RICHMOND, the capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War is today a majority-black city with a flourishing entertainment and cultural scene that is often celebrated in the national media. Its arty edginess has made it magnet for coffee-sipping, craft-beer coiffing, Vespa-riding millennials. But all that is currently being overshadowed by a bigger local story: an embarrassing mayoral election.
Richmond's election in November, when residents will pick a new mayor from seven candidates, including a former prosecutor and legislator who commuted from the jailhouse to the statehouse while doing time for having sex with a teenage girl, has put on display a sharply segmented city—one in which African-Americans control its politics and white people control its economy.
Rather than focusing on some tough issues—a burst of homicides, funding for struggling schools with high truancy rates and a replacement for its worn-out baseball stadium—the campaign is largely focused on an individual: Joe Morrissey, the frontrunner, whose checkered personal and professional history, going back more than two decades, might be expected to...Continue reading
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