Tomorrow, new Mayor Michael Nutter will be interviewed by ABC’s Charles Gibson, host of the network’s signature news
broadcast, World News Tonight.
ABC will also follow Nutter to film a day in the life segment. Gibson will host World News from Old City tomorrow night, as well.
The feature comes as Nutter comes into one power of one of the largest cities in the country, determined to take on urban problems with big plans.
World News broadcasts at 6:30 p.m. on ABC 6.
We have called for and expected the end of mainstream institutional racism in the United States since about the third day after it was exported to this country, maybe 400 years ago.
Back in 1999, when white Republican Sam Katz was challenging black Democrat John F. Street, Katz’s surging success in a city that had nearly as large a black population as white seemed to embolden that notion. Indeed, Katz seemed to make inroads in black communities that hadn’t voted more for a Republican than a Democratic mayoral candidate since 1972, when W. Thatcher Longstreth took on legendary Frank Rizzo, often derided as an outright bigot. Katz won the endorsement of John White Jr., a black former City Council member who lost to Street in the Democratic primary, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
When less than two months before the 1999 election, Martin O’Malley, a white Democrat, won over black voters in his party’s primary to beat out a field of mostly black candidates, the comparisons were sure to be made, as was done by the New York Times.
Clarence Armbrister left his post as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Temple University to be chief of staff for Mayor-elect Michael Nutter, as reported by The Temple News.
GERALD S. WILLIAMS / Inquirer Staff Photographer Photo courtesy of the Inquirer.
Photo for the Associated Press by Matt Rourke, courtesy of Day in the Life.
Photo of the two candidates in the courtyard of City Hall, courtesy of Great Expectations.
The delightfully simple, effective and well-received campaign advertisement supporting Michael Nutter. The catch, of course, is that Michael doesn’t say much at all, but rather his daughter Olivia, who boasts being the only child of any of the other candidates for mayor to be in a public school, does the talking.
Can an established Democrat in a city that has seen nothing but Democratic rule for more than 50 years really be a reformer?
Back in January, Philadelphia magazine had a great profile of Philadelphia’s likely next Mayor, who is charged to answer that question. The story, written by Jason Fagone, and appropriately called “Michael Nutter’s Dilemma” ran with the tagline: Is this man too much of a reformer to be mayor? Or so hungry to be mayor that he can’t be a real reformer?
There is Nutter the media marvel, who was lauded as the smart, savvy, outside candidate:
The moral narrative fills the gap in Nutter’s bio by suggesting a set of character traits and instincts that would serve him well as CEO of the city. Even the way he’s running his campaign — declaring his candidacy four months before his nearest competitor, thereby subjecting himself to the city’s new limits on fund-raising — boosts his executive cred. “There was never any mystery or cloud,” Nutter told a group of his donors at the Ritz-Carlton, contrasting himself with Fattah, Brady, Evans and Knox, who hadn’t declared yet. “Is he going to run? Is he not going to run? It’s called decision-making… all of you are business people. … That’s what being a chief executive is all about.”
Continue reading Philadelphia magazine: Can Michael Nutter be a reformer?