Goode: bad and indifferent.

• Author: Stone, Chuck
• Position: W. Wilson Goode

GOODE: BAD AND INDIFFERENT

Philadelphians angrily called it a bomb. Police officials coolly insisted it was an "entry device.' But the semantic difference soon seemed absurd, because whatever it was that the police dropped on a rowhouse inhabited by MOVE, a radical back-to-nature group, had turned the neighborhood into an inferno. The bomb killed six adults and five children, and gutted 61 adjacent black-owned rowhouses, leaving 250 black people homeless--and writing a new chapter in the City of Brotherly Love's history of black politics.

Political cartoons quickly defined Mayor W. Wilson Goode's role, showing him piloting a bomber plane over the city. In a column the next day, "The Bomb that Shattered a Civility,' I dubbed Goode, "Brown Bomber II.' Ten months later, the Mayor's Commission investigating the incident corroborated the satirical assessment with a more factual but equally scathing censure. In May, the city's district attorney empaneled a grand jury to investigate whether to press criminal charges against the top four city officials, including the Mayor.

Yet, incredible as it may seem, W. Wilson Goode is overwhelmingly favored to cruise to the Democratic nomination in May 1987, and a slight favorite to win re-election in November 1987. As of last month, 71 percent of the city's blacks still supported Goode. Although that's a drop from the 98 percent black voters gave him in 1983, the community's fidelity remains almost fanatical. Their 40 percent of the electorate, along with the 10 percent of the whites who still support Goode, could sneak him back into city hall.

Surprising as that may seem, it is doubly surprising considering his record of ineffectiveness with the city council and state legislature, and the personal scandals in which his name has been involved. Front-page headlines blared his denial, "I Don't Beat My Wife,' after rumors had spread around the city that he had. A middle-aged white woman who had an affair with Goode sued him, and Philadelphia's Inquirer and Daily News published exposes of now he had failed to pay for 24 tailored suits.

Yet the city's powerful businessmen, civic leaders, and black clergymen continue to speak out as unmovable Goode allies. Before MOVE, they credited him with supernatural powers. Now, despite the deep fissures in Goode's "wall of respect,' they still think of him as an inspirational leader.

"He's had a very successful administration with some gaps being created--the trash-to-steam...