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Ralph J. Perk, the “New Ethnicity” and the Making of Urban Ethnic Republicans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2017
Abstract
Historians seeking to explain the late twentieth-century rightward shift of urban ethnic whites have tended to ignore the shifting meaning and content of white ethnic identity in this transition, and the utility of these changes to conservative political discourse. This article, focussing on the ethnic strategies of the Republican mayor of Cleveland, Ralph Perk, seeks to illustrate the importance of the “New Ethnicity” of the 1970s, and its reconceptualization of white ethnicity as a series of “values,” in the making of urban ethnic Republicans. In doing so it reorients our understanding of Perk – the “Ethnic Mayor” – and places ethnicity at the heart of the conservative insurgency reshaping urban and national politics during this period.
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References
1 I use “ethnic” here as it was used during the 1970s and in 1984, to represent white, European American ethnic groups, largely Southern and Eastern European, Catholic and typically working or middle-class. Hereafter I will use “white ethnic” to describe these groups. In 1960s and 1970s Cleveland but also the nation, Jews and Irish Americans were typically considered ethnically (if not racially) distinct from the “ethnic” designation. Also excluded from this “ethnic” designation, and identified by “race” rather than “ethnicity,” were Hispanics (less of a feature in Cleveland politics, also seen as distinct but also racially so, neither “ethnic” nor “white”), Asians and African Americans.
2 “Ethnic Democrats Seen as a Top GOP Priority,” New York Times, 18 Oct. 1984, D27.
3 Ibid.
4 At the start of the 1970s there were less than 30,000 registered Republicans in Cleveland, compared to 209,000 Democrats. See “Garofoli, Perk Take Different Routes,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1 Aug. 1971, A4.
5 “Ethnic Cleveland,” Washington Post, 13 Aug. 1973, A1.
6 For examples see Phillips, Kevin, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1969)Google Scholar; Scammon, Richard and Wattenberg, Ben, The Real Majority (New York: Coward-McCann, 1971)Google Scholar; Greenberg, Stanley, Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Edsall, Thomas and Edsall, Mary, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1991)Google Scholar.
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9 Edward Whelan, “Ralph Perk's Flight to Washington,” Cleveland Magazine, May 1974, at http://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/the-read/articles/ralph-perk's-flight-to-washington; “Ralph Perk, 85, a Republican Who Led Cleveland in the 1970s,” New York Times, 23 April 1999, A23.
10 On Perk's “racist appeal” see Campbell, Thomas, “Cleveland: The Struggle for Stability,” in Bernard, Richard, ed., Snowbelt Cities: Metropolitan Politics in the Northeast and Midwest since World War II (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 122–23Google Scholar. On his “law and order” candidacy and appeals to white racial anxieties see Moore, Leonard, Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 134–43Google Scholar; and Hunter, Deborah Atwater, “The Aftermath of Carl Stokes: An Analysis of Political Drama in the 1971 Cleveland Mayoral Campaign,” Journal of Black Studies, 8, 3 (March 1978), 337–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For contemporary press coverage of Perk which makes this point see “Conservative Victories in Major Cities Reflect Continuing Racial Polarization,” New York Times, 3 Nov. 1971, 32.
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15 Lassiter, Matthew, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 4–5Google Scholar.
16 Cleveland Memory Project, Ralph J. Perk timeline, at www.clevelandmemory.org/mayors/perk/timeline.pdf; “Perk Candidacy Good for the City,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 May 1969, 16A. Perk's popularity is illustrated by his increasing margin of victory in county auditor elections. He steadily increased his majority from 20,000 votes in 1962 to nearly 100,000 four years later and 143,000 in 1970. See “Perk Extends Victory Story,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 29 Sept. 1971, 8.
17 Moore, Leonard, “Carl Stokes of Cleveland,” in Colburn, David and Adler, Jeffrey, eds., African-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 80–106, 82Google Scholar; Campbell, 109–16; Miller, Carol Poh and Wheeler, Robert, Cleveland: A Concise History, 1796–1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 157–58Google Scholar; Bernard, 268–70. Indeed, by 1960 under half of Cleveland's white population lived in the inner city, compared to over 60 percent just a decade earlier. The population of suburban Mayfield grew by 193 percent in this period, and the community of Lyndhurst by 240 percent. Residential and generational change meant that the number of foreign-born ethnic whites resident in Cleveland fell from 20 percent of the population in 1940 to half that in 1960.
18 Guest, Avery and Weed, James, “Ethnic Residential Segregation: Patterns of Change,” American Journal of Sociology, 81, 5 (March 1976), 1088–1111Google Scholar; Greeley, Andrew, “The Catholic Suburbanite,” in Greeley, The Church and the Suburbs (New York: Paulist Press, 1963), 53–61Google Scholar.
19 Campbell, 111, 116; “Negro in Running for Cleveland Mayor as Race Issues Intensify Battle,” New York Times, 24 Oct. 1965, 77; “Negroes Show Voting Power in Contest with Racial Issues,” New York Times, 3 Nov. 1965, 31; “Cleveland Negro Defeats Mayor,” New York Times, 4 Oct. 1967, 1.
20 For an excellent survey of Stokes's record in office see Moore, Carl B. Stokes.
21 “Garofoli, Perk Take Different Routes.”
22 “History: The Nationality Movement of Cuyahoga County,” n.d., Box 1, Folder 2, Ralph J. Perk Papers (MSS 4456), Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Cleveland, OH.
23 Ibid.; “Perk Starts Nationality Unity Drive,” Garfield Heights Tribune, 15 April 1965, copy in Box 2, Folder 17, Perk Papers. Perk often drew analogies between the ANM's activity and Stokes's mobilization of black voters, which itself had, ironically, actively replicated an earlier Democratic machine tradition of mobilizing individual national and ethno-racial blocs for votes. In 1969, Perk told the Plain Dealer that, “if 80–85% of Mayor Stokes’ supporters can turn out and vote for him, then there is no reason why 80–85% of our supporters cannot come out and vote for Ralph Perk.” See “Perk Law, Order Talk Cheered,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 22 Oct. 1969, 6A.
24 “History: the Nationality Movement of Cuyahoga County.”
25 “Perk Made an Honorary Polish Vet,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7 June 1965, 5; “Negro in Running for Cleveland Mayor”; “GOP Challenger Mirrors Old-Style Ethnic Values,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2 Nov. 1969, 1A; “Trials Beset Him, but Perk Keeps Faith,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 21 Oct. 1973, 1A.
26 Perk speech to Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, 3 May 1968, copy in Box 2, Folder 17, Perk Papers.
27 Letter, Jim Howard to Spiro Agnew and Leonard Garment, 9 Sept. 1968, Box 3, Folder 44, Perk Papers; nationalities for Nixon–Agnew press release, n.d., Perk Papers.
28 “1969 No Political Slouch, Either,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 12 April 1969, 9A. All election data from Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections, at http://uselectionatlas.org.
29 Letter, Dan Tyler Moore to Hubert Humphrey, 14 Aug. 1968, “Cor., by State: Ohio–Pa.,” Box 5-1, 1968 Presidential Campaign Files, Hubert Humphrey Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN; “Ohio – Get Out the Vote,” n.d., “Ohio: Correspondence and Misc.,” Box 12-7, Hubert Humphrey Papers.
30 “Next 48 Hours are ‘Do or Die’ for Ralph Perk,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 31 Oct. 1971, 1AA.
31 Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity, 9, 14.
32 For the postwar faith in ethnic assimilation see Herberg, Will, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (New York: Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar; Gordon, Assimilation in American Life; Goldman, Eric, The Crucial Decade – And After (New York: Knopf, 1962), 128–32Google Scholar. For an analysis of assimilation's unravelling in New York City and the persistence of ethnic and racial conflict, which illustrates the importance of dwindling Irish and Italian political power alongside growing black militancy in driving this process, see Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
33 For a contemporary account of the emergence of a new ethno-cultural politics in this period see Scammon and Wattenberg, The Real Majority. For two more recent analyses see Shafer, Byron and Claggett, William, The Two Majorities (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Cowie, Jefferson, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: New Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
34 For the powerful legislative impact of the civil rights revolution see Skrentny, John, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
35 On the left–liberal basis of much of the “New Ethnicity” see Joe Merton, “Rethinking the Politics of White Ethnicity,” Historical Journal, 55, 3) (Sept. 2012), 731–56.
36 “A White NAACP Set Up in Newark,” New York Times, 4 May 1973, 79; “Ethnics’ Strongarm,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 24 Sept. 1972, 6A; “Ethnics Come of Age as Power Bloc Here,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7 Feb. 1972, 5A; “What Became of Our Dream?, Ethnics Ask,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 17 Jan. 1971, 1AA.
37 “What Became of Our Dream?”; Baroni, Geno, “Ethnicity and Public Policy,” in Tomasi, Silvano and Wenk, Michael, eds., Pieces of a Dream: The Ethnic Worker's Crisis with America (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1972), 4Google Scholar; Novak, Michael, “The New Ethnicity,” Center, 7 (July–Aug. 1974), 18–25Google Scholar; Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 288–90Google Scholar, original emphasis.
38 “Ethnic Power!”, Newsweek, 21 Dec. 1970, 30; Scammon quoted in Weed, Perry, The White Ethnic Movement and Ethnic Politics (New York: Praeger, 1973), 217Google Scholar.
39 “Trials Beset Him”; “GOP Challenger Mirrors Old-Style Ethnic Values.” On Perk as “Cleveland's number one ethnic” see Box 86, Folder 1337, Perk Papers.
40 Novak, Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, 30.
41 Statement by County Auditor Ralph Perk, 25 June 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers, emphasis in original; “The Job for the Next Mayor – As It Looks to Perk,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 4 May 1969.
42 “Perk Draws Growing Number of Nationality Endorsements,” 15 Oct. 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers; Perk remarks to “Ethnic Expo,” Shaker Heights High School, 28 April 1975, Box 88, Folder 1378, Perk Papers.
43 Statement by Nicholas Bucur, chairman of Committee for a Non-Partisan Primary, 18 Jan. 1971, Box 33, Folder 616, Carl B. Stokes Papers (MSS 4370), WRHS; “Perk Blasts Stokes, Enters Mayor Race,” Cleveland Press, 1 April 1971, 1.
44 Moore, Carl B. Stokes, 180–81.
45 Ibid., 105; “Perk Out in Front,” Time, 5 Oct. 1973, 21–22.
46 Editorial, Cleveland Call and Post, 13 Oct. 1973, copy in Box 30, Folder 441, Perk Papers.
47 Perk speech to Woodrow Wilson School, 3 May 1968.
48 Letter, Bucur to Perk, 23 Sept. 1969, Box 32, Folder 434, Perk Papers; press release, “Perk Draws Growing Number of Nationality Endorsements”; Perk quoted in Cleveland Press, 15 June 1969.
49 “Perk Swears in 1,000 as Campaign Managers at Polka Rally,” Cleveland Press, 24 Oct. 1969, A13; “Perk Opens Campaign,” Cleveland Press, 9 Oct. 1969, C7; Perk speech to Croatian Pensioners Banquet, Croatian Home, 12 Oct. 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers.
50 Moore, “Carl Stokes of Cleveland,” 100.
51 “What Became of Our Dream, Ethnics Ask”; Perk speech to the American Nationalities Movement, n.d. [1971], Box 88, Folder 1377, Perk Papers; “Nationalities Honor Perk at Banquet,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6 Oct. 1975.
52 Market Opinion Research, “A Study of Candidates and Issues in the Cleveland Mayoral Election”; telegram, Southwest Taxpayers to Perk, 2 Nov. 1971, Box 30, Folder 409, Perk Papers, emphasis added.
53 Command Inc. Radio-TV-Transit advertising proposal for Mayor Ralph Perk reelection campaign, 14 Aug. 1973, Box 30, Folder 409, Perk Papers; Perk remarks to “Ethnic Expo.” Sadly for Perk, this rhetorical strategy did not translate into policy success as mayor. Despite his attempts at efficiencies the city sank further into debt and over half of the federal subsidies for economic development received by the city during his tenure were either misspent or went uncontracted. Perk's relationship with the city's business leaders collapsed completely. See “City Awaiting Leadership Renaissance,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 20 Aug. 1972.
54 Neighbourhood preservation and revitalization were a key part of the white ethnic movement's national agenda – and national politics – during the 1970s. See Suleiman Osman, “The Decade of the Neighborhood,” in Schulman and Zelizer, Rightward Bound, 106–27, 118–19; Looker, Benjamin, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 259–89, 309–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 Glazer, Nathan, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 188–89Google Scholar; Nicholas Pileggi, “Saturday Italians,” New York World Journal Tribune, 15 Jan. 1967, 14, original emphasis; Novak, Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, 69. Elsewhere Novak argued that all political programmes should be measured against the criterion that “what helps family and neighbourhood is good; what injures them is bad.” See Novak, Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, 274.
56 “Perk Opens Campaign”; letter, Bucur to Perk, 24 Sept. 1969, Box 32, Folder 434, Perk Papers.
57 Perk speech to Croatian Pensioners Banquet, Croatian Home, 12 Oct. 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers; “Perk Blasts Stokes, Enters Mayor Race,” Cleveland Press, 1 April 1971, 1.
58 The Slovak American writer Paul Wilkes, who was brought up in Cleveland, captured ethnic anxieties over this process of neighbourhood transition in a New York Times essay on his old East Side neighbourhood of Buckeye-Shaker. See Paul Wilkes, “As the Blacks Move In, the Ethnics Move Out,” New York Times, 24 Jan. 1971, SM9. Perk's papers also contain many letters from ethnic constituents alerting him to the spate of black-on-white crimes committed in transitional ethnic neighbourhoods such as Buckeye Road. See Box 1, Folder 1, Perk Papers.
59 Between 1965 and 1980 the city's population fell by nearly a third, from 810,000 to 574,000. See Campbell, “Cleveland: The Struggle for Stability,” 124.
60 “Perk Opens Campaign,” Cleveland Press, 9 Oct. 1969, C7; Perk speech to Croatian Pensioners Banquet; Perk speech to Polish Women's Hall, 8 Oct. 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers; Perk quoted in “Ethnic Cleveland.”
61 Benjamin Looker argues that this glorification of the ethnic enclave served as a means of diagnosing the “social sickness” of the ghetto amid discussion of an “urban crisis.” See Looker, Nation of Neighborhoods, 143.
62 The poem read, “I am a candidate for mayor of Cleveland / Here I was born / Here I married a Cleveland girl / Here by God's blessing our family came to us / And here, in the same neighbourhood, same home, we have lived our lives together / My home city has been good to me.” See Perk, statement announcing candidacy for mayor, 25 June 1969, Box 5, Folder 85, Perk Papers.
63 List of “People for Perk” campaign events, Oct. 1973, Box 30, Folder 411, Perk Papers; “Ethnic Cleveland.”
64 “Perk Quips Poke Needle at Stokes,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 30 Oct. 1969.
65 For a critique of these policies see Swanstrom, Todd, The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985), 107–13Google Scholar.
66 Memo, Harry Volk to Perk, 24 Nov. 1976, Box 30, Folder 412, Perk Papers; Campbell, “Cleveland: The Struggle for Stability,” 124; “Buckeye-Woodland Rails at Perk on GOP Plank,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1 Aug. 1976, 10.
67 On populism, class and conservatism see Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 221–68Google Scholar; Novak, Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, 271. In outlining the “New Ethnicity” Novak suggested that it reflected a “discomfort with the sense of identity one is supposed to have … universalist, ‘melted,’ ‘like everyone else’.” Similarly, white ethnic activist Geno Baroni feared that his “nephews and nieces will grow up like Wonder Bread – no crust, no identity.” See Novak, “The New Ethnicity,” 18–25, original emphasis; Baroni quoted in “The Melting Pot Didn't,” New York Times, 30 Dec. 1979, DX5; and for Novak's antimodernity and attacks on a WASP “superculture” see Novak, Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, 124–25, 239–43.
68 “GOP Challenger Mirrors Old-Style Ethnic Values”; “Cleveland's Polish Heart Beats On,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7 April 1974.
69 “Perk Quips Poke Needle at Stokes”; “Perk Draws Bead on Stokes, Co.,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 19 Oct. 1971, 20D.
70 Perk speech to Polish Women's Hall; “Perk Swears in 1,000 as Campaign Managers at Polka Rally.”
71 Perk speech to the American Nationalities Movement, n.d. [1971], Box 88, Folder 1377, Perk Papers.
72 Perk, statement announcing candidacy for mayor; Moore, “Carl B. Stokes,” 135; “1969 No Political Slouch”; “GOP Challenger Mirrors Old-Style Ethnic Values,” emphasis added.
73 “Perk Blasts Stokes, Enters Mayor Race”; “Cleveland's Polish Heart Beats On.”
74 “Cleveland Needs Ralph Perk,” statement by Polish Committee for Ralph J. Perk, n.d. [1971], Box 6, Folder 88, Perk Papers; telegram, Stella Walsh to Perk, 3 Nov. 1971, Box 30, Folder 409, Perk Papers; telegram, George Voinovich to Perk, 2 Nov. 1971, Perk Papers.
75 Perk remarks to “Ethnic Expo.” Again, ethnic Clevelanders responded to and even internalized Perk's “little people” discourse. Ethnic supporters interviewed at Perk's 1975 inauguration ceremony aligned “little people” with their own identities as “nationality people,” “ethnics” or “the average guy.” One even told the Plain Dealer, “I'm one of the little people he [Perk] talks about.” See “‘Little People’ for Perk,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 11 Nov. 1975.
76 “Battle for Ethnic Vote,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 Sept. 1979, D20; “Rhodes–Voinovich Alliance Working Well for Both,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9 Oct. 1978, B5.
77 Perk, remarks to Republican mayors’ conference, Chicago, 30 April 1977, reproduced in Kesaris, Paul, ed., Papers of the Republican Party, Part 2: Reports and Memoranda of the RNC Research Division, 1938–1980 (Frederick: University Publications of America, 1986)Google Scholar, Reel 10, Reel 15, Frame 246; “Ethnic Tide and Nixon,” Washington Post, 2 Oct. 1972, A23.
78 RNC research report, “‘72 Election Report: The Cities – Cleveland,” 27 Nov. 1972, reproduced in Kesaris, Papers of the Republican Party, Reel 12, Frame 0197; “Splintering the Great Coalition,” Time, 20 Nov. 1972; author's interview with Taras Szmagala, Washington, DC, 11 March 2007.
79 Gavin, William, Street Corner Conservative (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1975), 106, 112–13Google Scholar.
80 Memo, Bill Gavin to Martin Anderson, n.d., in “Gavin, William, 1978–79,” Box 3, Deaver and Hannaford Inc. Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, original emphasis; memo, Gavin to Peter Hannaford and Anderson, 10 April 1979, Deaver and Hannaford Inc. Papers.
81 Memo, Dole to Meese, Baker and Deaver, re “Ethnic/Catholic Strategy,” in “Proposed Action Plan for Ethnics,” 2 Nov. 1982, OA12450, Morton Blackwell Files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA. George H. W. Bush would deploy a similar strategy in 1988, telling an ethnic audience, “We're talking values, values that join all of us,” and that while his opponent Michael Dukakis could speak Spanish, “I speak our language of ethnic values and pride in America.” See “Bush Lists Foreign Policy Goals,” Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug. 1988, B1; “Bush, Courting Ethnic Vote, Counters Dukakis's Themes,” New York Times, 23 July 1988, 1.
82 Lassiter, Matthew, “Suburban Strategies: The Volatile Center in Postwar American Politics,” in Jacobs, Meg, Novak, William and Zelizer, Julian, eds., The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 327–49Google Scholar.