The New Urban Republican : Riordan and other big-city Republican mayors know that anti-tax, anti-government policies won’t solve urban problems.

Within the traditionally Democratic urban core a new kind of Republican may be emerging. Fueled by mayoral victories in such Democratic bastions as Los Angeles and Jersey City, neo-Republicanism offers an approach to big-city problems that transcends the anti-tax, anti-government religion popularized by Ronald Reagan.

Less willing to merrily sing the less-government-the-better hymn, the neo-Republicans are more inclined toward a pragmatism that values efficiency. Governmental action, they recognize, can at times be the most efficient solution. To this extent, they are carriers of a strain of Progressive Republicanism, especially strong in the West during the early 20th Century, that sought not only to apply business methods to government, but also to use the public sector as a means of assisting market forces.

The emergence of such big-city Republican mayors as Richard Riordan also promises to reverse a decade-long party habit of neglecting cities and ethnic minorities. Once the representative of the ascendant industrial America of the late 19th Century and the standard bearer of minority rights, the Grand Old Party has chiefly evolved into a party of Anglo nostalgia, with its strongest support coming from the most culturally conservative and homogeneous parts of the population.

Riordan, by contrast, received more than 40% of L.A.’s Latino vote and greater than 50% of the city’s Jewish vote on his way to City Hall. Bret Schundler, Jersey City’s new mayor, was elected by a population that is better than two-thirds minority. And Rudolph W. Giuliani, the GOP mayoral candidate in New York City, is assembling a coalition composed of Jewish, Latino and Asian voters, plus the city’s small conservative core.

But voter appeal across racial and ethnic lines alone does not make a neo-Republican. The necessity of dealing with the often brutal and grinding reality of city life allows urban Republicans no refuge in conservative dogma. The facile anti-government homilies that resonate so well in Newport Beach, or among country clubbers in Kansas, are meaningless in the face of the pressing problems of a Harlem or a South Los Angeles.

As custodians of the cities, neo-Republicans must break with the protect-the-haves conservatism of Sen. Robert Dole. In the big cities, improving the lot of the have-nots is critical not only to the poor, but also to the middle class and business community.

This often means that neo-Republicans must form alliances with urban liberals. For example, Riordan and Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) have joined forces to bring more federal resources to the city. Similarly, Giuliani has lined up with Herman Badillo, a well-known Latino politician, in his drive to unseat Mayor David M. Dinkins.

This does not mean that neo-Republicans condone huge tax increases. They well know that high taxation and overregulation are strangling the urban economy. To them, lowering taxes is primarily a means to a socially beneficial end, not an end in itself or some form of secular religion.

Taxes aren’t the only area in which neo-Republicans are more than conventional Democrats in elephantine garb. Both Riordan and Schundler, for example, are quite open about their strong religious orientations. They do not see their spiritual moorings as fundamentally hostile to others and have learned that such themes as family, self-help and order have broad voter appeal.

Still, Riordan cannot afford to even wink and nod at the politics of the Christian right. He may quietly accept such support, but would be unlikely to publicly rally under its banner. For any neo-Republican running in multiethnic, urban America, overt links to the Christian right would weaken ties to those groups--gays, Jews and cultural liberals--crucial to urban success.

Another clear sign of Riordan’s more inclusive Republicanism is the variety of people he has appointed to run his administration. Gays, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans--groups on the margin, at best, of traditional Republicanism--hold powerful positions at City Hall.

Indeed, neo-Republicans’ approaches to race and immigration issues serve to distinguish them from the more mainstream GOP. Riordan has refused to engage in the kind of immigrant-bashing that has become the stock and trade of suburban-based Republicans such as Gov. Pete Wilson. “They’re human beings,” Riordan recently told a crowd of L.A. community leaders at a local synagogue. “I don’t care if they are legal or illegal.” The mayor of the quintessential city of immigrants could not have said much else and still be an effective leader.

In terms of programs, neo-Republicans do not differ substantially from those Democrats who embrace the New Democrat philosophy that Bill Clinton once professed. Yet, the apparent inability of these Democrats to gain strong influence, if not control, of their party has helped to create a opening for the neo-Republicans--especially at the level of big-city politics.

But it was two events--last year’s riots in Los Angeles and the 1991 anti-Hasidic “pogrom” in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section--that turned neo-Republicans into serious political competitors in the cities. In Los Angeles, many middle-class Democrats, particularly those living in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside, were alienated by what they regarded as a “soft” attitude toward rioters among their more liberal fellow Democrats. In New York, Dinkins seemed reluctant to confront thugs who vented their rage on Jews and their property after the August, 1991, accidental death of a young black man in Crown Heights.

But neo-Republicans owe their electoral success to more than racially charged incidents. Jersey City, for example, had become so economically and socially dysfunctional that even poor, usually Democrat-leaning voters felt that things couldn’t get worse under Schundler. Most working-class Angelenos felt the same way last June. New Yorkers, keenly aware of their own city’s precipitous decline, increasingly feel much the same about Dinkins.

To sustain their appeal, however, neo-Republicans will have to take on the entrenched bureaucratic establishments and ethnic bosses who have long controlled government in most urban cores. The key tests will come in three areas: the restructuring of government services, fighting crime and reviving the urban economy.

In most cities, some form of privatization or contracting out of services seems almost compulsory for neo-Republican success. The need to get more for less and the fear that raising taxes may further hurt already-weak economies have made contracting city services--as a way to cut costs and, in some cases, raise revenue--a viable option.

Indianapolis Republican Mayor Steven Goldsmith talks about this strategy in classic free-market terms: doing to government what Sam Walton did to retailing. In his city, some services, such as window washing, have been cut by 61%; millions have been saved by compelling government workers to compete with private contractors. A similar approach has worked in the so-called 77 “contract cities” in Southern California. These cities--Lakewood, La Mirada and the Silicon Valley burg of Cupertino, to name three--generally spend less than half as much on such essential services as street cleaning, sanitation and park maintenance as do non-privatized communities.

But Los Angeles is no La Mirada. As Riordan is already learning, privatization schemes must overcome the opposition of a strong Civil Service tradition and powerful public-employee unions.

Finding innovative ways to turn back the rising tide of criminality in times of tight budgets is no less challenging. Norwalk’s strategy of using lower-paid public-safety officers and relying on citizen patrols is cost-effective. But getting the Police Protective League to go along with a similar approach in Los Angeles would be formidable, at best.

Finally, neo-Republicans must prove they are effective salesmen for their cities. Democratic politics have turned many core cities into economic Chernobyls; neo-Republicans will need to use their new power in City Hall to attract both new investment and persuade local businesses to expand within the inner city. To make their case, they must prove that the market system can be made to work for urban America.

Here may be the most promising opportunity for Riordan and neo-Republicans. Already, Schundler has used his private-sector wiles--and the promise of less regulation and lower tax rates than neighboring New York--to lure financial-service firms to his city. Riordan has used his persuasive skills to keep at least one major apparel firm, Carole Little, in town.

Riordan has also begun lessening the city’s regulatory burdens, starting in communities hardest hit by the riots. And he has made a special point of cultivating small manufacturers, developers and other entrepreneurs who suffered under the maddening bureaucracy at City Hall.

Despite huge obstacles in their path, the neo-Republicans represent a promising new brand of post-Reaganite conservatism, one that attacks rather than avoids the most pressing economic and social issues. If they are even mildly successful, they will present a serious challenge to Democrats who have long taken big cities for granted.