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Michael Nutter: Goldenberg has "the capacity, he has the intellect, the drive, the focus, the commitment that I look for in folks looking to run for office."
Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter took a 5:15 a.m. Amtrak to New Haven to grab a cup of orange juice and talk politics at East Rock Market, survey the transit hub-adjacent desolation of Church Street South, and throw his support behind his former student’s run for mayor.
Nutter made that campaign trip to the Elm City on Thursday morning to back Tom Goldenberg, the Republican and Independent Party nominee for mayor in this year’s Nov. 7 general election.
From 2008 to 2016, Nutter, a Democrat, served as the mayor of Philadelphia. He was on Philadelphia’s City Council for 15 years before that, served as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and is a founder, along with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, of the urban anti-violence initiative Cities United. He currently teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as the David N. Dinkins Professor of Professional Practice in Urban and Public Affairs.
Politics have brought him to New Haven before, including a 2016 stop on Long Wharf to meet with then-Mayor Toni Harp and support Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.
On Thursday morning, at a breakfast reception attended by roughly a dozen people at East Rock Market on Nicoll Street, Nutter made clear that he had come to New Haven not because he is running for office — but because he is supporting Goldenberg’s New Haven mayoral run. (Two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker and former legal aid attorney Liam Brennan are set to face off in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary for mayor. Whoever wins that contest will advance to November’s general election to run again Goldenberg and fellow mayoral challenger Shafiq Abdussabur, an unaffiliated mayoral candidate.)
Nutter met Goldenberg, an ex-McKinsey consultant who grew up in West Haven and lives in East Rock, roughly a year ago when the latter was a student in an Executive Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at Columbia.
Goldenberg took a class taught by Nutter called “Critical Issues in Urban Policy.” He then undertook a semester-long independent study with the former Philly mayor in which he put together a policy platform focused on a potential run for mayor of New Haven. Goldenberg said he would meet one-on-one with Nutter for an hour every two weeks, and present and get critiqued on proposals around everything from education to public safety to economic development.
“That was an incredible experience,” Goldenberg told the audience before him, which included campaign staffers Jayuan Carter and Jason Bartlett, former Republican probate judge candidate Jerald Barber, Newhallville alder hopeful Addie Kimbrough, local minority- and women-owned business booster Rey Harp, and former Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch.
Goldenberg praised Nutter for overseeing a “50-year low” in homicides during his time as Philly mayor, as well as for bringing to the fore “more than 200 economic development projects valued at over $11 billion” during his second term alone. He spoke with admiration of Nutter’s “commitment, responsibility, passion, and effectiveness” as a public servant, and urged him to run for president some day. (Nutter, with a smile, insistently declined.)
As a professor, Goldenberg continued, Nutter has “his own Ten Commandments, called Nutter’s Rules,” that stick with his former student to this day.
“The first rule of politics: Define yourself before someone does it for you,” Goldenberg recited. “The first rule of self-awareness: Never forget that you’re not the smartest person in the room. The first rule of power: Never forget when you didn’t have any, and always remember it won’t last forever.”
During his time at the podium, Nutter reiterated that he won’t be running for president. (“My electoral days are in the past.”) And then detailed his support for Goldenberg’s candidacy for mayor of New Haven.
“Obviously, I cannot vote for him,” Nutter said, since he does not live in New Haven. But, if he could, he would. Because Goldenberg “has the capacity, he has the intellect, the drive, the focus, the commitment that I look for in folks looking to run for office.”
Nutter said many of his students at Columbia wind up working on campaigns or running for elected office after graduating. He was happy to see Goldenberg follow that route. “He was a great student. He did very well in my class and did his work and wanted to be a student of government, a student of politics.”
Nutter, Goldenberg, and ex-Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch.
The former Philly mayor confessed that he’s “no expert about New Haven, but I do know about people” and he knows something about cities. “In many instances — small, medium, or large — the only real difference between and among the cities is how many zeroes are after the first number in your budget.”
Otherwise, he said, cities across the country face many of the same issues around public safety, education, economic development, and environmental sustainability.
“The key component for every one of those cities is great leadership,” Nutter continued. “Leadership that is focused, leadership that has the ability to bring people together with good ideas, and then of course execution. You have to make things happen.”
Nutter said that Goldenberg would be a good fit for New Haven’s top elected office. “He knows the issues. He understands the challenges people are facing on a day-to-day basis. Those are the critical elements of being a good public servant.”
Asked for any specific advice he has for Goldenberg based on Nutter’s two terms as mayor of Philadelphia, he said that, to confront issues around public safety, a mayor must hire “a really great police commissioner.” He said he “got really really lucky” with Charles Ramsey as Philadelphia’s top cop during his time in office. Working with the right police leader, Nutter said, he was able to update “foot patrols and how we deploy resources” to cut down on violent crime.
Jayuan Carter, Marcey Lynn Jones, and Addie Kimbrough at Thursday's breakfast reception.
Nutter and Goldenberg also spoke on Thursday about Church Street South — an expansive, now-empty swath of privately owned land across from Union Station that Nutter and Goldenberg visited later in the morning for an economic-development-focused press conference.
Nutter said he was “taken aback by what I was seeing when he got off the train at Union Station early Thursday and saw that large empty expanse right across the street, the first thing that people see upon arriving by train to New Haven.
“We’ve seen talks stall” between the Elicker administration and the property’s owner, Northland, Goldenberg said. “This is unacceptable.”
He said if elected mayor one of his top priorities would be getting back to the negotiation table with Northland to find some way to strike a deal so that new housing can finally be built on that site, which used to be home to a privately-owned, government-rent-subsidized 301-unit former housing cooperative that was demolished in 2018 after years of neglected maintenance destroyed roofs and walls and poisoned kids with asthma.
Goldenberg said the city should also consider exercising eminent domain over the property if the developer leaves the property derelict and refuses to build.
Nutter and Goldenberg said that the city should consider using Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to incentivize the development of that plot of land, in addition to continuing to apply for federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUG) dollars. As mayor, “you really do have to use every resource available,” Nutter said. He pointed to the redevelopments of Philadelphia’s Sharwood and Parkside neighborhoods during his tenure as mayor as examples of successful economic development projects.
Asked how he feels as a former Democratic mayor supporting New Haven’s Republican nominee for top elected office, Nutter said that Goldenberg’s campaign signs do still say “Democrat for Mayor.” Goldenberg pointed out that he is still a registered Democrat, even though he’s been endorsed by the Republican Party (and, as of Thursday night, the Independent Party).
Nutter then quoted former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia: “There is no Democratic or Republican way of sweeping the streets.” People want clean streets — and other municipal services — and care less about the party affiliation of those getting the work done.
Click on the video below to watch Goldenberg’s and Nutter’s remarks at Thursday morning’s breakfast reception at East Rock Market.
What does McNutter know about New Haven politics. In fact, what did he know about Philadelphia politics?