some of the population that had left Gary. However, the white suburban state representatives passed a special exemption to Indiana's incorporation laws (which prohibited incorporation within a five mile radius of an incorporated city) which allowed Merrillville to incorporate itself into a town. Following this, virtually all major retailers, banks, and other business establishments closed their location and fled to Merrillville. Over 100 major businesses moved from downtown Gary and Broadway Avenue to Merrillville in the 1970s, making downtown Gary into a ghost town. Tens of thousands of white residents followed, and Gary lost valuable jobs, residents, and tax revenues. Hatcher was instrumental in getting the 1972 National Black Political Convention to come to Gary when the convention organizers struggled to find a city willing to host the event. After Democratic presidential nomination candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976 expressed sympathy with ethnics preserving the "ethnic purity" of their neighborhoods, Mayor Hatcher characterized Carter as a "Frankenstein monster with a Southern drawl." From 1980 until 1981, Hatcher served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors. In the 1984 U.S. presidential election, Mayor Hatcher served as the chairman for Jackson's campaign. He served as the Vice-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985. Projects Hatcher pursued in hopes of reversing the city's economic decline included an expansion of the city's airport to handle commercial traffic, the construction of the Genesis Convention Center, and the construction and opening of a Holiday Inn hotel in 1971. Over the course of his tenure, Hatcher was able to secure hundreds of million of dollars from the federal government for subsidized housing and job-training programs. Despite Hatcher's efforts to stymie the city's decline, which was driven largely by a decrease in steel production jobs, the city continued to lose population during his mayoralty and face economic plight. When Hatcher assumed office, Gary had a roughly 15% poverty rate. When he left office in 1987, the city had a 25% poverty rate and an unemployment in excess of 20%. Hatcher and his supporters have argued that racism played a role in the rate of disinvestment from the city. Later life In 1988, Hatcher started his own consulting firm, R. Gordon Hatcher & Associates. From 1988 to 1989, he worked as an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He also began teaching political science at Roosevelt University in 1989 and later became a