President Trump is making America’s mayors really nervous.

That’s the takeaway from a new Politico Magazine survey of city leaders who, ever since Election Day, have been frantically trying to figure out what the arrival of a Trump administration means for them and their constituents. What’s got the nation’s urban executives so worried? Start with the new president’s threat to repeal Obamacare. Three-quarters of the predominantly Democratic mayors who responded to the survey say it would be “a complete disaster” for their cities. How about affordable housing? Nearly two-thirds consider it a priority in their cities, but they don’t think Trump’s pick for head of Housing and Urban Development is up to the job. Education? Mayors are almost unanimous in their support for universal pre-kindergarten, but they haven’t heard a peep out of the administration on a subject they say is vital to creating a 21st century workforce. Even where the mayors and the 45th president find some common ground, such as their mutual desire for major investment in infrastructure, the mayors expressed conspicuous doubt that the political newcomer will deliver on his ambitious promises.

And all that angst and skepticism came before Trump took a shot at cities with his “American carnage” line in his inaugural speech, vowed to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities and possibly “send in the feds” to Chicago if the city couldn’t get a handle on its violent crime.

In the eighth installment of Politico Magazine’s mayors survey, part of the award-winning What Works series, we asked mayors in the two weeks before the inauguration to forecast how their cities would fare under the incoming Trump administration. Forty-six mayors responded to the unscientific and anonymous survey, from big cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia; college towns like Madison, Wisconsin, Knoxville, Tennessee and New Haven, Connecticut; and rapidly expanding urban centers like Austin, Texas and Asheville, North Carolina. The participants were largely Democrat, (42 Democrats and four Republicans), mirroring the predominantly Democratic cast of America’s city halls.

“While I understand that you have many priorities, Mr. President,” judiciously said one mayor who is focused on neighborhood revitalization, “please do not neglect urban centers and inner cities in your policy agenda.”

But most mayors expressed great concern that far from forgetting them, Trump was in fact targeting them. The collective frustration laced through the survey responses reflects the mayors’ mounting anger that Trump has used their cities as a punching bag during his campaign to appeal to rural voters. That view was not softened during his tumultuous transition and his equally volatile first week in office, which culminated with a sweeping ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

“If you can’t help cities advance progressive policies, then just leave us alone,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said. “Don’t punish cities for our immigration policies because you want to please your base by pretending to do something about immigration reform. Just actually do smart immigration reform and then cities won’t have to have distinct immigration policies in the first place. And, dear god, stop tweeting.”


But the impact of Trump’s raft of executive orders is already being felt in America’s cities, exposing conflicts between city halls and the Oval Office that are likely to dominate the next four, or even eight years. Last week, Trump followed up on his campaign promise to threaten mayors of so-called sanctuary cities—where by law or by practice city officials don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities—with a cutoff of federal funds. At least one mayor capitulated immediately.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez told the Miami Herald that his South Florida community did not want to risk losing millions in federal dollars by refusing to comply with the president’s order. While the White House may be constitutionally constrained in other areas, when it comes to sanctuary cities certain federal grant programs can be suspended without a congressional vote. The fear that drove Gimenez to act was reflected clearly in the survey results. Of the mayors who said they had already directed their police not to comply with federal detention orders, more than two-thirds are worried that their coffers might be targeted if they fail to comply with the president’s policy.

Immigration surged to the top of the news late last week, but the survey (conducted January 9-20) covered a number of other hot-button issues for urban executives—housing, health, education and one that doesn’t get a lot of attention except from budget-conscious mayors: the onerous cost of replacing aging sewer pipes to comply with federal water quality rules. On each subject, there is an evident fault line between mayors, who see their cities as engines of the nation’s long-term economic recovery, and the new occupant of the White House, who routinely spotlights cities as the scene of myriad ills, from violent crime to alleged voter fraud.

Few issues raise alarms with mayors as loudly as the threatened repeal of Obamacare. Having worked to promote and help implement Obamacare, Democrats now face a president who promised to gut it and a Congress that tried for years to repeal it. For now, Republicans are still trying to figure out their replacement plan and how to phase it in while moving away from former President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. In the meantime, mayors are worried that those without insurance will once again clog their emergency rooms. Three-quarters of mayors surveyed, agreed a repeal would be a “complete disaster.”

“The Affordable Care Act is most divisive because many in my city now have health care for the first time as a family and that is threatened,” one mayor said.

Another mayor added: “We are concerned about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. As a city and state we have worked hard to enroll residents in the ACA, and now have more than 133,000 people covered under the ACA in our city.”

When it comes to top public health priorities, mayors are less concerned about gun violence, a preoccupation of President Trump when he talks about the nation’s largest cities, than they are about problems such as a lack of health insurance and drug addiction that they see affecting much larger numbers of their constituents. Asked to prioritize the health problems facing their residents, 58 percent said drugs (such as opioids) and 54 percent said a lack of insurance. Gun violence was tied with obesity at 34 percent. That’s not the way Trump is looking at their world. During a speech January 26 to congressional Republicans in Philadelphia, Trump incorrectly asserted that the City of Brotherly Love has experienced an increase in homicides. In fact, such crimes have for the most part been steadily decreasing over the past decade.

Mayors are also wary about the president’s Cabinet picks who will have the most impact on what transpires in their cities. As one mayor put it, “… his Cabinet appointments seem unqualified. They do not have the same level of sophistication as previous administrations.” Despite passing the Senate’s Banking Committee unanimously, mayors see the combination of Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who Trump tapped to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as harmful to their agenda. While 80 percent see the goal of creating affordable housing as a high priority, nearly two-thirds of those who responded see Carson and Trump causing some or major harm in that area.

While they’re not opposed to charter schools, of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for education secretary, 89 percent think it should be part of the education mix. But they are much more focused on issues like universal pre-kindergarten, which 85 percent of them consider essential to preparing their workforce for 21st century jobs. However, universal Pre-K is not on Trump or DeVos’ list of policy priorities. Not surprisingly, mayors have cheered the president’s interest in investing as much as $1 trillion in new infrastructure and repairing failing bridges and highways. But despite the possibility of this much needed investment, only 9 percent are very or mostly optimistic that Trump will deliver on his promise—while half of the mayors who responded are not very or not at all optimistic.

Perhaps part of the reason mayors are so pessimistic is that the $1 trillion bill the president and his aides have talked about would require congressional approval. The president’s own party has demonstrated thus far that is focused on other early priorities, such as gutting Obamacare and cutting taxes. The two parties also have deep philosophical differences on an infrastructure plan, with Trump’s team pushing a tax-credit heavy package to spur private investment and Democrats seeking direct spending akin to Obama’s stimulus plan.

Mayors have their own ideas about how to fund the desperately needed work. In one of the areas with the broadest support in the entire survey, 85 percent of mayors said Congress should raise the national gas tax to pay for infrastructure improvements. Republicans are in virtual lock step against raising taxes of any sort. The federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not been raised since Bill Clinton was in the White House. (Adjusted for inflation, the tax per gallon would be roughly 30 cents now.) Since 2008, the Highway Trust Fund’s annual needs have outpaced what the tax can generate. In 2015, Congress allocated $70 billion from the Treasury’s general fund over the next five years, which the Congressional Budget Office views as a temporary patch for a problem that will re-emerge once the dollars run out. But despite the resounding support for an increase, mayors couldn’t find consensus on just how large it should be. A little more than a third of them backed a 15-cent bump and another third said an additional 50 cents was appropriate.

Mayors also weighed in on an obscure issue that some of them say is one of the biggest impediments to their city’s growth: combined sewer overflow. In older cities, sewers carrying storm water and raw sewage are combined and during heavy storms backups can cause chemicals and waste to contaminate waterways. By federal environmental law, cities are required to put in costly mitigation measures and those costs are trickling down to small businesses. Mayors don’t want to undo the regulations—they know how important clean water is to their city’s health—but they do want help offsetting the cost of compliance.

The general economic outlook is still optimistic from inside city hall. Nearly three-quarters of mayors are as optimistic or more optimistic about their city’s economic outlook compared with six months ago. But that number reflects a steady decrease in optimism since the beginning of the presidential cycle. In August 2016, 74 percent of mayors said they were equally optimistic or more optimistic than they were a half-year earlier.

Mayors increasingly see themselves as a bulwark against the federal government. City halls are some of the last levers the Democratic Party holds in national politics, having previously lost control of Congress, state legislatures and governorships in record numbers.

Bruce Katz, centennial scholar at the Brookings Institution, sees some similarities between the current adversarial climate and the Reagan administration when a series of cutbacks to cities were rolled out. But mayors, he said, occupy a more independent role now than they did in the 80s.

“Mayors as political leaders are playing a very different role [than during Reagan’s time],” he said. “In many respects, they have become really essentially leaders not just around their formal powers … but really around a whole set of issues whether it is around education, whether it is around climate change, whether it is around infrastructure or innovation.”

When asked what they would tell the president, mayors largely asked the president to listen to them and to work together, but they are also deeply concerned that Trump’s priorities conflict with their own visions.

“The biggest flashpoint? Everything. Donald Trump's agenda relies on cities and our people to be weakened for his, Pence's, and Bannon's brand of authoritarianism, nationalism, and white supremacy to take root and grow,” one mayor said. “They will use every lever of the federal government they can to compel us into fascism, and cities will have to fight that for the survival of our people and of our democracy.”

PARTICIPATING MAYORS (46): C. Kim Bracey, York, PA; Noam Bramson, New Rochelle, NY; Marni Sawicki, Cape Coral, FL; Betsy Hodges, Minneapolis; John Marchione, Redmond, WA; Larry Wolgast, Topeka, KS; William Capote, Palm Bay, FL; Elizabeth Tisdahl, Evanston, IL; Jon Mitchell, New Bedford, MA; Javier M. Gonzales, Santa Fe, NM; Helene Schneider, Santa Barbara, CA; Pauline Cutter, San Leandro, CA; Acquanetta Warren, Fontana, CA; Nan Whaley, Dayton, OH; Adrian Mapp, Plainfield, NJ; Bob Buckhorn, Tampa, FL; Steve Adler, Austin, TX; Mike Spano, Yonkers, NY; Jeri Muoio, West Palm Beach, FL; Claudia Bill-de la Peña, Thousand Oaks, CA; Betsy Price, Fort Worth, TX; Paul Dyster, Niagara Falls, NY; Esther E. Manheimer, Asheville, NC; Paul R. Soglin, Madison, WI; Stephanie A. Miner, Syracuse, NY; Jonathan Rothschild, Tucson, AZ; Dana L. Redd, Camden, NJ; Kathy Sheehan, Albany, NY; George Van Dusen, Skokie, IL; Karen Freeman-Wilson, Gary, IN; Andrew Gillum, Tallahassee, FL; Andy Berke, Chattanooga, TN; Marty Walsh, Boston; Madeline Rogero, Knoxville, TN; Marilyn Strickland, Tacoma, WA; Robert Garcia, Long Beach, CA; Edwin M. Lee, San Francisco; Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles; Jim Kenney, Philadelphia; Ed Murray, Seattle; Alan Arakawa, Maui County, HI; Mike Rawlings, Dallas; Toni N. Harp, New Haven, CT; Mark Stodola, Little Rock, AR; Denny Doyle, Beaverton, OR; Joseph M. Petty, Worcester, MA.

Ben Wofford contributed to this report.