Tensions over racial justice shadow Louisville mayor's race

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — On Valentine's Day, a man appeared in the doorway of a Louisville campaign office and fired shots at mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg. He wasn't hit — a bullet grazed his sweater — but some of the tensions still lingering over this city flared once again.

A social justice activist was charged with the attempted shooting and remains in federal custody. And with primaries drawing to a close Tuesday in Kentucky's largest city, the Louisville mayor's race has transcended local politics.

Greenberg, a businessman, is one of eight Democratic candidates on Tuesday's ballot. The race has been shaped by a spike in gun violence and the fallout from the March 2020 death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman shot in her apartment during a botched police raid. Then there are issues still with the ongoing pandemic and the prospect that Louisville could face a $70 million budget shortfall by 2024.

Just weeks after the shooting at Greenberg's campaign office, as campaign yard signs began to pop up on front lawns citywide, a jury acquitted the only officer criminally charged in the Taylor raid. Many activists were left expressing feelings that the city’s justice system had failed Taylor and her family. They pledged to take their cause to the ballot box.

Taylor’s death helped spur massive racial injustice protests in the summer of 2020, along with the deaths of George Floyd and other Black people in encounters with police. In her hometown of Louisville, protests carried on for weeks.

“We demand the truth, we demand transparency,” Bianca Austin, Taylor’s aunt, said at a memorial in March for her niece’s death. “We are going to continue to demand answers and we’re gonna continue to keep pressure on the Louisville Metro Police Department, who continues to...