In Philadelphia, a Brash Ex-Mayor Draws Comparisons to Donald Trump

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/us/politics/frank-rizzo-philadelphia-donald-trump.html

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His style has evoked polarizing political figures like Barry Goldwater, George Wallace and Edward I. Koch, but as the presidential campaign moves through Pennsylvania, Donald J. Trump is reviving memories of someone who stirred local passions like few others: Frank L. Rizzo of Philadelphia.

A former police officer who was nicknamed Big Bambino, Mr. Rizzo rose to power during the city’s crime-ridden 1960s and ’70s, cracking down on lawlessness with a legendary bellicosity.

After becoming police commissioner, he rounded up homosexuals late at night, forced the Black Panthers to strip down in the streets and once appeared with a nightstick stuffed in the cummerbund of his tuxedo. As mayor, he threatened to “break the heads” of criminals and boasted that his Police Department was strong enough to invade Cuba.

While Mr. Trump has yet to wield such power, his tone as a candidate has been seen as similarly provocative, stoking a comparable zeal among supporters. And Mr. Trump, given his comments on immigrants and Muslims, has stirred similar unease over what he might do in office.

For many in Philadelphia who remember the Rizzo era — some with horror, others nostalgically — Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is a case of déjà vu.

“Frank was outspoken, and Trump is certainly outspoken,” said Michael Cibik, a Republican who ran for City Council while Mr. Rizzo was running for re-election in the 1980s. “Imagewise, they are both a little bigger than life, and they touched on hot-button issues at the time.”

Mr. Rizzo, an imposing figure who was briefly in the Navy, served two terms as the city’s mayor, from 1972 to 1980. A blue-collar Democrat while in office, he later became a Republican and ran unsuccessfully two more times before dying of a heart attack in 1991 at age 70.

While Mr. Trump talks tough on terrorism and immigration, Mr. Rizzo’s core message was bringing order and security to unruly streets. The news media has been a foil for both men, with Mr. Rizzo once calling a television reporter a “crumb, creep, lush coward” and threatening to beat him up along with his camera crew. Plain-spoken populism, simple messages and the occasional use of profanity on the stump also form a common thread.

“The way to treat criminals is spacco il capo,” Mr. Rizzo once said, using the Italian for “break their heads.” And according to his Philadelphia Inquirer obituary, he used a gay slur to suggest during one of his campaigns that his toughness would make Attila the Hun seem like a weakling in comparison.

Despite Mr. Rizzo’s harsh tone, even those who clashed with him could not deny his natural political talent. Edward G. Rendell, a former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor, said that Mr. Rizzo, like Mr. Trump, could be endearing when he wanted and was loyal to his allies.

“Both are magnetic personalities, could literally fill a room and had a great deal of personal charm,” said Mr. Rendell, who was running against Mr. Rizzo at the time of Mr. Rizzo’s death.

That charm could not always carry Mr. Rizzo as the city’s electorate changed, even with his efforts to soften his tone later in life. W. Wilson Goode, who was Philadelphia’s first black mayor and twice defeated Mr. Rizzo — once in a Democratic primary and once in the general election — recalled that while Mr. Rizzo tended to have the most passionate supporters, he struggled to broaden his base in the 1980s beyond white voters who wanted a crime-fighting mayor.

“He did have a kind of passionate fringe of people that could be readily identified,” Mr. Goode said of Mr. Rizzo. “It was law-and-order folks, people who were against crime, people who were emotionally racist.”

He added, “White males were the people who supported Frank Rizzo.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign has also been buttressed by white male voters, including many who feel disaffected by politics or left behind by a changing economy. Polls show Mr. Trump poised to do well in Pennsylvania’s primary election on Tuesday, and the remnants of the Rizzo coalition could back him in Philadelphia.

“People call saying, ‘I want to register so I can vote for Trump,’” said Joe DeFelice, chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party, who said he had recently seen many working-class people come in to change their party affiliations. “He speaks his mind and doesn’t care about the backlash. That pretty much sums up a lot of Rizzo.”

Despite the similarities between the two men, many who remembered Mr. Rizzo mused that the parallels stopped at politics, and some suggested that Mr. Rizzo’s actions might have made even Mr. Trump blush.

Timothy J. Lombardo, a historian with a forthcoming book on Mr. Rizzo, noted that Mr. Rizzo grew up in a hardscrabble part of South Philadelphia and followed his father into law enforcement, while Mr. Trump was the son of a millionaire developer, was raised in an upper-class part of Queens and attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“The difference between Rizzo and Trump is that Rizzo was the real deal,” Mr. Lombardo said. “Rizzo has the authenticity, but Trump is really good at playing that role.”