Well, you heard Dave Davies and Mark McDonald from the Daily News talk a little about the Street legacy on Radio Times this morning, but there's plenty more.
The City Paper reprinted the transcript of their exit interview with the mayor. In it, Street explains that his biggest accomplishment is the end of the term "abandoned property."
There is no neighborhood in this city today that is worthless. By that, I mean there is no such thing as abandoned property anymore. When I became the mayor eight years ago, there was a lot of talk about abandoned property.
Speaking of abandoned property, Mark McDonald of the Daily News gives us part 1 of a two-part piece that evaluates the NTI program. It's an extremely thoughtful and balanced piece that admits, in some places, that we just can't tell whether NTI did some of the things it set out to do. In fact, that's exactly the conclusion he reached after asking a number of people, inside the Street administration and other experts, "Did NTI lead to thousands of new homes in Philly - or were other forces at work?"
I, however, am most fascinated by the reader comments section, which you should be able to get here. I'm still scrolling through them. I'd say they're about 80% racist garbage, 5% defense of Street and 10% thoughtful criticism. It's the 10% I'm trying to focus on.
Back to those comments.
(edited to add) I'm also picking my way through the City Paper article. Admittedly, Street makes a lot of good points about why his 8 years in office were actually not that bad, but in the context of his overall communication style, his points often come across as grousing and bellyaching:
In 2002, homicides in this city were at a 17-year low. Nine out of the 11 years before I became mayor, we had [more than] 400 homicides every single year. I became the mayor, we have had [more than] 400 homicides one out of seven years. We got homicides down so low that when they starting coming back up people said, "Oh boy, look at this." And it is bad, it's bad, but I think modern means of communication like the Internet really gives people a whole lot more [information] and they talk about it a lot more.
...
I really do think people out of the heat of the moment are going to look back and say a lot of good stuff happened. I think I'm young enough to live to that time; there are huge numbers of people out there in the neighborhoods who have a mighty appreciation for the improvements in their lives today, but they aren't always spoken for. Most of them aren't bloggers, the people who overwhelmingly voted for me in all of my elections are probably not of the blogging class.
I am the blogging class, but as I was still registered in Delaware County in 2003 and 1999, I didn't have the chance not to vote for Mayor Street.
(edited to add) And this is why blogs are great, because we can check people's math. Continuing with my interpretation of City Paper's John Street interview, it appears the mayor bristled a little when the interviewer mentioned Michael Nutter's electoral victory:
CP: You have three weeks to go [at the time of the interview] and Michael Nutter, who is coming in, and who won a large majority of the vote ...
JS: Well, actually he didn't win a large majority. Actually, he had a very small majority. Thirteen percent of the total registered Democratic voters of the city of Philadelphia voted for him in the primary, so if the primary turnout was 27 percent, hypothetically, and he got 34 percent of the vote of the people who voted, that percen tthat he got is much smaller of the total number of people who are registered voters in the Democratic primary. See, he didn't get a whole lot of votes, but it goes to show you the perception.
In the general election, the Republicans didn't even campaign. I think Al Taubenberger spent less than $150,000, if that. My general election, the opponents probably spent $10 million. I say all that to say I don't know what you can refer from the voting in general, the primary, the voting in the general election.There was no competitive general election and in the primary, the turnout was very low, and the vote was split up in so many pieces, that the eventual winner of the Mayor's office did it with almost no votes.
Can Nutter be faulted that the GOP considered him such a strong candidate that they didn't even try to field a better candidate? Let's compare the 1999 with the 2007 Democratic primaries:
In 1999, John Street received 103,479 votes in a 6 candidate field (5 "viable candidates"). This equaled about 36% of the votes cast (289,005). There were a total of 737,063 registered Democrats which means that turnout was 39% and Street's total votes represents 14.0% of registered Democrats.
Eight years later, population dropped by at least 70,000 people (according to U.S. Census estimates) but the number of registered Democrats increased to 752,097. Many experts attribute that to laws which made it more difficult to purge non-voters from the voter rolls. It's possible that there were less than 700,000 registered Democrats in the city. However, setting that aside, what are the numbers:
In 2007, Michael Nutter received 106,805 votes in a 7-way (5 "viable candidate") race out of 291,492 votes cast. That's a turn out of about 39% assuming there really are 752,097 registered Democrats. Actual turnout could have been anywhere from 41% to 45% (very rough estimates). Regardless, more total voters showed up at the polls to vote despite the fact that there was much less money spent on television ads than in the 1999 primary. Nutter's 106,805 votes represent about 37% of the vote and 14% of the total number of "official" registered Democrats.
And with that, I've spent just as much time picking on John Street's seemingly inane point about Nutter's vote total as he spent downplaying the City Paper interviewer's reference to Nutter's "large majority."
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