MARK KIESLING: Copeland's E.C. win a history-maker, too

The media have been making a lot of the victory of Karen Freeman-Wilson as the first black female mayor in Indiana.

It is a historic victory, and it says something to a nation that thinks Indiana still is run by the Ku Klux Klan as it was in the 1920s, long before most of you could vote.

And there is no doubt Freeman-Wilson's decisive victory is historic -- and it was decisive with a 10,470-vote margin over her closest rival, Republican Charles Smith.

But more quietly, history was also made next door in East Chicago, where the city elected its first black mayor, Anthony Copeland.

Copeland, a former city councilman, was named earlier this year to fill the unexpired term of indicted (and later convicted) former Mayor George Pabey on public corruption charges.

But even though he was mayor, he had not won it in his own right until Tuesday. He had been selected by Democratic precinct committeemen from East Chicago, a small fraction of the city's population.

Now no one can say Copeland is a caretaker mayor or a fluke.

"Last year, some said the precinct committeemen were just out for themselves," Copeland told supporters Tuesday. "In (the May primary) some said it was just a fluke. What are they going to call it tonight?"

Up until the controversial defeat of longtime Mayor Bob Pastrick, which ended up in the courts with Pabey being given the chance at another election, all the mayors of East Chicago had been white, or European-American if you prefer.

Pastrick kept his job as the city's demographics shifted by keeping the city's black and Latino groups either satisfied with key departmental appointments or hopelessly fractured ones.

Pabey, of Puerto Rican descent, became the city's first Hispanic mayor and could have given that voting bloc hope that it finally could have a top voice in city government.

Unfortunately for it, he instead chose to use the office to help himself to city workers and city money to rehab a house he and his daughter had bought in Gary's Miller Beach area.

He was the former police chief under Pastrick, and he could have learned from the master, who stayed above the fray while his lieutenants were being indicted right and left.

But "indictment" and "Copeland" are words I have not seen teamed up, unless someone has said, "I don't see any indictment against Copeland."

I'm not taking away anything from Freeman-Wilson's victory, which was truly historic.

But so was Copeland's, and this should not be lost among the confetti raining down next door in Gary.

The opinions are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at mark.kiesling@nwi.com or (219) 933-4170.