Byron Brown, Buffalo, New York
Brown has been magician-like in helping the city’s homicide rate drop 50 percent, partly through installing cameras on street corners. He has reigned over myriad emergency relief from blizzards. Brown endured allegations of corruption in 2007 and ’08 but was never charged.
Kevin Johnson, Sacramento, California
The former NBA star, mostly with the Phoenix Suns, took charge of his hometown the same year President Barack Obama took over the White House — 2008. He won in a runoff — despite unproven claims by a woman of sexual misconduct — and then re-election. Among his biggest achievements was preventing the Sacramento Kings from moving to Seattle in a last-minute deal that made him a hero.
