Why did Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty lose his re-election bid, despite his record of overseeing rising student test scores and a declining D.C. murder rate?

Thomas Sowell offers Human Events readers the following answer:

One key fact tells much of the story: Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote.

Both men are black. But the head of the school system that he appointed is Asian and the chief of police is a white woman. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black. There were also bitter complaints that black contractors did not get as many of the contracts for doing business with the city as they expected.

In short, the mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently expected to. He also didn’t spend as much time schmoozing with the folks as was expected.

So what if he gave their children a better education and gave everybody a lower likelihood of being murdered?

The mayor’s faults were political faults. He did his job, produced results and thought that this should be enough to get him re-elected. He refused to do polls and focus groups, and he ignored what his political advisers were warning him about.