Posted by Bytmccall on October 10, 2004 at 23:43:40:

On L. Harvey Smith

A few weeks ago, I was very close to endorsing L. Harvey Smith for Mayor of Jersey City. I had a post more or less written in my head: The Case for Harvey Smith, or In Defense of Harvey Smith, something like that. I was going to say that in a field with no real powerhouse candidate -- and a general election coming up in May -- it would be wrong to turn over the reins of municipal government to an unknown quantity so soon after Smith had taken office. I felt we should give the Acting Mayor some time to make good on both his promises, and on the lofty and strenuous words he spoke at City Council meetings and on the steps of City Hall on behalf of our public culture.

Harvey Smith had been dealt a bad hand. He had to succeed a popular mayor -- one who represented the political aspirations of the City's most-maligned ward -- over the strident objections of Cunningham supporters. The rush to put a halo over the head of the late Mayor Cunningham has made Smith look like an interloper or usurper by contrast: an accidental mayor, a temporary and hastily-improvised patch over a bleeding wound. Smith has been called a stooge of the HCDO, a nepotist, an Uncle Tom. Throughout, he's had the shadow of defeat in the November elections looming over everything he's done, undercutting his authority. If he has seemed perpetually embattled, bruised, diminished by infighting, that's no accident: with no public mandate, he hasn't been able to act the part of the political strongman.

But Smith has had advantages that the other candidates haven't had. We can appraise their supporters and imagine hypotheticals, but we don't really know what a Mayor Manzo or Mayor Flood would be like. On the other hand, we have had a good three months to examine Mayor Smith in action. That might not be enough time to get a full EKG reading on his leadership, but it's more than just a municipal heartbeat. It's fair to judge Smith on his record, especially since he's the only candidate who has one. For better and for worse, he is the incumbent, and the November elections are a referendum on Mr. Smith's Jersey City, and Mr. Smith's leadership.

With incumbency come benefits. For the past three months, Harvey Smith has gotten to put his name and his face on every event, opening, and happening held in Jersey City. If there was a dog show, it became the L. Harvey Smith dog show, if there was a karaoke contest, he came down to it and blessed it with his name and the authority of his position. That's his prerogative as chief executive, and if you thought (as many residents did) that it demeaned the office of the mayor to have L. Harvey Smith's banner and seal plastered behind renditions of "I Will Survive", remember that he had mere weeks to introduce himself to the people of Jersey City before he went to the general public to ask for a removal of the word "Acting" from his job description. An incumbent facing an election is only as powerful as his poll numbers and name recognition show him to be. Nobody is going to listen to a sitting mayor if they've got a pretty good inkling that he's about to be shown the door by the electorate.

So if there's been a certain desperation to Smith as he's chased events around town, pledging his commitment wherever he can, it is perhaps understandable. Without a wide base of support, and a sense of gathering momentum, the Smith administration would have been stillborn: something to ride out until November. In order to make the most of his three months, L. Harvey Smith had to behave like a man with a good chance to get his hands on, at the very least, another six.

But for those of us on the other end of his pledges -- supporters of 111 First Street, for instance, or the Friends of the Loew's -- Smith's electioneering often raised expectations to unrealistic levels. When Mayor Smith ran to the Old Gold Smokestack and assured the tenants at the Arts Center that there was no way he'd allow Lloyd Goldman to take the structure down, he was clearly blowing smoke. I don't mean to suggest that there has been anything disingenuous about the Acting Mayor's support of the Arts District; Smith's heart may have well been in the right place that day. But he allowed himself to be overzealous, excitable, crowd-pleasing -- and that excitability led him to make a pledge that he had no business making.

It also made him look ineffectual. For years, the Cunningham administration proceeded cautiously on the Warehouse District issue, taking pains neither to inflame the landlord nor to satisfy the many demands of the creative community there. Many of us involved in the arts in Hudson County wanted Mr. Cunningham to move faster and to take a firmer stand against Lloyd Goldman. But Cunningham wasn't gung-ho about landmarking, and in retrospect, I have to believe his strategy was wiser than that Mr. Smith's, who strapped on the gloves in plain sight and attempted to punch above his weight. Smith made many of us happy when he declared war on New Gold -- he got our Irish up, he appealed to our belligerence, he got us marching and banging drums. Then he got knocked flat on his ass, and suddenly it wasn't so much fun anymore. 110 came down, artists were pushed out of 111 First Street, BLDG was allowed to vandalize the halls of the Arts Center and to treat its tenants cruelly. And when Mr. Goldman hired himself a little private army to harass visitors and attempt to ruin the Studio Tour, a cowed Harvey Smith -- who had pledged himself a relentless supporter of our community -- was nowhere to be found.

Mayor Smith got the landmarking he wanted this week. It remains to be seen whether that translates into better conditions for artists or a developed warehouse district consisting of something other than untouchable and uninhabited old buildings. Nonetheless, this was a much-needed win for Smith. But it was a win he should have had a month ago -- at a City Council meeting in early September when he foolishly tabled the landmarking in an eleventh-hour effort to compromise with Lloyd Goldman. That night, Smith allowed himself to be hoodwinked by Goldman's team. To use a metaphor that Smith, an old basketball star, should understand, Mr. Cavanaugh and New Gold were attempting to stall by dribbling out the clock. That couldn't have been too difficult to deduce: hundreds of people in a packed City Council chamber knew exactly what was going on. Our mayor did not. He got maneuvered into a bad-faith negotiation, and one that wasted an entire month.

In the gloom following the decision to table the landmarking, many supporters of the Powerhouse surmised that Smith was on the take -- that he'd been paid off by Goldman to kill the district. But subsequent events proved that the Acting Mayor was not on the take -- he went into his dinner meeting with Lloyd Goldman actually expecting to reach a reasoned compromise. He wasn't corrupted, he was unprepared. If Smith had spent the time educating himself about Mr. Goldman's prior acts, there's no way he would have taken Mr. Cavanaugh's bait. He would have been able to avoid this pitfall, and he would have looked like a hero in the process. But because he was unprepared, he was played like a chump. A corrupt politician is often shrewd enough to work angles for the benefit of his city. A politician who is behind the curve -- one relying on yesterday's news -- is no good to anybody.

As Acting Mayor, Mr. Smith has combined unpreparedness with a scary willingness to shut down discourse. At two City Council meetings, he's taken items off the agenda, and refused to hear already-scheduled public speakers. His attempts to explain his own stances are often gruff, impatient, and incoherent. Nobody is really sure why he has decided to reverse his previously-held position on the lease of the Loew's Theatre. The Friends of the Loew's -- another group to whom Smith has pledged support many times -- deserves an explanation and apology. It is very possible that Smith's plan for the Loew's is one that will make everybody in town happy. It's also possible that he's going to hand the theatre over to a campaign contributor. We cannot know, because the Acting Mayor isn't telling. He needs to clarify his positions, and understand that a major policy reversal requires an accompanying detailed explanation.

Unfortunately, Harvey Smith's public utterances are reliably uninspiring. His speeches are loaded with management-speak and vague, euphemistic language -- he is constantly "moving forward" and using the catch-all "situation" to stand in for any controversy -- and in public meetings he has shown himself short-tempered and intolerant of disagreement. Mr. Smith is a poor communicator. Behind the microphone, he often seems uncomfortable, irritable, expeditious to a fault. After watching him in public settings for three months, I now believe Mr. Smith is one of those people who has become accustomed to using body language in lieu of actual discourse. He is a very large man, and he has sometimes used his imposing physical stature to intimidate people who challenge him. That is a good strategy on the basketball court, but it isn't one you ever want to see in City Hall. It's not the face of Jersey City that I want to show to the rest of the nation.

It is tempting to think that if given the authority that comes from a popular mandate, L. Harvey Smith would be able to stand behind his public utterances and make good on the many pledges he has made during this campaign. Tempting, yes, but also foolish. A popular mandate is not going to make Smith better prepared, or quicker on his feet, or more willing to entertain dissent gracefully. It's not going to prevent him from falling into the sort of snares that Lloyd Goldman set for him on September 8, or for picking battles that he's not willing to see through to their conclusions. It won't make him a better or clearer speaker, or a calmer hand on the tiller. After three months of rudderless governance, I've seen enough. L. Harvey Smith is over his head as mayor of Jersey City, and should not be elected on November 2.

Follow Ups:

• Reality Check Diogenes 13:04:12 10/11/04 (1)
  • Re: Reality Check JHR 15:05:56 10/11/04 (0)
• Re: On L. Harvey Smith And the bottom line speaks volumns 10:40:37 10/11/04 (0)

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: On L. Harvey Smith

: A few weeks ago, I was very close to endorsing L. Harvey Smith for Mayor of Jersey City. I had a post more or less written in my head: The Case for Harvey Smith, or In Defense of Harvey Smith, something like that. I was going to say that in a field with no real powerhouse candidate -- and a general election coming up in May -- it would be wrong to turn over the reins of municipal government to an unknown quantity so soon after Smith had taken office. I felt we should give the Acting Mayor some time to make good on both his promises, and on the lofty and strenuous words he spoke at City Council meetings and on the steps of City Hall on behalf of our public culture.

: Harvey Smith had been dealt a bad hand. He had to succeed a popular mayor -- one who represented the political aspirations of the City's most-maligned ward -- over the strident objections of Cunningham supporters. The rush to put a halo over the head of the late Mayor Cunningham has made Smith look like an interloper or usurper by contrast: an accidental mayor, a temporary and hastily-improvised patch over a bleeding wound. Smith has been called a stooge of the HCDO, a nepotist, an Uncle Tom. Throughout, he's had the shadow of defeat in the November elections looming over everything he's done, undercutting his authority. If he has seemed perpetually embattled, bruised, diminished by infighting, that's no accident: with no public mandate, he hasn't been able to act the part of the political strongman. 

: But Smith has had advantages that the other candidates haven't had. We can appraise their supporters and imagine hypotheticals, but we don't really know what a Mayor Manzo or Mayor Flood would be like. On the other hand, we have had a good three months to examine Mayor Smith in action. That might not be enough time to get a full EKG reading on his leadership, but it's more than just a municipal heartbeat. It's fair to judge Smith on his record, especially since he's the only candidate who has one. For better and for worse, he is the incumbent, and the November elections are a referendum on Mr. Smith's Jersey City, and Mr. Smith's leadership.

: With incumbency come benefits. For the past three months, Harvey Smith has gotten to put his name and his face on every event, opening, and happening held in Jersey City. If there was a dog show, it became the L. Harvey Smith dog show, if there was a karaoke contest, he came down to it and blessed it with his name and the authority of his position. That's his prerogative as chief executive, and if you thought (as many residents did) that it demeaned the office of the mayor to have L. Harvey Smith's banner and seal plastered behind renditions of "I Will Survive", remember that he had mere weeks to introduce himself to the people of Jersey City before he went to the general public to ask for a removal of the word "Acting" from his job description. An incumbent facing an election is only as powerful as his poll numbers and name recognition show him to be. Nobody is going to listen to a sitting mayor if they've got a pretty good inkling that he's about to be shown the door by the electorate.

: So if there's been a certain desperation to Smith as he's chased events around town, pledging his commitment wherever he can, it is perhaps understandable. Without a wide base of support, and a sense of gathering momentum, the Smith administration would have been stillborn: something to ride out until November. In order to make the most of his three months, L. Harvey Smith had to behave like a man with a good chance to get his hands on, at the very least, another six.

: But for those of us on the other end of his pledges -- supporters of 111 First Street, for instance, or the Friends of the Loew's -- Smith's electioneering often raised expectations to unrealistic levels. When Mayor Smith ran to the Old Gold Smokestack and assured the tenants at the Arts Center that there was no way he'd allow Lloyd Goldman to take the structure down, he was clearly blowing smoke. I don't mean to suggest that there has been anything disingenuous about the Acting Mayor's support of the Arts District; Smith's heart may have well been in the right place that day. But he allowed himself to be overzealous, excitable, crowd-pleasing -- and that excitability led him to make a pledge that he had no business making. 

: It also made him look ineffectual. For years, the Cunningham administration proceeded cautiously on the Warehouse District issue, taking pains neither to inflame the landlord nor to satisfy the many demands of the creative community there. Many of us involved in the arts in Hudson County wanted Mr. Cunningham to move faster and to take a firmer stand against Lloyd Goldman. But Cunningham wasn't gung-ho about landmarking, and in retrospect, I have to believe his strategy was wiser than that Mr. Smith's, who strapped on the gloves in plain sight and attempted to punch above his weight. Smith made many of us happy when he declared war on New Gold -- he got our Irish up, he appealed to our belligerence, he got us marching and banging drums. Then he got knocked flat on his ass, and suddenly it wasn't so much fun anymore. 110 came down, artists were pushed out of 111 First Street, BLDG was allowed to vandalize the halls of the Arts Center and to treat its tenants cruelly. And when Mr. Goldman hired himself a little private army to harass visitors and attempt to ruin the Studio Tour, a cowed Harvey Smith -- who had pledged himself a relentless supporter of our community -- was nowhere to be found.

: Mayor Smith got the landmarking he wanted this week. It remains to be seen whether that translates into better conditions for artists or a developed warehouse district consisting of something other than untouchable and uninhabited old buildings. Nonetheless, this was a much-needed win for Smith. But it was a win he should have had a month ago -- at a City Council meeting in early September when he foolishly tabled the landmarking in an eleventh-hour effort to compromise with Lloyd Goldman. That night, Smith allowed himself to be hoodwinked by Goldman's team. To use a metaphor that Smith, an old basketball star, should understand, Mr. Cavanaugh and New Gold were attempting to stall by dribbling out the clock. That couldn't have been too difficult to deduce: hundreds of people in a packed City Council chamber knew exactly what was going on. Our mayor did not. He got maneuvered into a bad-faith negotiation, and one that wasted an entire month.

: In the gloom following the decision to table the landmarking, many supporters of the Powerhouse surmised that Smith was on the take -- that he'd been paid off by Goldman to kill the district. But subsequent events proved that the Acting Mayor was not on the take -- he went into his dinner meeting with Lloyd Goldman actually expecting to reach a reasoned compromise. He wasn't corrupted, he was unprepared. If Smith had spent the time educating himself about Mr. Goldman's prior acts, there's no way he would have taken Mr. Cavanaugh's bait. He would have been able to avoid this pitfall, and he would have looked like a hero in the process. But because he was unprepared, he was played like a chump. A corrupt politician is often shrewd enough to work angles for the benefit of his city. A politician who is behind the curve -- one relying on yesterday's news -- is no good to anybody.

: As Acting Mayor, Mr. Smith has combined unpreparedness with a scary willingness to shut down discourse. At two City Council meetings, he's taken items off the agenda, and refused to hear already-scheduled public speakers. His attempts to explain his own stances are often gruff, impatient, and incoherent. Nobody is really sure why he has decided to reverse his previously-held position on the lease of the Loew's Theatre. The Friends of the Loew's -- another group to whom Smith has pledged support many times -- deserves an explanation and apology. It is very possible that Smith's plan for the Loew's is one that will make everybody in town happy. It's also possible that he's going to hand the theatre over to a campaign contributor. We cannot know, because the Acting Mayor isn't telling. He needs to clarify his positions, and understand that a major policy reversal requires an accompanying detailed explanation. 

: Unfortunately, Harvey Smith's public utterances are reliably uninspiring. His speeches are loaded with management-speak and vague, euphemistic language -- he is constantly "moving forward" and using the catch-all "situation" to stand in for any controversy -- and in public meetings he has shown himself short-tempered and intolerant of disagreement. Mr. Smith is a poor communicator. Behind the microphone, he often seems uncomfortable, irritable, expeditious to a fault. After watching him in public settings for three months, I now believe Mr. Smith is one of those people who has become accustomed to using body language in lieu of actual discourse. He is a very large man, and he has sometimes used his imposing physical stature to intimidate people who challenge him. That is a good strategy on the basketball court, but it isn't one you ever want to see in City Hall. It's not the face of Jersey City that I want to show to the rest of the nation.

: It is tempting to think that if given the authority that comes from a popular mandate, L. Harvey Smith would be able to stand behind his public utterances and make good on the many pledges he has made during this campaign. Tempting, yes, but also foolish. A popular mandate is not going to make Smith better prepared, or quicker on his feet, or more willing to entertain dissent gracefully. It's not going to prevent him from falling into the sort of snares that Lloyd Goldman set for him on September 8, or for picking battles that he's not willing to see through to their conclusions. It won't make him a better or clearer speaker, or a calmer hand on the tiller. After three months of rudderless governance, I've seen enough. L. Harvey Smith is over his head as mayor of Jersey City, and should not be elected on November 2. 

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