Joe Riley wins tenth term as Charleston's mayor

Joseph P. Riley Jr. has wowed urbanists with his consistent, loving attention to the design and appearance of Charleston, South Carolina. 

The 68-year-old mayor has seen to it that subsidized housing was built in the pleasing form of traditional Charleston sideyard houses. He has lavished attention on the architecture and even the pavement of his 120,000-population city, down to influencing the type of gravel paths installed in some of the parks. An inspiring speaker, he was treated as a hero when the Congress for New Urbanism held its annual gathering in Charleston in 1996.

And now the 68-year-old Democrat, currently the longest-serving mayor in the United States, has another four-year term. 

"Riley cruises to 10th term," declared a headline in The Post and Courier after voters on Tuesday gave him more than 67 percent of the vote, according to incomplete, unofficial returns. He swamped his four opponents, the paper said, and "will keep the full-time job that city voters first gave him in 1975." According to the paper, Riley said the coming term will be his last.

In the run-up to the election, Riley, by dint of his longevity, was the subject of news articles in papers such as The New York Times. 

"Mr. Riley, who makes $162,816 a year, is taking criticism for his relationship with the state port authority and the cruise ship industry over how many new vessels will be allowed to disgorge tourists into the historic city," The Times reported. "There is discussion in the local news media of 'Riley fatigue.'” 

But the "fatigue" didn't show up in the vote totals.

Among the initiatives Riley has spearheaded in the past decade is "a new division of Municipal Court called Livability Court," The Times said. "It gives residents with complaints about barking dogs and parking a forum separate from a court docket filled with assaults and drug crimes."

A founder of the Mayors' Institute on City Design, Riley has been long and widely honored, winning the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture from the American Institute of Architects in 1994, the Seaside Prize in 1997, and the Urban Land Institute's J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionary Urban Development in 2000. 

Charleston "recently was recognized as having the nation’s greatest 'brain gain' and [beat] out San Francisco as the nation’s top tourist destination in Conde Nast readers’ survey," The Post and Courier noted.

Riley recently described his attitude toward the mayoralty in these words: “You have a job that’s worthwhile, and you believe it’s important and interesting. I haven’t wanted to stop, and the voters haven’t told me to stop.”