When Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory announced that he’d be stepping down at the end of his seventh term, some in the black community called it good news for Anthony Foxx, a two-term councilman who earlier announced his plan to seek the post.

Foxx recently sat with Qcitymetro to talk about the 2009 race and his goal of being only the second African American elected to lead the city, following Harvey Gantt. He called McCrory’s decision a “non-event.”

“There are some issues that we’ve got to deal with in Charlotte that really have nothing to do with who my opponent is,” he said. “It doesn’t change how I’m approaching the campaign or anything we’re going to do.”

Below is an edited version of that interview:

Q. If elected, what would be your priorities?
“Crime, making some dramatic improvements in the way that we approach crime in the community. Our police chief is doing an outstanding job, in my opinion, of changing the focus to more of a neighborhood-based police model. It’s going to require some investment on our part in hiring new police officers, and we are going to face a challenge this current budget cycle in terms of meeting that challenge. But the upshot is there will be more boots on the ground.

“Secondarily, transportation is a huge issue for our community, and I think it’s going to continue being an issue as long as we’re wondering how we can afford to build the roads and the transit system we need.

“And I want to be an advocate for kids in the community. I’ve got two of my own. I think there are a number of areas that are very important for a mayor to have a say about. I think being an advocate for children who attend our public schools is a big deal. It's an areas where we’ve really not had a mayor talk a lot about those issues, but I will. I’ll be a voice. I won’t be the school superintendent, but I’ll try to stay on the advocacy side of that line.”

Q. Let’s go back to crime for a minute. Crime has very specific causes -- poverty, culture to some degree. What can a mayor do to address those issues?
“When I got on council, one of the first things I started working on was a business corridor improvement strategy, which was an effort to address poverty from the standpoint of trying to increase job growth and economic opportunity in some of our challenged neighborhoods. I believe that if you can create the opportunity for wealth, or at least a good standard of living, the people who are siting on that fence and looking at this choice of committing crime or living a life that is on the right side of the law will choose the right side of the law.

“But the other piece I think a mayor can have an impact on is talking about personal responsibility in an authentic way. I remember the comments that were made in the July Fourth incident a few years ago, when Pat McCrory called people thugs and gangsters. I think people understood what he was trying to say, but he didn’t come across as particularly vested in trying to make something different happen in the future.

“I think I’m the kind of person that can go into a lot of different parts of our community and speak with authenticity and say, ‘Look, there is some personal responsibility involved in this, too.’”

Q. As a council member, what accomplishments are you most proud of?
The business corridor strategy is one. It’s brought a new business park on Rozzells Ferry Road that’s bringing 125 jobs into a community that is high poverty and low education attainment.

“That corridor strategy extends not just to Rozzells Ferry Road. We’ve actually got work going on Beatties Ford Road, north Tryon Street, out in the Eastland area and out in the  Wilkinson/Freedom Drive area.

Q. What’s been your role in that?
“Advocate. When you’re on a council of 11, there is a fine line between taking the reigns of something and being a show horse and actually loosing the war because you’re trying to run out in front of something and gain attention. But the fact that I haven’t run out in front of things trying to garner attention doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing this.

“That project would not have happened had I not been there. I was the one to ask council to look into it. I was the one who spent many mornings pouring over budgets to try to figure out how we could create the capital to make the projects happen. I was the one who was at the stakeholder group meetings at 7:30 in the morning for many mornings over the course of seven months to help craft the strategy, and I spent a lot of time trying to understand how the economics of poverty work. So that was a signature issue for me.”

Q. One of the biggest criticism leveled against Pat McCrory is that he focused too much on uptown and not enough on the neighborhoods. Do you think that is a fair criticism?
In the words you just used, I think it’s fair. I think there is a balance. Our Center City is the living room of not only our city but the region. The work that has gone into making it that way is important work, so I would never say we shouldn’t have a vibrant Center City and a vibrant downtown. But have we missed opportunities to extend some of the vibrancy into other places? Yes, and that’s where I think I can also do some good.”

Q. Charlotte has not elected an African American mayor in 25 years, not since Harvey Gantt. Why do you think it has taken so long?
“I don’t know. Having grown up here when Harvey Gantt was mayor, one of the first things that happened was the Ku Klux Klan decided to march down Tryon Street. One of the things I remember about that, it’s emblazoned in my mind, was when Harvey was asked about it he said, ‘Well, have they applied for their permits?’ The answer was yes, and he said, ‘Well, they have the right to march.’

“That took a lot of people aback because you’ve got this guy who’s the first African American mayor of the city making a somewhat counterintuitive judgment that the right of this group, that clearly doesn’t like him serving in that capacity, is more important than proving a point. I think the brilliance of Harvey Gantt was that he was serving the entire community and not just one segment of it.”

Q. Do you think Barack Obama’s election has made it easier for African American candidates to get elected?
I think what Obama’s election has done is, it opened a door into American consciousness far wider than the one I was talking about in the Harvey Gantt example.

“In previous eras, if you were African American and you walked into a political environment, the expectation among everyone was that you would be the voice just for the African American community. That was the extent of what you were expected to know and talk about.

“But Barack Obama’s got to be concerned with Russia. He’s got to be concerned about the Middle East. He’s got to be concerned about the economy. Having an example of someone who is in service in the highest office in the land who is deeply engaged in the broadest issues out there I think proves the point that many generations of African Americans have made in different ways, that we love this country and we love this city as much as anyone else, and that we want to be engaged in conversations about the city that are much broader than sometimes we are led to do.”

Q. Do you have aspirations beyond the mayor’s office?
“My focus right now is running for mayor of Charlotte and doing the work I think is needed to make this community the best community it can be. Beyond that, I have no aspirations.”

Visit Anthony Foxx's website at www.anthonyfoxx.com.





 

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