It's even more interesting than that, really, because crime everywhere was bad in the very early 90s. Giuliani gets the credit for having cleaned up crime in NYC (and maybe he did) but we look to the early 90s as kind of the high water mark for crime, and particularly violent crime, everywhere.
At the same time as New York's crime was falling, the same thing was happening everywhere -- San Diego and Austin and San Jose had basically identical trajectories as NYC under Giuliani, but obviously did not have Giuliani (tho perhaps they had also brought in their own?
Just Googling now, and it seems San Diego brought in Susan Golding (R) in 1992 to replace Maureen O'Connor (D), and they didn't flip back until 2005.
Austin had Bruce Todd (which one article refers to as an "establishment Democrat") from 91-97, and Kirk Watson (D) from 97-01.
San Jose has had consecutively Democratic mayors from 1971 to now.
TLDR, I don't think party alignment is as indicative as we might hope it would be, however much policy preferences might tend to overlap with party. Perhaps that was different way back in the 90s, when polarization wasn't as high, and/or party marching orders weren't quite as unified nationally as they seem to be now -- or I'm just missing something obvious elsewhere
At the same time as New York's crime was falling, the same thing was happening everywhere -- San Diego and Austin and San Jose had basically identical trajectories as NYC under Giuliani, but obviously did not have Giuliani (tho perhaps they had also brought in their own?
Just Googling now, and it seems San Diego brought in Susan Golding (R) in 1992 to replace Maureen O'Connor (D), and they didn't flip back until 2005.
Austin had Bruce Todd (which one article refers to as an "establishment Democrat") from 91-97, and Kirk Watson (D) from 97-01.
San Jose has had consecutively Democratic mayors from 1971 to now.
TLDR, I don't think party alignment is as indicative as we might hope it would be, however much policy preferences might tend to overlap with party. Perhaps that was different way back in the 90s, when polarization wasn't as high, and/or party marching orders weren't quite as unified nationally as they seem to be now -- or I'm just missing something obvious elsewhere