This is interesting...

Black Philly Mayor Backs Clinton

PHILADELPHIA — The question that buzzes around Michael A. Nutter, the new mayor here, has nothing to do with the looming fiscal crisis, the intractable crime problem or the poverty that plagues the city — issues that 82 percent of voters in November judged him best qualified to handle...

Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator and presidential candidate, is wildly popular here, especially in the poor black neighborhoods and the upper-income white neighborhoods that gave Mr. Nutter his greatest margins of victory. But Mr. Nutter has endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the pivotal Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania on April 22...

When asked why he, a black, Ivy League-educated Democratic politician with a reformer’s résumé and a voter base of poor blacks and upper-middle-income whites, had not endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate who is practically his political doppelgänger, Mr. Nutter at first appeared quizzical, as if the question had never before come up.

“He’s a really nice guy who’s talking about really important issues,” Mr. Nutter said last week while sitting over a late dinner of grilled cheese and chocolate milk at his favorite diner, Little Pete’s, “and I am aware that he is African-American.” Mr. Nutter’s wit is dry almost to the point of brittle.

“But there is this fascination, mostly in the press, with certain elements of race issues that, for whatever reason, only get raised with high-profile African-Americans,” Mr. Nutter said. “Have you asked any non-African-American politicians why they are supporting Senator Obama, and if they are getting flak from their constituents for supporting Senator Obama?”

...On issues he cared most about — combating crime, creating jobs, repairing the infrastructure of aging cities like Philadelphia — Mr. Nutter said he liked Mrs. Clinton’s answers best.