Goode Show?

Running a textbook campaign

His platform oratory is almost breathtakingly dull. "With fiscal stability, good management and an improved bond rating," promises W. Wilson Goode, 45, on the verge of becoming the city's first black mayor, "Philadelphia will be able to raise the level of public capital investment." Philadelphians may be yawning, but they are not turned off. Republican Candidate John Egan Jr., 40, ex-chairman of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, trails Goode's 42% in one poll by 19 points, while the independent contender, former City Controller Thomas Leonard, 37, has a mere 12%.

Goode's lack of pizazz may seem old hat to citizens accustomed to the business-like but uninspiring administration of retiring Mayor William J. Green and much preferable to the blustering machismo of ex-Mayor Frank Rizzo. Indeed, Goode squashed Rizzo's attempt at a flamboyant comeback in the May Democratic primary by a healthy 9-point margin.

Goode, the city's managing director until the campaign, has run for the office in textbook style, waving from old-fashioned motorcades, which snake almost daily through the city's black and ethnic neighborhoods. The Wharton School graduate soberly stresses his 17-year record of public service and painstakingly delineated "multipoint programs." His economic development plan is so detailed, Egan sneers, that "Wilson Goode has more positions than The Joy of Sex."

Goode shrugs off such mild taunts and ignores uglier ones. Goode says that in Philadelphia, unlike Chicago (where bitter racial overtones preceded Harold Washington's victory), the fact that he is black is unimportant in the campaign. "I think I've transcended race by focusing on the issues," he asserts.

Goode's base is the city's 39% black electorate. But he also got 23% of the white vote in the primary, despite Rizzo's attempts to link Goode to the hot rhetoric of Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson. In fact, Goode pointedly did not invite Jackson to appear on his behalf then and has not since.

After the May primary, Rizzo came around and endorsed Goode. Last week Egan suggested that Goode had "cut a deal" with Rizzo, allegedly promising a high-level post at Philadelphia's gas company in exchange for Rizzo's endorsement. Egan later lamely admitted his sole source was a rumor he had heard "on the street."

Goode hopes to garner a third of the white vote, thereby emerging as a majority mayor. Such a win would help dim the nation's memory of Chicago's sometimes ugly mayoral battle. Goode would then be the fourth black mayor running one of the nation's ten largest cities. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.