Hartford Courant Profiles John DeStefano

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Hartford Courant Profiles John DeStefano

The Hartford Courant July 16, 2006

By Mark Pazniokas

NEW HAVEN - On the first Tuesday of nearly every month, Mayor John DeStefano Jr.'s style of governance is on display at city hall, live and unscripted.

Anyone can walk into the office of the city's 49th mayor on "Mayor's Night In" to plead for help, complain about an unsympathetic cop or an unruly neighbor, or tell DeStefano how his government has failed in some way.

It is a reality check, a way to recalibrate and test his decentralized system of running the city, which he has divided into 10 districts, each advised by a citizen management committee.

As a Democratic candidate for governor, DeStefano is promising to deliver universal health care, raise the minimum wage annually, ease the municipal reliance on the property tax and create 200,000 new jobs.

But on Mayor's Night In, he is asked to stop dust from the demolition of the New Haven Coliseum from falling on a couple's corner store. Can he drive away the thieves recently plaguing Wooster Square? Can he rid an exit ramp of litter? And he can help an ex-convict named Damian find a job as a home health aide?

"What would you like me to do for you?" DeStefano asked Damian.

Damian wanted to know if he was a victim of discrimination.

DeStefano shook his head and told him that an employer can consider a criminal record.

"I'm not saying it's right. It's what it is," DeStefano said.

An aide took Damian's name and number and promised to put him in contact with a local group that helps place ex-offenders. Into his office walked the next problem.

There was a time when he lacked the patience or grace for such a monthly exercise. During the 1980s, DeStefano was a high-ranking city bureaucrat with a reputation for brusqueness, entrusted by Mayor Biagio DiLieto to make problems go away.

"When there was a fire, it was my job to put it out. I think I developed a reputation out of that," DeStefano said. "I did not suffer fools lightly. I was very much about the business of getting things done."

As a 38-year-old mayor who took office on New Year's Day 1994, DeStefano still displayed an intellectual arrogance. A cop's son in a city of Yalies, DeStefano often seemed intent on proving he was the smartest one in the room. He said a stint as president of the National League of Cities, working with the best and brightest around the nation, mellowed him.

"It helped me see a different side of myself. You know, it was like ... you don't have to show you are the smartest guy in the room anymore," DeStefano said. "At 21, it's endearing. It's not particularly charming in someone in their 40s."

The foundation of his campaign is the story of his years in New Haven. Poverty remains a stubborn problem, but the city is widely seen as undergoing a renaissance. Crime and school dropout rates are down - and economic activity is up.

Under DeStefano, who controls the school board, the schools have undergone a $1.5 billion makeover. As he reminds audiences in his stump speech, magnet schools in New Haven attract 1,600 suburban students. His community policing and district management system have given city hall a reputation for responsiveness.

The brochure he hands out at campaign stops says, "Finally, a governor who will get things done for people."

In 1989, DeStefano was DiLieto's choice to succeed him, but state Sen. John C. Daniels won the Democratic primary and went on to become New Haven's first African American mayor.

DeStefano was banished from city hall and took over the nonprofit group overseeing construction of the New Haven tennis center and its annual tournament. Four years later, DeStefano was elected after Daniels did not seek a third two-year term.

DeStefano, 51, has been re-elected six times in overwhelmingly Democratic New Haven, surviving a housing scandal in 1998 and a bitter primary challenge in 1999 from Sen. Martin Looney, who is now backing him for governor.

Other former opponents have remained critics. Daniels endorsed Mayor Dannel P. Malloy of Stamford, DeStefano's rival for the Democratic nomination, earlier this year, saying DeStefano's vaunted community policing program was overrated.

"In New Haven, we do not have control of our streets," Daniels said.

But municipal unions in the city are largely backing the mayor, including the police, several affiliates of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the executive committee of the New Haven Federation of Teachers.

DeStefano's campaign manager is Henry Fernandez, the Harvard and Yale Law graduate he recruited eight years ago to clean up a housing program that had improperly granted loans to city employees.

During the scandal and the primary, DeStefano exhibited a toughness, firing three top aides. He also broadly hinted that anyone supporting Looney would face political consequences. He won easily.

Fernandez said no one should be surprised that a successful urban mayor, even one who lards his speeches with references to settling disputes with win-win solutions, is tough.

"When you are working in municipal government, you are either a tough administrator - or ineffective," Fernandez said.

Rep. Patricia Dillon, D-New Haven, who has been on the outs with city hall, said DeStefano is one of the most focused politicians she knows, for better or worse.

"He is extremely focused, very disciplined," Dillon said. "If he decides that you are useful to him, the courtship is absolutely amazing. If he decides you are not, he is ice."

Charm And Toughness

A mix of charm and toughness have served DeStefano well, keeping political opponents at bay, while establishing a warm and fruitful relationship with Yale University - a foil for generations of New Haven politicians.

"When I was first elected, you could reasonably expect to get elected by running against Yale," DeStefano said. "I think the community has got to the point where - because of me, because of Yale, because of a lot of people - the atmosphere is not destructive."

Yale is the city's dominant employer, filling 200 buildings on 915 acres, a colossus with an annual budget of $1.68 billion. More recently, Yale has been a catalyst for economic development, spinning off biotechnology ventures.

Last week, DeStefano was a guest at the opening of Elm Street Ventures, a biotech venture capital firm and the latest tenant to move into the 300 George Street Technology Center.

Rob Bettigole, a tanned and trim man who keeps in shape by rowing, welcomed the mayor, who mingled with investors and employees of the firm.

DeStefano is energized when he talks about the transformation of 300 George Street from the headquarters of a regulated utility, Southern New England Telephone, to a home for technology entrepreneurs.

"It's the perfect metaphor for the city," DeStefano said.

Bettigole called DeStefano an approachable politician who is eager to talk about both the science and economics of biotech.

"He is very enthusiastic. He gets it," Bettigole said.

DeStefano has walked a fine line as a booster of Yale. The construction of a cancer center at Yale-New Haven Hospital was held up by Yale's dispute with labor and community activists. DeStefano urged Yale to come to terms, temporarily costing him support in the city's medical community.

The deadlock was broken in March with Yale agreeing to hire from the surrounding neighborhood and allowing an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union to attempt to organize center employees.

Yale, organized labor and the neighborhood were left happy. A week later, one of DeStefano's supporters reported that doctors who had been ducking her calls suddenly were willing to attend a DeStefano fundraiser.

DeStefano said the cancer center was one of his "win-wins," an example of his ability to coax parties into collaborating. The longer he has been mayor, the more clearly he sees leadership as more than delivering services, he said.

"How do you leverage situations? How do you leverage people to do things they otherwise wouldn't? It's been more fun," he said. "You know, experience, if you are awake, should help you grow - if you are awake. A lot of people have experiences, they don't particularly grow from it."

DeStefano offered no examples of politicians who are slumbering, though he does not hide his disdain for what he says is Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell's lack of vision for making Connecticut competitive.

"We are a very small, very smart, resource-rich state," DeStefano said. "What are we going to point to as Jodi Rell's greatest accomplishment? That no one has gone to jail during her administration?"

DeStefano has been a candidate for governor since early 2004, when a dissipated John G. Rowland was still governor and Rell was an anonymous lieutenant governor. He opted to stay in the race, even after Rowland quit in July 2004 and Rell became the most popular Connecticut governor since the advent of polling.

He is more generous to Malloy, but only to a point, saying Malloy has succeeded in a city with relatively high income and few of New Haven's challenges.

"My peers are Bridgeport and Hartford," DeStefano said. And in that group, he added, there is no comparison. "Expectations have increased in New Haven."

He said expectations are lower in Hartford, which is struggling with street violence and missed opportunities for economic development, and Bridgeport, which is coping with mayoral corruption and drug use.

It was a proud and, perhaps, foolish thing to say, considering that Hartford and Bridgeport are heavily Democratic. But to the mayor of New Haven - candidate or not - the observation was a simple truth.

Contact Mark Pazniokas at mpazniokas