Chum in the Water

The most vivid  personal image I have of the time that New York City hit rock bottom comes from around 1975 or 1976, on Seventh Avenue near Duffy Square. As I turned the corner from 47th Street to the Avenue, I saw a helmeted NYC policeman using his jacket to swat at flames coming from the engine of his banged-up, falling-apart, bright robin’s-egg-blue Vespa scooter. He wasn’t making any progress as he just kept slapping at the flames. I asked if he needed a hand. “No thanks,” he said, “unless you have a fire extinguisher handy.” Being fresh out of those, I wished him luck and kept walking on, as did everyone else. He kept swatting at the flames, alone.

What a metaphor for the City, I thought! Falling apart, bursting into flames, with only a few brave souls bravely trying to keep the whole decrepit thing from falling apart, a probably hopeless effort.

Watching the hapless and luckless Mayor Abe Beame try to keep the whole thing together in those days was painful. Good Lord, I often thought, who in their right minds would ever want to run this place?  What an impossible job, to be the mayor of a town like New York.

Almost forty years later, we know that the fortunes of the City have dramatically turned. Once written off for dead, that town of 8 million souls has reversed itself. That’s not to say that it’s paradise on earth. A casual look at a local newspaper or TV news will quickly disabuse you of that idea! There is still too much crime, too much desperate poverty, and too much aged infrastructure. Hurricane Sandy showed that the city may not fare well in a future of more extreme climate swings. There’s an awful lot that’s still wrong with New York City, to be sure. But for anyone who remembers the Bad Old Days of the 1970’s, the turnaround is simply astonishing.

Granted, New York has vast resources other cities can only dream of. The economy is much more diversified than most cities, keeping its tax base robust, although its over-reliance on the financial services industry may yet prove to be a weak link. The city continues to be a magnet for talented individuals from around the US and the world, and the constant influx of those people added to the 8 Million already living here keep the place vibrant.

New York has also been fortunate with its string of elected leaders. Since the unlucky Mr. Beame, the city’s public face has been its talented (although of course flawed) mayors. Ed Koch, David Dinkins (Trenton’s native son), Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg have each put their imprint on the City, and each were vital in wrenching New York out of the gutter. Nearly forty remarkable years, with only four mayors in all that time. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of other individuals, if not millions, who are part of this story. But so much of the tale always comes back to the guy in City Hall.

If a metropolis of Eight Million People can come back from the dead, surely a pocket city of eighty thousand can, too. With a little luck and some competent leadership, yes, and with the work of 80,000 souls here. But I do believe today about the job of the Mayor of Trenton what I thought 40 years ago about New York’s: who in their right mind would ever want the gig?

These thoughts come to mind this morning, with the first news in a while about the developing 2014 political horse race that is the coming mayoral election. I last wrote about the upcoming contest back in December, when several names of potential candidates were swirling around the local rumor mill. I didn’t name any names then, since there were very few candidates who were admitting to their preliminary efforts. But I did lay out some criteria for what I considered to be essential qualities and experience in any credible candidates for the position. More on that in later posts.

Today’s article is prompted by the announcement by one unannounced candidate, James Gee , that he would not formally enter the race; and Gee’s decision along with that of another candidate, Patrick Hall, to talk to Trenton Times reporter Alex Zdan about the dynamics of the race as it is being run today, about 14 months before the May 2014 election.

According to the article, Mr. Gee declined to run largely because of personal considerations, which is an honorable decision. He seemed to think that his chances in any race were good, even though his resume as a political operative with several political campaign and a series of appointed staff positions in state government never struck me as sufficient qualification to run the city’s Executive Branch.

Mr. Hall also feels qualified to run for Mayor, although his background,  prior experience and non-existent civic profile also suggest to me that his is not among the strongest names pondering his chances. But this morning, his interview with Mr. Zdan is giving us some news.

Mr. Hall talks about several small informal meetings that have been occurring around town for the last year, as many of the potential candidates are testing the water for potential voter and campaign contributor support, talking to ad hoc invited groups of individuals as well as standing civic associations. Full disclosure: I have been contacted by a few of the potential candidates and asked to meet. So far I have met with one, but have not yet made any public or private expressions of support. All of that is what you’d expect to see at this point in the election cycle, all standard procedure.

What’s interesting to hear about is Mr. Hall’s disclosure that several candidates have met on multiple occasions to discuss the race and, in the words of Mr. Hall, “We tried to bring all known would-be candidates together, and tried to get a sense of how we can navigate this and not get it to where it was last election.” By this he means that several current candidates want to avoid the circus free-for-all we saw in 2010, when 10 formal candidates (and one late write-in entrant) scrambled for votes, a process that led to the election of the disaster currently occupying the mayor’s office.

The candidates who participated in this process included both Mr. Hall and Mr. Gee, as well as James Golden and Eric Jackson. Also involved as participants, Mr. Hall named West Ward Councilman Zac Chester, Mercer Freeholder (and Cadwalader Heights neighbor) Sam Frisby and William Watson, long active in Trenton affairs both inside government as Mayor Doug Palmer’s Chief of Staff and member of several city boards, as well as the involved periphery in such roles as his position at the Watson Institute of Public Affairs at Edison State College and as brother to Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. Not part of this process were other potential candidates, such as Council member Kathy McBride and Deputy County Clerk Walker Worthy.

What do I think of these developments?

Back in December, I characterized the first rumblings of the mayoral race as sharks swimming around, all attracted by the non-existent re-election prospects of the Indicted Occupant. This week’s developments tell me that there is tacit agreement that the IO will not be any significant factor in 2014: he will either not run, or he will run with no prospects of success. His blood isn’t motivating the other sharks, but all the remaining guys are throwing enough chum in the water to stir things up.

I desperately, desperately  want to avoid a re-run of 2010, and am cautiously pleased to hear that at least some of the candidates want the same, along with several other interested parties. If Mr. Hall’s description of the motivations of these individuals is accurate, and this process results in winnowing out some of the field by mutual agreement to run and support only the strongest candidate or two, then we citizens may benefit from having better choices than we had in May and June of 2010.

Is this “smoke-filled room” insider politics, unfairly excluding the general public? Generally, I think not. To the extent this kind of process is between candidates, in the absence of a partisan primary process, I think it can be healthy if these discussions result in fewer but stronger candidates, strongly supported. And nothing prevents individuals from running if they are unhappy with these kind of “pre-season” discussions. With enough signatures on petitions, anyone – and everyone as we saw in 2010 – can run. No one is excluded, and the public will be able to make their choice.

I’ll talk more about the individuals running in future posts. I still think to a certain extent that anyone who wants to be Mayor of Trenton is flipping crazy, and that a person who voluntarily runs should be disqualified for reason of mental instability.

However, I also more deeply feel that those who are considering a run in this race deserve our appreciation for putting themselves out there. It’s going to be a thankless job, and too much time and effort will be spent by the winner swatting helplessly at the flames of this broken-down town with nothing more effective than a jacket.

Some of the folks in this race now are more capable and qualified than others, to be sure. I expect that more of these individuals will come to the same decision as James Gee did this week, and admit this race to be  likely outside their grasp. But I am encouraged by the presence of at least a few of those running, and look forward to hearing more about and from them.

Having lived through much of the comeback of New York City, I know that if a huge lumbering beast of eight million can turn around with a little luck and the right people in charge, then it’s certainly possible for a burg of eighty thousand to do the same.

With a little luck.

And the right people in charge.