America's Mayors Can Save Democracy

American democracy is undeniably in serious peril at the federal level. But in cities across the country, mayors are still cutting violence, building housing, and delivering for the people who elected them. This piece profiles five of them. They deserve attention, praise, and emulation. If your mayor deserves to be on this list and wasn't included, let us know in the comments!

Harvey Ward governs Gainesville, Florida, under conditions that would justify paralysis. The state seized his city's public utility over the objection of 75 percent of voters. Ward kept governing anyway. Gun murders dropped 50 percent in 2024, from sixteen to eight, with no gun homicide recorded since May. In September, the city passed an inclusionary zoning ordinance requiring developments of fifty or more units to set aside ten percent as affordable housing with 99-year affordability requirements. Not thirty years. Ninety-nine. The city's partnership with Bright Community Trust produced its first permanently affordable homes in 2024, selling at more than $100,000 below market value. When nearly 500 people gathered in downtown Gainesville for the March 4 Day of Action against the Trump administration, Ward showed up personally.

That transaction has broken down at higher levels of American government. Federal institutions have been systematically captured. The mechanisms designed to translate popular will into policy have been deliberately disabled. But municipal governance remains the last venue where the basic democratic promise reliably holds. You vote for a mayor. The mayor implements policy. If you don't like the policy, you vote for a different mayor. That elementary sequence, foundational to the concept of representative government, still works most robustly in American cities.

The mayors in this piece are proving it under conditions that vary dramatically. Ward faces active state nullification of democratic outcomes. Brandon Johnson in Chicago confronts federal authority directly. Monroe Nichols governs in a state Trump won by 33 points and just restructured criminal jurisdiction in ways that made the governor sue him. James Mueller in South Bend demonstrates what sustained investment in public safety infrastructure produces over time without an allied state government. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak in Burlington builds the infrastructure other cities will need, with state support. The differences in what they face illuminate the different tools available for fighting back.

Brandon Johnson recorded Chicago's safest April since 1962. Homicides in the first half of 2025 dropped 33 percent compared to 2024, double the average decline tracked across 30 cities by the Council on Criminal Justice. Violent crime fell 21.6 percent overall, with carjackings down 49 percent. Johnson's Green Social Housing Ordinance, signed in May 2025, creates a city-owned nonprofit developer and a $135 million revolving loan fund to build permanently affordable housing. His paid leave ordinance guarantees ten days of paid time off for an estimated 1.38 million Chicago workers. He achieved what no Chicago mayor has in fifteen years: a four-year teachers union contract without a strike or strike vote.

Those results gave Johnson standing to confront federal authority directly. When the Trump administration threatened mass deportations, he issued an executive order prohibiting Chicago police from cooperating with unlawful federal actions. He sat in front of the House Oversight Committee for six hours on March 5, 2025, and called the administration's deportation efforts "unconscionable and abhorrent."

Johnson demonstrates a specific tool in the municipal arsenal: building a policy record that makes confrontation credible.

Monroe Nichols governs in a state Trump won by 33 points. He became the first African American mayor in Tulsa's 127-year history. In June 2025, he announced a $105 million private trust for descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The "Road to Repair" initiative provides scholarships and housing assistance to massacre descendants while establishing June 1 as an official city holiday. Asked about launching a reparations program while the Trump administration dismantles federal diversity programs, Nichols said simply: "It doesn't change the work we have to do."

He refused to allow Tulsa police to participate in federal deportation operations, directly defying both the Trump administration and Governor Kevin Stitt's "Operation Guardian." His line: "We're not going to be a city that's going to go door-to-door trying to round people up."

But the most significant of Nichols's accomplishments requires particular attention. On June 25, 2025, Nichols signed a settlement agreement with the Muscogee Nation that fundamentally restructured criminal jurisdiction within the city. Under the agreement, Tulsa will not exercise criminal jurisdiction over tribal citizens for crimes occurring within the Muscogee Reservation that overlaps with Tulsa city limits. Those cases transfer to Muscogee Nation tribal court. Tulsa police retain full authority to enforce local laws and conduct traffic stops regardless of tribal status, but prosecution of tribal citizens goes to the nation's court system. The agreement resolves a lawsuit the Muscogee Nation filed in 2023 challenging the city's jurisdiction over tribal citizens within reservation boundaries, a question opened by the Supreme Court's 2020 McGirt decision.

Governor Stitt immediately filed a lawsuit to block the agreement, calling Tulsa "a sanctuary city for tribal members engaged in criminal activity." Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. praised the agreement and condemned Stitt's "ignorance of the fundamentals of tribal sovereignty." Nichols made the stakes explicit: "I don't believe a strong Tulsa is possible without the solemn acknowledgement of tribal sovereignty."

Making Tulsa the first Oklahoma city to establish tribal sovereignty as a cornerstone policy, in Oklahoma, in 2025, represents a category of political courage distinct from the other mayors in this piece. Nichols demonstrates what becomes available when a mayor treats hostile state and federal environments not as constraints but as conditions under which to govern boldly anyway. He did not wait for a friendlier political climate. He restructured criminal jurisdiction in his city to honor treaty obligations that predate Oklahoma statehood because it was the right thing to do.

We must stand with our convictions because they matter more than law. Compromising those convictions is how we ended up with our current political climate.

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James Mueller demonstrates what sustained investment in public safety infrastructure produces over time, even without an allied state government. In 2024, South Bend's police department solved 100 percent of its homicide cases. That number sounds almost too good, so the context matters: there were seven homicides in 2024, down from 23 the previous year, and the Violent Crimes Unit resolved all seven. Fatal shootings dropped 75 percent in a single year, from 20 to 5. Total murders fell to the lowest level since 2010.

Mueller built this through a Group Violence Intervention strategy that identifies the small number of individuals driving most violence and offers them a choice: services and opportunity, or consequences. The ballistics lab earned national recognition from the ATF for turnaround time, joining the top five in the country.

Additionally, over 1,000 new housing units are under construction, nearly half income-qualified affordable. The city opened Indiana's first Financial Empowerment Center.

Pete Buttigieg's former chief of staff, now in his sixth year as mayor, shows that the methodical application of evidence-based policing produces results through patient investment rather than political theater. On federal overreach, Mueller has been direct: "We will follow all lawful, Constitutional mandates, whether we agree with them or not. We will not, however, be bullied or incentivized to violate anyone's Constitutional rights." On immigration, he stated: "Without immigrants South Bend would be a stagnant or declining city. If we are going to continue our resurgence, we will need more immigrants, not fewer."

Mueller's tool is time. He demonstrates that cities willing to invest consistently in systems that work can build the kind of record that speaks for itself.

Emma Mulvaney-Stanak operates under different conditions than the other four mayors. Burlington has an aligned state government. Vermont is not trying to nullify her elections or sue her for honoring tribal sovereignty. She faces neither active state obstruction nor direct federal confrontation of the kind Johnson absorbed.

Her presence in this piece matters precisely because of that difference. Burlington elected its first woman and first openly LGBTQ+ mayor in 159 years, and Mulvaney-Stanak immediately began building: closing a $14 million budget gap while adding $675,000 for community safety programs, passing a balanced budget unanimously through labor negotiations rather than cuts, enacting the "Neighborhood Code" that allows four-unit buildings in zones previously restricted to single-family homes. Burlington had not made it easier to build housing in 70 years. In March 2025, voters approved three infrastructure bonds totaling $192 million with over 75 percent support. The city's fire department launched PREVENT, a first-in-the-nation program allowing EMTs to administer buprenorphine to overdose patients in the field.

When the Trump administration issued its July 2025 executive order demanding cities clear homeless encampments, Mulvaney-Stanak called it "not a mandate" and committed to maintaining evidence-based housing-first approaches. She has held 36 weekly "Mayor Meet-ups" across Burlington in her first year.

Mulvaney-Stanak demonstrates that cities with supportive state governments must use that advantage to build the systems other cities will need when conditions change. The infrastructure she creates now becomes the model for cities currently under siege. The housing policies, the community safety investments, the labor agreements, the overdose response protocols: all of these represent transferable tools. When Ward or Nichols or Johnson looks for examples of what works, Burlington under Mulvaney-Stanak provides evidence. The work of democratic accountability does not require a crisis to be real.

These five mayors govern cities ranging from 45,000 to 2.7 million people, in red states and blue, under conditions ranging from supportive to openly hostile. Ward faced the explicit nullification of two referenda and kept delivering results. Johnson absorbed six hours of congressional attack and did not move. Nichols restructured criminal jurisdiction to honor tribal sovereignty while a hostile governor prepared lawsuits. Mueller built systems over six years that produced a 75 percent drop in fatal shootings. Mulvaney-Stanak built systems that other cities can adapt.

What they share is a refusal to treat the current political environment as an excuse for inaction. They passed legislation, cut violence, built housing, and showed up when it mattered.

The deeper point is structural. Municipal governance has become the strongest venue representing the democratic promise. The mayors in this piece are not just doing good work. They are demonstrating that real progress is still possible, even today.

If you want to tell these mayors their work matters and is being recognized nationally, here's where to find them:

Brandon Johnson: X @ChicagosMayor | Instagram @chicagosmayor | Facebook facebook.com/ChicagoMayorsOffice | Bluesky @mayorofchicago.bsky.social

Monroe Nichols: X @monroefortulsa | Instagram @monroefortulsa

Harvey Ward: X @hlward | Instagram @hl_ward | Bluesky @hlward.bsky.social

James Mueller: X @SBMayorMueller | Instagram @muellerformayor

Emma Mulvaney-Stanak: X @mayorbtv | Instagram @mayorbtv

Share this piece with them. Let them know we are paying attention and that you appreciate their work. Maybe tag your mayor or city council members in that thank you. Give your representatives something to aspire towards and show them that we are paying attention.

If you want to understand how cities and states can build independent systems when federal institutions fail, the Intro to Soft Secession booklet lays out the framework. It covers state attorney general strategies, public revenue alternatives, and interstate coordination mechanisms that don't depend on Washington. The mayors in this piece are operating within that framework whether they use the language or not. Find it by clicking on this text Intro to Soft Secession

References

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