Mike vs. Mike
His political identity took shape during his college years, when he worked as a DJ at the Impulse Disco on Broad Street. In the ’70s, Impulse hosted the fund-raisers that fueled a political revolution. The Reverend Bill Gray developed candidates like U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah and State Representative Dwight Evans, African-American politicians rising outside the city’s white Democratic machine. To some degree, this period of Philadelphia’s political history is rightfully romanticized. But the reality is that Gray’s charges didn’t change how the game of politics was played so much as who got to play in it. What this means is, citizens shouldn’t be surprised when Nutter, as a product of this political culture, shifts his positions, or otherwise undercuts his reformer image.
Think Carol Ann Campbell. The recently deceased ward leader and City Council member operated at the margins of the law throughout her career, a sad totem of our pay-to-play culture. For years she parked her wheelchair in city ballrooms, wheezing with the lung problems that ultimately killed her as she collected the “street money” that fuels this city’s get-out-the-vote drives. She was indicted in 2001 for failing to report thousands of dollars in contributions from judicial candidates. She faced numerous fines for violating campaign finance laws. But for virtually his entire political career, Michael Nutter treated her as an ally.
In 2005, the Daily News reported that Nutter even made several calls to the sheriff’s office on Campbell’s behalf regarding her $80,000 no-bid consulting contract with that office. At the time, Nutter said the calls were in keeping with constituent services. Today, he views his dealings with figures like Campbell in purely pragmatic terms: “In politics,” he says, “you have a variety of relationships with a lot of different people. My view is that you maintain some fundamental core principles. … And I’ve maintained that. But you’re trying to get something done, and it’s virtually impossible to do it by yourself. Politics just doesn’t work that way.”
We would expect the departed Rizzo, Rendell or Street to say exactly the same thing. But from Nutter, this kind of talk is deflating. What we hoped for from him was literally nothing less than a new Philadelphia, and a new kind of politics.
IN PERSON, MICHAEL Nutter is big, with wide shoulders and a face that is broad, elegant, and sharply defined. When he smiles, his cheeks seem to inflate with joy. But his default expression is dour, and redolent of the image he carried for 15 years as a serious politician, doggedly working to pass progressive legislation: stricter ethics laws, a domestic partnership bill, the smoking ban.
On Council, Nutter asked pointed questions, and brusquely re-asked them if the answer was unclear. The kid schooled by Jesuits schooled whoever came before him at a public hearing. These performances had the effect of making Nutter, who is probably the smartest guy in pretty much any room he enters, look like the smartest guy in the room — the über-nerd, talking in the nasal tones of a man whose glasses are pinching the bridge of his nose too tightly.
