Congressional Races Avoid Urban Agenda Local Candidates Go After Middle-class Vote

Last spring, Los Angeles burned - and seared a nation's conscience.

The rage was described as America's wake-up call, a reveille to rectify years of neglect.

Even politicians took notice, declaring the riots would bring cities back to the fore in national debate.

Six months later, urban policy has all but vanished from political discourse.

The presidential contest hinges on the suburbs and the landed middle class.

Bill Clinton pushes moderation to woo suburban voters, and President Bush battles to hold his eroding base there. In the television debates, the lessons of Los Angeles got less air time than the rebuilding of Soviet republics half a world away.

And new federal aid got tangled up in a $27 billion tax bill, and now faces a presidential veto.

With all that as a model, the plight of the nation's cities has made little dent in races at lesser levels, particularly those in the coveted suburbs.

In the congressional races in the Philadelphia suburbs, urban issues dropped rapidly from political consciousness in the weeks and months after Los Angeles, meriting scarcely an afterthought in the endless debate over the economy.

Saving cities is not popular politics, when the recession this time is hitting white-collar workers in their suburban jobs and homes.

"It's an issue politicians shy away from, especially in an election year," said Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer of Bucks County, who is facing a fierce challenge from state Sen. James C. Greenwood in the Eighth District. "That's unfortunate, because the fate of the cities and the fate of the suburbs are linked."

Republican U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon is even more blunt.

"Politically, urban areas are taken for granted by the Democratic Party and ignored by the Republican Party," said Weldon, who is being challenged by former Media Mayor Frank Daly in the Seventh District.

The people the suburbs send to Congress this year will have the clout to shape or block solutions to urban ills. In this election, according to the census, more votes will be cast in suburbs than in cities. More suburban votes mean more suburban seats in Congress. More suburban seats mean more suburban power.

The cities can't be saved unless suburban members of Congress are willing to embrace regionalism, urban planners say.