Considering his vow to trim fat from Richmond city government, it’s no surprise that L. Douglas Wilder is in tiptop shape. Svelte and spry at 74, Wilder sports a physique that men half his age would envy. The crop of hair is whiter than his salt-and-pepper days as Virginia governor. But Wilder’s trademark swagger is still very much evident. Beneath his hazel eyes, impressive bearing and hallmark charisma, one can still catch glimpses of the impish Doug Wilder, famous for bedeviling foes and allies alike.

Political firsts are nothing new to Wilder, who has run for public office as a Democrat and as an independent, but whose politics sometimes strike a decidedly conservative tone. He became the state’s first black senator since Reconstruction after winning election to the Virginia Senate in 1969. He grabbed national headlines in 1989 when Virginia voters narrowly made him the first elected black governor in the United States. Now, setting aside a decade of semiretirement in Charles City County, Wilder is back in the spotlight after a landslide victory in November that makes him Richmond’s first popularly elected mayor in 60 years.

The strong-mayor form of government separates powers in a manner akin to the federal system, a restructuring Wilder helped champion. City Council continues as a legislative body, but the executive powers now reside in a mayor with greater centralized authority.

Wilder captured nearly 80 percent of the vote by running a scathing, throw-the-bums-out campaign to clean up a city government beset by recent corruption scandals and swamped by various social ills. His support cut across political parties, religious affiliations and ethnic groups. Richmond business leaders are practically giddy over Wilder’s star quality and ability to mobilize public opinion. Much of Wilder’s $544,000 campaign war chest resulted from donations from the business community, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Among the notables was grocery store magnate James E. Ukrop, who donated $5,500 to Wilder’s campaign, and insurance executives Anthony Markel and Steven Markel, who combined to give $7,500.

Figures from the business community are on board to help ease the transition to the new operating structure. Not since Harry Truman occupied the White House have Richmond residents had an elected mayor. In Trumanesque fashion, Wilder says the buck now stops with him. Spearheading change is never easy, and he expects to take his lumps. But why, at a time when many people his age would be content to enjoy retirement, is Wilder trading his golden years for the political hurly-burly of running Virginia’s capital? Nattily dressed in brown trousers, a brown suede sweater and tan cowboy boots, he rocks gently back in a leather armchair at his downtown city hall office and quips, “I’m doing this primarily because I’ve lost my mind.”

Self-deprecation aside, Wilder’s mind is as sharp as ever. And his plans for transforming city government are not a laughing matter. Wilder hopes to bring the same deft touch to Richmond government that he used when running the state. Caustic political opponents joke privately that Wilder’s velvet glove conceals an iron fist. Indeed, Wilder wants to consolidate agencies, eliminate duplicate services, and institute performance benchmarks for city employees, especially department heads.

Trying to plug a $6.5 million expected revenue shortfall in the city’s budget, he is asking panels of business and community leaders to examine every aspect of city government to help spot waste and inefficiency. Eva Hardy, senior vice president of external affairs and corporate communications with Dominion Resources, co-chairs a special human services committee hand-picked by Wilder. She credits him with launching a new discourse between city officials and other stakeholders in metropolitan Richmond, including corporations.

“Finally the business community feels welcomed as a partner to help the city grow and solve its problems,” says Hardy, who was secretary of health and human resources for Virginia under former Gov. Gerald Baliles. She also serves on Wilder’s transition team.

At the same time, the Wilder administration must stem an alarming rash of murders. While the city’s crime rate dropped 12 percent in 2004 in every major category except homicides, murders continued to rise with 95 reported last year, one more than the 94 reported in 2003 and nearly 15 percent more than the 83 murders reported in 2002. In fact, based on 2003 crime statistics, Richmond was listed as one of the 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S., according to one annual survey that compares cities of similar size.

Underachieving public schools are equally worrisome. Students at some Richmond public schools continue to miss state-mandated Standards of Learning requirements for reading and math. Another intractable problem is growing income disparity between Rich-mond’s richest and poorest residents. Education and poverty are intertwined issues that could hinder economic growth. “Em-ployers [considering] coming to Richmond need to have confidence they can find a cadre of skilled people. It’s more important to them than taxes, transportation, or just about anything else,” says Hugh Keogh, president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

Already Wilder has visited Virginia’s congressional delegation in Washington to try and wring more federal money for Richmond. He also articulates a vision of greater accountability and fiscal restraint for the city that harkens to his belt-tightening days as governor from 1990 to 1994. He refused to raise taxes to balance the state budget during a recession, overcoming boisterous opposition from fellow Democrats to slash spending by more than $2 billion. That included some of the largest higher-education cuts in the nation. But is it possible that being mayor of Richmond presents an even greater challenge? “When a new governor comes in, the bureaucracy is already in place, so it’s a matter of just putting the people in place … that fit the mold of the new administration,” says Wilder. “This [job] is totally different. We’re moving into recharting the course of government in Richmond as to how it operates and for whom it operates.”

Wilder’s chief goal now is surrounding himself with people who can carry out his reforms. Putting the right people in place is both a “long-term and short-term goal. We’re focusing on what we want this administration to be [now] and when we’re gone. We’re asking, ‘What do we want the city to look like four years from now?’”

Many business leaders believe Richmond’s government is long overdue for such change, for the good of the entire metropolitan region. Wilder has the cult of personality necessary to lead the transformation. “People tend to respond to energizing leadership, and we have the good fortune to have an energetic leader who can mobilize the community,” says James W. Dunn, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce.
Building on momentum

It’s not as if everything was gloom and doom in the Richmond area, though, before Wilder ascended to his new office. Since 1994, more than 300 businesses have relocated to the region, investing about $5 billion and producing 86,000 jobs, according to the Greater Richmond Partnership. More than $600 million worth of new investment is ongoing downtown, including a revived James River waterfront and new life along the Broad Street corridor, including restaurants, downtown apartments and commercial activity.

Philip Morris USA moved its corporate headquarters to Richmond last year, resulting in about 270 new jobs. After a merger with New York-based Prudential Securities, Wachovia Securities chose Richmond as its headquarters for the combined company, creating more than 1,000 jobs in the region. Virginia Commonwealth University has kick-started the Broad Street corridor almost single-handedly with $1 billion in investment, and plans another $1 billion infusion during the next 15 years. All the activity has helped Richmond win accolades in recent years as a good place to do business. Forbes magazine last year ranked the region No. 10 among the most business-friendly metro areas in the U.S., based on a survey of 150 of the nation’s largest population centers.

Nevertheless, parochial squabbles often landed Richmond in the news for the wrong reasons. Controversy over the placement of the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue — a pantheon for Confederate Civil War heroes — attracted international media coverage. Also drawing unwanted attention were flaps over a floodwall mural bearing the likeness of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and the installation of a statue of President Abraham Lincoln and his son at the site of a former Confederate munitions plant.

Doing worse damage to Richmond’s image was a string of high-profile scandals. Between 1999 and 2004, three council members were packed off to federal prison. They include Councilman and former Mayor Leonidas B. Young, who pleaded guilty to fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion in 1999; Councilman Sa’ad Al-Amin, who was found guilty of several felony tax-related charges; and Councilwoman Gwen C. Hedge-peth, who was found guilty by a federal jury of three bribery charges and one count of lying to the FBI, all felonies. Moreover, federal probes into city financing uncovered graft that resulted in convictions of three other city officials. In one case, an assistant in the city manager’s office managed to steal a million dollars from the city.

Richmond business leaders hope Wilder’s election will begin to polish Richmond’s tarnished reputation, especially since all Virginians have a stake in the capital city. “I think it’s terribly important to make Richmond a bright shining star, because it’s helpful to the rest of Virginia,” says Dunn.

In response to the corruption scandals, Wilder and retired Republican Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr. launched a ballot initiative in 2002 to change the city charter to allow direct mayoral elections. Previously the mayor’s role rotated between the nine city council members. In typical Wilder fashion, he threw his hat in the ring at the 11th hour — after disavowing interest in the job early on. He entered the race reluctantly, he says, after repeated urgings by people he met when traveling around Richmond. Besides, he wants to give back to a hometown that gave him “a good livelihood [for years Wilder ran a law practice in Church Hill where he grew up] and a good political base to do other things. There’s no room to say, ‘Okay, I’ve done my bit and now I can relax.’”

Yet adding another chapter to his storied political career almost certainly proved too great a temptation to resist. The strong-mayor form of government provides Wilder and his successors with unprecedented clout, including the authority to hire and fire city staffers. It is a privilege Wilder is not shy about using. Within weeks of his mayoral triumph, he purged Andre Parker as police chief and Calvin Jamison as city manager and last month eliminated three small city agencies. Richmond’s daily affairs will be run by a full-time chief administrative officer who is hired by, and answers directly to, the mayor.

City bureaucrats also are on notice. Department heads or higher must reapply for their current positions. Wilder says he hopes no jobs will be cut, but he’s making no promises. “I have said I don’t want to see any curtailment of essential services, including police, emergency services or [helping] people who might be caught in the cracks. But by the same token, we do have fat. We can trim in any number of circumstances.”

Business leaders applaud Wilder for adopting a top-down style of management that mirrors the private sector, including setting goals and holding people accountable. “This is an organization structure that makes business sense,” says James Cherry, regional chief executive officer of Wachovia Bank in Richmond and a member of Wilder’s transition team. “What [preceded it] was unworkable.”

Wilder is walking a fine line between tightening city spending, including economic investment, without alienating developers. A case in point may be Wilder’s early reaction to a proposal by the Richmond Braves and a private development company to build a baseball stadium and village-type complex in the city’s Shockoe Bottom area. Wilder has withheld his support until further information is provided, citing the plan’s lack of detail on traffic and impact studies. Meanwhile, the ball team is hinting that it might pull out of Richmond if its plans for a new stadium aren’t endorsed.

Even staunch backers are unsure if Wilder will reciprocate the business community’s rousing support. Keogh, who served as Virginia’s economic development director under Wilder, wonders if his old boss has a “fire in his belly” to make economic development a top priority for the city. “He didn’t play those cards to the fullest as governor,” says Keogh.

Starting and finishing
The change to a strong mayor is welcomed by Virginia Commonwealth University President Eugene Trani. Trani came to Richmond 15 years ago to head up VCU after serving as vice president for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and before that as assistant vice president for academic affairs at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln — capital cities both governed by strong mayors. “One of the things strong mayors are better able to do is represent the interests of the city to state governments,” says Trani. “That’s a very important role that I see Mayor Wilder performing” in Richmond, especially since he dealt directly with legislators as governor.

Wilder’s election ripples beyond Virginia as well. He brings certain intangibles to bear, including name recognition and friends in high places (comedian Bill Cosby has pledged $1 million to Wilder’s slavery museum project in Fredericksburg). Robert C. Bobb, who served as Richmond’s city manager for 11 years before leaving in 1997, calls Wilder’s election a boon for all cities. “With mayors in other cities, it’s like turning a flashlight on in the community. With Mayor Wilder, it’s like a turning on a floodlight,” says Bobb, now city administrator in Washington, D.C.

Yet, Wilder has a history of not always finishing what he starts. He flirted briefly with seeking the Democrat presidential nomination in 1992. Then, in 1994, Wilder ran for the U.S. Senate as an independent before quitting the race. The mercurial Wilder raised eyebrows again in 1998 by accepting — then backing out — as president of his alma mater, Virginia Union University, after the school’s board objected to Wilder’s plans to seek the resignations of about a dozen administrators.

Wilder is inured to such speculation. He says that he was “within three days of taking the job” at Virginia Union but declined because the school’s board of directors “did not want me to have my own team.” The only venture he admits to not finishing was his presidential run, joking that “the loudest ovation I ever got was when I announced [in the General Assembly] that I would not be pursuing the presidency.”

Wilder’s re-emergence also is rekindling some old animus. If his term as mayor mirrors his governorship, Richmond’s black community shouldn’t expect special consideration from Wilder. So says W. Avon Drake, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and a frequent Wilder critic. “He has no legacy of having done anything significant to help the African-American community. I know he likes to say he represents everybody, but that’s an easy way out.”

Even greater powers are coming Wilder’s way, too. The Virginia General Assembly passed a series of charter changes in January. Included is a line-item veto for specific items in a city budget — which a council majority can still override — and broader say-so by city council over the Richmond School Board’s budget. Detractors say Wilder’s request for more muscle confirms what they suspected all along: that the strong-mayor referendum was a pretext for a naked power grab. “The system hadn’t even had a chance to work before he pushed the General Assembly to make more changes immediately,” says former Mayor Rudolph McCollum, who opposed the strong-mayor proposal but later ran against Wilder, finishing second in the four-way race. “I think we need to think about the impact of this new form of government on [other cities] in the commonwealth.” Wilder dismisses such talk as sour grapes, claiming the expanded authority is necessary to rein in wasteful spending. “Politics is money. If I’m going to be held accountable for what the government does, and have nothing to say [about spending] priorities, then it’s an empty job,” Wilder says.

Notwithstanding his pre-referendum screed that Richmond government was a “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency,” Wilder carries his own set of political baggage. The Internal Revenue Service hounded Wilder for years regarding a $1 million inaugural committee fund surplus, which it claimed he owed taxes on. He reportedly settled with the IRS several years ago, but recently new questions have surfaced about a lack of reporting to the state Board of Elections on money left over from Wilder’s campaign for governor — a filing Wilder has said was the responsibility of his son, who served as the campaign’s treasurer.

Four years may not be enough time for Wilder to enact all his reforms. The revised city charter allows a second term, although Wilder would be 78 then. Depending on the success — or lack of it — during his first term, Wilder may elect to pack it in and return to his riverfront estate in Charles City County. Few things are ironclad in the protean world of Doug Wilder. This much, however, seems certain. For at least a while, Virginians get to witness a legend mount the stage for possibly his final performance. Sit back and relax. If nothing else, Wilder is bound to be entertaining.