point of his tenure as mayor came in 1994, when the town’s only major employer, South Bay Growers, closed down after 47 years. Lost were a $17-million annual payroll and 1,300 jobs--including his mother’s.

“I felt I’d been a failure,” Anthony said. “I had been mayor for nine years, and we didn’t have an alternative industry.” After the closing, unemployment in South Bay soared above 50%.

The town’s economy got a boost two years ago with the opening of a minimum-security prison, which provides about 350 jobs. But the majority of those hired and trained were not former farm workers and, the mayor admitted, South Bay still teeters on the brink of economic ruin.

“When my year is up, the first question is, what did you do for your community?” Anthony said. “And if the answer is, I brought some industry here, or a pilot job skills program, or improved the police or housing--then I’ll consider my year a success.”

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.