MAYOR
The City in the Twenty-First Century
Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter, Series Editors
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
MAYOR
The Best Job in Politics
Michael A. Nutter
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2018 Michael A. Nutter
All images in the gallery between pages 68 and 69 are copyright © City of Philadelphia. Photos by Kait Privitera and Mitchell Leff.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-8122-5002-2
To my mom, Catalina; my dad, Basil; my sister, Renee; and my grandmother, Edythe, thank you always for the love, support, and encouragement to be a good man.
To Councilman John C. Anderson, Obra S. Kernodle III, Congressman William H. Gray III, and committee people of the Fifty-Second Ward, thank you for your inspiration, leadership, and mentorship—you made me a better man.
To Lisa, Olivia, and Christian, thank you for making me the best husband, father, and public servant I could ever hope to be.
This book is dedicated to the incredible citizens of Philadelphia who cared about me and gave me a chance to lead our great city, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Transfiguration of Our Lord School, the Jesuits and lay teachers at Saint Joseph’s Preparatory High School who taught me to be a man for others, the faculty and staff at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, all of my classmates throughout my education, my incredible City Council staff, the tremendously talented leaders of my mayoral administration, the fine public servants of the City of Philadelphia, and public servants across America. Thank you for what you do every day.
CONTENTS
Prologue. The Best Job in Politics
1.Where’d You Go to High School?
2.How Chemistry 101 and a Disco Changed My Life
4.Aren’t You on City Council? What Are You Going to Do About That?
5.Fifth in a Five-Way Race
6.My Name Is Olivia Nutter and This Is My Dad
PART TWO
7.Budgets and Roses
8.The Last Call You Ever Want to Get
9.Getting to the Brink of Plan C
10.We’re Not Running a Big Babysitting Service. We’re Running a Big Government
11.Why Not a Tax on Cheesesteaks Instead of Soda?
PART THREE
12.There Was Never an Earthquake Here Before You Were Mayor
13.A Cool and a Hot City: Attracting the New and Retaining the Old
14.Tragedies, Frustrations, Accidents, and a Holy Visit
Conclusion. United Cities of America
A photo gallery appears between pages 68 and 69.
In 1975, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I commandeered a large Deer Park water jug from somewhere on the campus. Every night, I’d empty my pockets and put the change in that jug, and after I graduated, wherever I moved, I always took that jug with me. By 1988, the water jug contained a fair amount of change. When I was first running for City Council in the 1987 election in Philadelphia, my car had died, and after I’d lost the election, I turned that jug upside down every day to get quarters so that I could scrape together the money to catch the SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) bus and elevated train to work.
That was in 1988. Twenty years later, on January 7, 2008, I was standing on the stage at the Academy of Music at Broad and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, being sworn in as the ninety-eighth mayor of my hometown. The road was long, and there were many events and happenings, in between. And I didn’t take the journey by myself.
This is a story, and a political autobiography, about commitment and perseverance, about the passion and desire to serve. If you enter the world of public service for the right reasons, it’s the most incredible feeling that you will ever have. You will never make a lot of money in public service. Most of the people who try to make money in politics (government) end up going to jail. But there is something entirely unique about the opportunity, every day, to make somebody else’s life better. It’s a feeling that you can perhaps get in some other professions, but I know that it happens in this one. I would contend that being the mayor is the best job in politics, and possibly the best job in America.
Mayoring involves many paradoxes. Being mayor is a lonely business, and leadership of a city can be a very lonely place. At the end of the day, you’re the ultimate decision maker, at least within your realm. To be sure, there are external factors and influences in city government: there are other nearby local governments, and state and federal governments with which you have to build relationships and interact. Cities generally are a political subdivision of their respective states. There can be a lot of tension between and among cities and their respective states, and between states and the federal government, depending on the policies and programs that are being proposed at any given time. But, for the most part, cities are allowed to operate autonomously.