As released by Marilyn Levin Chairman, Dauphin County Democratic Committee:

January 19, 2013.

Dear Brother and Sister Democrats,

This weekend, we as one country remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.— a legendary inspirational leader. He was a good and decent man. Indeed, he was a great man who knew what he wanted and focused his efforts to attain that dream. Dr. King wanted all people to be treated equally and fairly, and he led not only his people but our entire nation to see the goodness and the potential in each man and woman regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or creed. Like Moses, he did not get to the promised land with his people. Yet, because of his efforts, many of his people made it to the promised land, and the scales of ignorance, prejudice and bigotry began to drop from the eyes of a repentant nation as it passed historic civil rights legislation in the wake of his non-violent march on Washington, D.C. nearly 50 years ago. I believe that if Dr. King were alive today he would take great pride in the first African American Mayor of Harrisburg, Linda D. Thompson. Dr. King said “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” Linda Thompson has kept Harrisburg moving forward. While some want to take the easy way out, calling for bankruptcy, Mayor Thompson resisted and made the best of the hand dealt her to insure that no one stakeholder bears all the pain of past mismanagement.

Martin Luther King once said, “On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? While attorneys and financial professionals yelled for the city to go bankrupt, Mayor Thompson knew it was the advice of these "all knowing" professionals that wrought the fiscal crisis upon the city in the first place. Like Dr. King, Mayor Thompson has a conscience: she asked, “Is it right?”.

Although some like to only recall the initial growing pains of Mayor Thompson's first several months in office, over the past several years she has steadily matured and has performed admirably these past few years in laying the groundwork for the fiscal recovery of the city. She was decisive in attaining and managing Act 47 protection through three recovery plans, under two governors and two receivers. Negotiations leading to the sale of the incinerator and leasing of the City’s parking system are well underway with final contracts expected by the second quarter of this year. The Mayor is now on course to eliminate the enormous debt burden created by a series of unwise financial transactions accumulated by so-called professionals over the past twenty years.

Dr. King would be proud today of how the Mayor of the Capitol of Pennsylvania ignored the noise, ignored the media, ignored the nay-sayers and stayed the course, focusing on a fiscal recovery for the city. None of the city’s problems, from the need for increased police protection to infrastructure repair, can be accomplished without complete fiscal recovery and access to capital markets. As Mayor Thompson recently said, “How the city goes in the next two years will significantly impact county and regional development for years to come.”

I believe that Mayor Thompson has worked skillfully to hold together all the stakeholders through a period of political rancor. As a result of the Mayor's leadership, the city is in a position to see daylight at the end of the tunnel, and there is no point in changing administrations now. It took Moses 40 years to lead the Israelites out of the wilderness. It took 10 years after Dr. King started his non-violent movement on December 1, 1955 (the day Rosa Parks refused to yield her segregated bus seat to a white man) before the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land. It took 20 years of unbridled hubris to get Harrisburg into the mess it was when Mayor Thompson took office.

Despite all the obstructionists, armed with her deep faith in God and the people of Harrisburg, Mayor Thompson in the last two years has done much to reverse the ruinous course that drove the city's finances into the ditch. Having gotten the bus back on track, Mayor Thompson rightly has the courage not to glibly yield her seat in City Hall to those presuming to be more deserving.

If we want to keep Dr. King's legacy alive, the voters need to let Mayor Linda Thompson finish her work. As Dr. King wisely counseled, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Turning to another candidate at this point in the recovery process would be a huge step backwards for the city’s citizens and fiscal recovery.

This message is my personal message about Dr. King and an incumbent Mayor who I personally believe deserves four more years. The Dauphin County Democratic Committee has not endorsed any candidate at this time. While I initially hesitated to publicly let my fellow Democrats and the Harrisburg community know whom I personally support in the Mayor's race,"There comes a time," as Dr. King said,"when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”

Marilyn Levin Chairman, Dauphin County Democratic Committee

Archive Video: Marilyn Levin "Send in the clowns"

Photo/Natalie Cake