It's About Restoring Trust

'The Fighting Mayor: John DeStefano Hopes a Reputation for Tenacity Will Make Him Governor"

From the Hartford Courant, December 29, 2003

By Christopher Keating

It was a dark day for New Haven -- and especially for Mayor John DeStefano.

“John DeStefano never shies away from a fight—or the next challenge.”

It was Dec. 12, 2000, and DeStefano had just given up on his five-year campaign to build an upscale regional mall at Long Wharf. The $500 million mall, with 150 shops and 3,000 permanent jobs, had been DeStefano's dream for revitalizing his city; it had died beneath the weight of lawsuits brought by local businesses and a rival mall developer.

DeStefano had spent huge amounts of political capital in an exhausting battle. But it was time to pull the plug.

Fast forward three years, almost to the day: Earlier this month, a re-energized DeStefano was smiling broadly as he presided over a ribbon-cutting for the new, $31 million Church Street South bridge, connecting downtown to the former mall site. The state-paid bridge will bring shoppers to a new Ikea furniture store at the busy intersection of I-91 and I-95. Ikea, the wildly popular retailer, is expected to open late next year in the exact spot of the proposed mall -- a solid victory for DeStefano.

"When the mall died, he did not give up on the vision," said former state legislator Chris DePino, a Republican who battled for the mall for several years at the Capitol and now lobbies for the city. "The mayor said, 'It's time to regroup. It's not the end of the world.' DeStefano's success at Long Wharf now is a great example of his tenacity."

John DeStefano never shies away from a fight -- or the next challenge.

The recently re-elected six-term mayor is a political survivor who has battled to victory in five Democratic primaries in the bare-knuckle politics of the Elm City. Unlike 2001, when he fought a primary against a well-known state senator, this year he floated easily to re-election in a quiet primary and a general election with no Republican challenger. Now he says it's time to move to the next challenge: the race for governor in 2006.

But there is a big difference between reaffirming his hold on the familiar city hall office overlooking the New Haven Green and grasping for wide support in the foreign territory of the rest of the state, where few even recognize his name.

His is a quest burdened with a question: Who is John DeStefano, and why does he think he can become governor? A liberal policy wonk, he believes he has the right answers. And he believes his time is now -- to step to the bigger stage and away from the city he loves.

"Not everybody gets to get up in the morning and love their job," DeStefano said in an interview in his spacious office. "But I think there comes a time, both personally and for the community, that you need to move on. No matter how well you do a job, you're going to leave it someday and there's going to be plenty left for someone else to do."

Seen even by some friends as prickly and sometimes arrogant, the outspoken DeStefano has made his share of enemies among fellow Democrats and unions that sometimes have endorsed his primary opponents. But DeStefano says he has cultivated enough political support to make the leap to the state's highest position.

One former opponent, who now considers himself a friend, said DeStefano has grown in recent years and is now capable of being governor. Douglas W. Rae, a Yale University professor who helped Democrat John Daniels defeat DeStefano in a 1989 mayoral primary, said DeStefano has played a huge role in pushing New Haven to its current revival while also seeing the statewide picture.

"In the last three or four years, he's become more self-aware and reflective," Rae said. "He's become something of an urban intellectual. He's getting better at boiling it down and not sounding like Al Gore."

When compared with recent governors in terms of character and intelligence, DeStefano stacks up well, Rae says.

"I think he's more naturally a state politician than a city politician," Rae said. "He thinks broadly. In city hall, it doesn't do you much good to think about big issues, because you have small levers."

Taxes And Sprawl

As chairman of a statewide commission looking at the problems of rising property taxes and suburban sprawl, DeStefano has a ready-made issue to build his campaign around. Local reliance on property taxes, he says, is threatening the quality of life in Connecticut as revenue-starved municipal officials cede hundreds of acres of open space to developers.

“As chairman of a statewide commission looking at the problems of rising property taxes and suburban sprawl, DeStefano has a ready-made issue to build his campaign around.”

In September, DeStefano's Blue Ribbon Commission on Property Tax Burdens and Smart Growth Incentives proposed a massive overhaul of the state's tax and land-use policies to combat sprawl. The changes, he says, would allow communities to preserve their characters while steering development to areas where roads and other infrastructure already exist -- a win for everyone.

But in a state where home rule is an article of faith for most politicians, not everyone agrees with DeStefano.

At the state level, DeStefano's plan could cost as much as $1.25 billion in funds shifted to cities and towns in order to hold down property taxes. While the Blue Ribbon Commission did not offer an official solution, DeStefano and many Democrats say the money could be raised partly by implementing a "millionaires' tax" on the state's wealthiest residents. Such a tax, however, has been vetoed repeatedly by Gov. John G. Rowland and opposed strongly by Republicans in the state legislature.

House Republican leader Robert Ward is deeply skeptical of the tax shift and predicted that DeStefano cannot ride the plan to victory because the idea will not have widespread appeal outside the cities.

"Ultimately, it's a tax-increase platform that is a losing platform," Ward said. "I don't believe it's at all realistic to promise people big increases in municipal aid."

Property-tax reform has been a major issue at the state Capitol for at least a decade, and Democrats on both the state and local levels have touted the importance of holding down tax rates for the cash-strapped middle class. Property taxes were the campaign centerpieces for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Curry in his unsuccessful campaigns against Rowland in 1994 and 2002. Both Curry and his running-mate, George Jepsen, talked about the dangers of sprawl, but DeStefano says this time it can be a winning issue.

"Bill always talked about the wiring of the house, and not the kind of house you wanted to live in," DeStefano said. "I think Bill talked a lot about the detail, rather than the vision."

This time, what's different is the packaging and the awareness of the issues.

"This is not new stuff," DeStefano said. "I just think the breadth of understanding of it is getting broader. I'm not creating the issue."

But Curry said that DeStefano is not only wrong on his campaign history but also recently blew a major chance to make a difference on property-tax reform.

"One of the unfortunate aspects of the blue ribbon commission that John just chaired is they skipped over how you pay for it," said Curry. "That's a pretty big hole. He had a great opportunity with the blue ribbon commission to put a detailed blueprint on the table, and he didn't. Their job was to move the ball down the field by beginning to fill in the blanks. This blue ribbon commission was not intended to be a campaign platform for anybody."

Fourth In Line?

Website Vooweb.com provides the biggest collection of professional Web 2.0 Templates. Web 2.0 Templates - its a website templates which made by world-class designers. Buy our Web 2.0 Templates | A family cooking recipes with hundreds of healthy, whole-food cooking recipes for the home cook. Healthy Food cooking Recipes For Your Entire Family | List of Samui villas and houses for rent on Koh Samui. Koh Samui villas for rent and sale on a private Samui community on the southern tip of the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.

"Apart from Blumenthal, I don't think any of these people are particularly strong," said one senior Democrat. "Susan -- she seems disagreeable, and the message isn't there. And no mayor can raise enough money to win a governor's race."

The biggest question on the Democratic side is whether Blumenthal will run, but with the election nearly three years away, he's in no hurry to decide. Bysiewicz isn't waiting; she's already raised more than $400,000, prompting the early talk among some candidates who do not want to be left behind.

"I was less impressed with the $400,000 than I was with 1,600 contributors" to Bysiewicz, said DeStefano, who will not start raising money until next year. "I don't think it's surprising, nor do I think it's particularly intimidating."

While Rowland has not announced any final decision, many Democrats assume that the governor will not seek re-election -- especially after admitting recently that he lied about gifts from state employees and a politically connected contractor who worked on Rowland's cottage on Bantam Lake in Litchfield.

Rowland himself has developed a stronger relationship with DeStefano as the state has increasingly poured money into the Elm City. The two appeared together twice recently: at a Yale event and at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the state-paid bridge that will lead to Ikea. After 40 years of delays over the Church Street South bridge, Rowland said, DeStefano's persistence had made it all possible.

"The mayor's a hero on this," Rowland said in an interview. "He's got great vision and great resources, and he really works hard at it."

Besides the biggest question of whether Blumenthal will run, history is also a major factor in the race. No one has vaulted directly from a mayor's chair to the governor's mansion in more than 100 years.

Records at the State Library show that the last to go that route was Republican Morgan G. Bulkeley, mayor of Hartford, who served as governor from 1889 until 1893. The most recent governor who had once served as a mayor was Thomas Meskill, who was New Britain's mayor before being elected to Congress and then to the governor's chair.

Former state Republican chairman Richard Foley said this history makes DeStefano a long shot.

"Most mayors are policy wonks, but this is not a government of philosophers," Foley said. "You've got to go somewhere in between" before getting elected as governor, he said.

As a result, some DeStefano supporters think he may eventually angle for a spot as lieutenant governor and then run for the top job.

After conducting a poll to gauge his popularity, DeStefano candidly admits that relatively few voters in eastern Connecticut would recognize his name. His recognition, at the moment, is defined by what he calls "the Channel 8 television market" that centers on New Haven.

But DeStefano, 48, says he can break the traditional mold in the same way that it was broken by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who never held political office before being governor of California. DeStefano says he can burst out of his regional cocoon as his message spreads around the state. As the president of the National League of Cities, he has traveled widely during the past two years and spread the word about the plight of the cities.

In the Elm City, DeStefano says he tries to balance the interests of Nobel laureates teaching at Yale and some of the poorest of the poor living in nearby housing projects. Statewide, he says he's willing to meet the challenges of the sharply different worlds of rural eastern Connecticut and the high-flying bond traders in Greenwich whose mindset is tied more to Wall Street than to Hartford.

''Coming from New Haven, I've got a Ph.D. in trying to get people to get along with each other who don't look alike, that have radically different incomes, that may live 1 mile from each other but live in completely different worlds," DeStefano said. "You go from the center of this [Yale] campus, and you can find some very different places within 1 mile. And how do you get them to not cannibalize each other, not blame each other, but just find spaces that they share common interests?"

“Coming from New Haven, I've got a Ph.D. in trying to get people to get along with each other who don't look alike, that have radically different incomes, that may live 1 mile from each other but live in completely different worlds,” DeStefano said.

As an example, DeStefano was credited this year with playing a major role in settling an acrimonious strike by Yale employees.

City Dweller

A New Haven native, DeStefano grew up in The Cove, a neighborhood in the far southeastern corner of the city near East Haven. After graduating from the University of Connecticut, he married his wife, Kathy, while he was working toward his master's degree in public affairs at UConn. Kathy is a kindergarten teacher, which complements the mayor's deep interest in early childhood education.

The family tradition continues at UConn with their son, Dan, attending as a sophomore and living in the same dormitory where his mother lived. The youngest son, Jim, is a high school senior in New Haven and is considering a number of colleges, including Fordham University in New York.

Truly a fan of New Haven, DeStefano has worked for the city in multiple capacities for virtually his entire adult life. After serving as deputy controller, chief administrative officer, and development administrator, he entered the mayor's office on the second floor of city hall 10 years ago.

Since then, he has worked to make New Haven a "livable" city, helping to increase the amount of housing downtown and generally avoiding gigantic projects such as Hartford's Adriaen's Landing.

"We all like to build things. 'Get those cranes up in the sky:' That's what they say in Hartford," he said. "I like to see people on the street."

The failure of the proposed Long Wharf mall was a blow because DeStefano had pushed for the project for years, but he has since mended fences with the mall's opponents, including House Majority Leader James Amann of Milford.

"You can't take Mayor DeStefano lightly," said Amann, whose power has increased dramatically since the mall battle. "He's as smart as a whip. He's up against tough competition if the attorney general comes forward. And Susan Bysiewicz is not chopped liver. ... As far as the mall, that was one issue. When it was over, we said we would go to dinner and break bread and we would move on. And we have."

DeStefano smiles when he talks about his years in the mayor's chair.

"I have a great job here," he said. "It's been a lot of fun."

Meanwhile, DeStefano is looking toward the governor's mansion to accomplish his statewide goals of preserving open space, maintaining the state's quality of life, keeping property taxes low, and stopping sprawl.

Those are the issues driving the development of the former Canton Golf Course on Route 44, which he said will have an impact with the cumulative build-up over time. That type of development, statewide, will not be changed "unless people feel threatened" and step into action, he said.

The lost golf course alone will not change the suburban commuter town, but he is worried about the future.

"Will it collapse Canton? No, it won't collapse Canton," DeStefano said. "But that one, and the next one, and next year's, and two years from now. You put a frog on a stove and just turn up the heat in increments. It won't jump off, and it will just slowly fry to death. That's how we get into trouble. ... It's about what kind of state, what kind of community you want to live in. Something is happening in Connecticut. Folks are getting it."

Copyright 2004 The Hartford Courant Company.