Candidate in runoff campaigns to be 1st black mayor of capital

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Six decades after nine black students were escorted past an angry white mob into Little Rock Central High School, the city at the center of the desegregation crisis may be on the verge of electing its first African American mayor.

Frank Scott, the 35-year-old banking executive who may break that barrier, could win by bridging some of the biggest rifts in Arkansas’ capital: race, income and geography. He’s a native of one of Little Rock’s poorer areas who has risen in disciplines — politics and finance — dominated by white men.

Race is hard to escape in the campaign for mayor in Arkansas’ capital, where divisions linger long after the school’s 1957 desegregation. The city’s police department has faced questions about its tactics. The predominantly black Little Rock School District has been under state control for the past three years, and community leaders have compared the takeover to Gov. Orval Faubus’ efforts to block integration.

Black leaders in the city view the runoff on Tuesday as a chance for Little Rock to address some of its biggest divisions.

“Race is a major dividing line in this city. That’s one but the other major dividing line in this city is economics,” said Joyce Elliott, a Democratic state senator who’s backing Scott’s bid. “We are not doing a good job of having a conversation or a plan that involve all of us that we carry out.”

If Scott is elected, he’d be the highest-profile black official in a state that hasn’t elected an African American to Congress or statewide office since Reconstruction.

Little Rock has had two black mayors, but they were elected city directors chosen for the job by fellow board members and not by voters. Scott won a plurality of votes in a five-man race in November with 37 percent of the vote, a few percentage points shy of the 40 percent needed to win the office outright.

He’s running against Baker Kurrus, a white attorney and businessman who was appointed as the school district’s superintendent after the state takeover.