In a dozen years as mayor, Paul Helmke worked with a number of leaders in the
community, in both good times and bad. This is one of the good times, when he
was affecting rakish looks with City Councilman Don Schmidt, R-2nd District,
at a 1988 welcome party for the annual conference of the Indiana Association
of Cities and Towns.
When
it comes to leadership, I look for a mix of qualities. You want someone who's
bright and not just book smart. They need an area of expertise. And it should
be somebody who knows something I can learn from.
I'm knowledgeable but I like people with different areas of knowledge as well. Leaders need to be people who not only know things, but also know what they don't know. I always get suspicious with leaders and advisers who don't see the down side. You have to be able to analyze the pluses and negatives of any decision. A leader who doesn't look at both sides is going to be blind-sided by something.
You need to be able to make decisions, which isn't as easy as you think. It's being able to fit what you know with what you don't. However, if you let the pluses and minuses bounce back and forth and overwhelm you, you'll never act at all. It will be paralysis through analysis. Sometimes decisions are made with incomplete information, without all the facts. Sometimes you wish you knew certain information, but you can't afford to wait.
You have to be willing to be criticized, to take heat and accept the fact you're going to be second-guessed a lot. Almost anything you do as mayor, someone's not going to like. Often, the person who doesn't like what you do and complains gets more attention than the people who support your decision. Even if it's right for 90 percent of the people, 10 percent will hate you for it. And those people have a higher level of intensity than those who support you.
You have to not let it get you down. You have to be willing to do what's right.
You want someone who gets others to follow them, to get inspired and to act. Leadership motivation usually is the hardest part because it relies on more than just what the leader does. It depends on the group as well. You can only lead so far on your own. You also need folks who want to follow.
Leadership is not just "stand up and give a great speech and march down the street and get things done." It's laying the early groundwork; you need to lay the groundwork so people will follow you. It means working harder and connecting with voters by listening to them.
These are leaders I admire:
Abraham Lincoln
A real inspiration to me. He decided what was the right thing and stuck with it, despite wars and unpopularity. He was good at making decisions, sticking with them and inspiring people.
George Washington
He was someone who was patient; he was losing battles, but winning the war. He realized you don't just judge immediately, but look long range.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
He wasn't a hero when my Republican family talked politics at the dinner table. But when I read about him, I saw someone who realized the traditional way of dealing with problems might not be the best way. He tried to figure out different ways to deal with the situation and to get a mandate to act.
It wasn't just that he tried to rid the country of the Great Depression. His leadership came from the fact people saw him doing something.
Barry Goldwater
He was a bit naive about the way the real world worked, but he had a clear idea of his philosophy. Sometimes philosophy has to mesh with reality, but at least he had a skepticism about the role of government.
However, I never became the kind of Republican who said all government is bad.
Bobby Kennedy
It was the sense with Kennedy here was somebody who knew government, who knew how it could be misused. But he had a vision and idealism to push people where he wanted them to go.
I heard him speak when he ran for president in 1968.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I met him in high school in Fort Wayne.
King realized you could lead people with speeches, and figured out ways to use the system with civil disobedience by breaking the rules while playing by the rules at the same time. He went to jail in such a way to show the rules should be changed.
Richard Lugar
As mayor of Indianapolis, he got unigov established there. He was a model for my career; he lost for U.S. Senate before getting elected during a second try.
It's amazing how much he knows about so many different things. He has an ability to analyze foreign affairs, and agricultural and urban issues. To me he's a model of who we want in government, even if he's not flashy.
Dan Quayle
He's interesting. The attitude that Quayle was some sort of a joke -- the humorous David Letterman-Jay Leno image of him -- has stuck.
I'd point out, however, it wasn't fair to him. He has a good grasp of issues and people.
It's the image problem, some of which he helped feed. Some of it is the media that puts you in a box that's hard to get out. It's unfair. If you're in the public eye with a microphone in front of you 24 hours a day, you will slip up, speak ungrammatically at times, or say things that don't sound too smart.
But Quayle had a willingness to take political risks, and keep going out there even when folks continued to knock and prejudge him.
Ed Rousseau
I've always admired him, even though he said he was going to "kick my ass" years ago when we appeared before the Legislature to argue about the makeup of the county Board of Health. He cares about the community, and has great local political experience with the City Council, Allen County Council and County Commissioner.
He gets frustrated and shows his temper very easily. But Rousseau is an advocate of economic development and the entire community. He's got a sense that we're all in this together. He's frustrated being in a system where it's not just him, but two other commissioners as well.
Tom Wyss
He's also frustrated and with a temper, but I can't blame him. He keeps coming back with proposed laws to lower the drunken-driving threshold, like the windup Energizer bunny. He is still pushing.
Bud Meeks
He was a good sheriff, and his experience in Washington with the national sheriffs' association really broadened his perspective. Here's a small-town boy who winds up head of a national organization and who gets invited to testify before Congress. Yet he's kept his down-home demeanor and friendliness, the same things that made him an easy-going sheriff and individual.
Linda Buskirk
I think so highly of her. She would have done a great job as mayor. She was better prepared to be mayor than when I had run.
She understood city government, the media, has a master's degree, is levelheaded and straightforward and did a great job running the Board of Works.
It was a real loss when she wasn't elected mayor. I hope she runs again for public office; she's the kind of person you want to see involved in government.
Steve Shine
He's a different sort of personality. The line on Shine is he's more of the cheerleader than the organizer. But he's a great cheerleader. He's got a great media sense.
It's a strange fit with him as head of the local Republican Party. But you could tell he liked politics and liked seeing his name out front. He was pretty savvy getting his name out front.
He came to prominence when Quayle became vice president. When he wanted to run for party chairman, I didn't publicly support anyone although I was more inclined to side with Shine's opponent, Alan McMahan.
The challenge for Steve was always to make sure the reality fit in with the talk. He's great at getting attention for himself and the party. Making sure he's following through, whether it's crafting a party that's more inclusive or getting good candidates, has been more of a challenge for him.
Where I've had my run-ins with Shine was when he was put in pressure situations. Because of his role as head of a countywide party, some of the things I was doing in support of the city, like annexation, didn't sit well with non-city types. There was pressure from some Republicans locally and statewide that I wasn't being Republican enough.
On one hand, we got along well, but he'd be getting pressure and Steve's the kind of person who doesn't like internal conflict in the party. So his approach was to get those conflicts mediated, like getting us together with Sheriff Joe Squadrito.
As a lawyer, he does a lot of mediation work and he's good at it. People don't see that quality. Instead, they see the brash public side. Sometimes in politics, however, you can't bring people together and you will have conflict.
When I ran for Senate, Shine was uptight when Peter Rusthoven's people brought in Bob Dole for the annual Lincoln Day dinner. The tie-in to that was they wanted Rusthoven to introduce him. So here we are, in my hometown during a primary election in 1998 for U.S. Senate and one of my primary opponents is going up to the dais and having the prominent role of introducing Bob Dole. I wasn't very happy with it; neither were my people. Rusthoven's folks, however, said they'd have Dole cancel if it didn't happen. Shine felt in the middle of some of these things and they were hard for him to handle.
Early on in office, Shine would get called on issues and he'd call me. One issue had to do with firefighters who were dissatisfied. You can't make everybody happy; there were groups of firefighters that didn't like Chief Steve Hinton or Deputy Chief Steve Adams, or were grumbling during union contract negotiations.
I was dealing with those issues and people, but when Steve got the GOP chairmanship, he'd call me about some of those gripes. I tried to be pretty direct with Steve: "This is my job, not your job. And I am going to handle it my way."
I'm always willing to get more information, and I don't want to shut the door on anyone, especially the county chairman if he has thoughts and insights. But I'm going to make the call on what the city does.
I pointed out, if folks felt the way to influence me was by going through Shine, then it would open the door for Shine to hear a lot more complaints not worth his or my time.
We came to an understanding on it fairly quickly. Subsequently, he would call me to let me know what people were saying about me; it was more of the appropriate relationship for us. I felt he was a friend.
Neil Moore
He was a great chief for the most part; he was the right person at the right time for the department. He was chosen at a time of a lot of divisiveness. He had the skills to bring the department up to a new level. He had worked on the accreditation of the department to make it more professional. With a master's degree and working on a doctorate, he brought in ideas from the outside more than others had.
Neil was responsible for community-oriented policing and knew who had tried the concept, why it worked and where it didn't. He's an academic and a hands-on police officer. He combined the way the academic and the police officer looked at things. It really helped us build up the department; he had credibility with the City Council, neighborhoods and officers to have them buy into community-oriented policing.
There were problems at the end of his tenure when I believe he wasn't as in touch with some problems, like complaints in the minority community about police officers. I don't know if he was spending too much time on his doctorate and accreditation elsewhere.
Sometimes, Neil got accused of being too willing to back up officers without realizing there were times officers needed to be disciplined. If there was a fault, it was that he sometimes couldn't judge officers as harshly as they should have been. He came up through the ranks and served with so many of them, he sometimes couldn't see when they caused problems. As a result, it was difficult to be objective.
Still, he was one of Fort Wayne's best police chiefs and one of the best in the country. We couldn't have done what we've done with the changes in the department without his involvement.
Dan Hannaford
He was Neil's runner-up in the selection for chief. Personalitywise, Neil was a bit more outgoing and I felt he would have an easier time selling what we were trying to do. Dan was a real close second; he became the No. 2 man and the team served the department well.
It was an easy choice for me to move Hannaford up when Moore left. He was a better disciplinarian than Neil, and it's what was needed at the time. He helped restore confidence in the Police Department with the minority community; he made extra effort to work with them. Most officers realized there was a need to be tighter with discipline as well.
Hannaford also was a big advocate of using crime statistics analysis in crime-fighting. The final numbers at the end of 1999 showed the city had the lowest crime rate since 1974.
Sharon Banks
She's one of the real jewels of the community. After my first campaign, I asked her to join the administration, but she didn't want to leave the school system when she was an assistant principal at Snider High School. I would consult her now and then even before she finally came aboard. She eventually joined as chief of staff, a real coup for me.
She knew the community really well. Her concern was always that government deal with those people government usually doesn't deal with or listen to.
She kept things running well as a No. 2 person, but also was good as an outreach person to get government and me to deal with issues we hadn't done a good job with. She formed a mayor's youth council and a deaf awareness council, so I'd hear concerns from those groups. She was always looking for new things to get into.
She was my eyes and ears to the community, especially parts I hadn't seen or been in contact with.
John Stafford
He knows more about local government than anybody; he's a human filing cabinet. I wanted him on board from the start. As a long-time local planner, he got me excited about the concept of consolidated government back in the times of my involvement with Fort Wayne Future. It was the same with annexation. He knows everything, it seems.
He's a good person to have around, but he's very much the pessimist. When we developed our annexation plans, he believed things would flop. We'd lose in the courts, or there'd be some other downside, he said.
He could analyze issues and see long-range consequences. He put together a list of some problems we'd have to deal with the next 10 years, like trash fees, annexation, cash balances, and we used these ideas as a work plan for the future. It gave us a good road map.
Part of his personality is perfectly suited for government. He could analyze issues neutrally. But part of his personality had problems. He would worry so much. He can look haggard and this one time, he looked even worse. I asked John, "What's wrong?" He's concerned about the assessed valuation figures at a time we were readying the budget. If those figures came in low, it would throw off our numbers. He hadn't been able to sleep at night because of these assessed valuation figures. I told him I worry about those numbers but I don't lose sleep over them. "Get a life; you can't let these things wear you down."
He cared so much about what he took on, and it made it difficult for him to leave the job at the office.
He's a great guy and was a crucial person in local government.
Tim McCaulay
He'd been a friend of mine since the mid-1970s. I knew his wife, Janet, since high school, and my wife knew Janet since grade school. He worked for my dad's law firm and became one of my closest friends when we worked there.
I didn't consider anyone else for city attorney, even though the decision was criticized. I separated my legal entanglements from the firm when I became mayor, even though Tim stayed on there.
I wanted someone I trusted, someone I had confidence in as a lawyer and whose opinion, legal or otherwise, I sought out and listened to.
He wasn't a yes person; he would tell me things I didn't want to hear and disagreed with. As a lawyer myself, I knew what I wanted from a city attorney. You have to watch how the legal issues fit with political issues and tactical concerns. You need someone who could combine the legal, political and policy advice into one. So you don't get someone who just gives you the law, but sees its political and policy implications. I had faith in Tim in those areas.
He was the one who pushed a phased-in strategy of annexation of St. Joe Township; it helped get the annexation plan passed locally. He did a great job with it all the way through. When Tim gets on a case, he's the best lawyer I've ever seen. He's a good homework type of lawyer.
He could be frustrating. He would get his own ideas about politics, mostly on non-city issues. Sometimes they'd be nastier and more biting than how I did things. He was the one, unlike others in city government, who wasn't deferential to the mayor. I'm the boss, but I wanted advice. Since I had known Tim long before I became mayor, he was the one who would tell me if I was getting off track and would get under my skin more than others.
"Don't do that; straighten up your act." That was his message at times. He gave good advice.
He also sometimes made people angry. I had to pick up after him. Sometimes, it wasn't intentionally. Other times, it was. Politically, sometimes you need the lawyer to be the tough guy, not the mayor. I'm the one who needs to get the votes and have people like me. Tim didn't need to get votes or have people like him, and sometimes he relished the role. In tough union negotiations, he liked playing hardball.
Greg Purcell
He was a carry-over from the Win Moses Jr. administration, and was looked at suspiciously by some of the folks because he had been there before. I always sensed Greg was a professional. If you told him to do something, he'd do it. Greg would tell you if you were on the wrong track, but if you wanted it done, he'd do it.
He's a city manager type. He'll do a good job and do it professionally. In some ways, he's a consummate bureaucrat. For some people, it's not a compliment. It's knowing how to cover your rear, to make sure you could survive.
We were having some discussion about an issue, and some of my advisers were looking one way and Greg another. Greg said he knew his job was then to fall on his sword. It's one of his strengths; he was the good soldier. I appreciated it.
He made sure we did the follow through. He made sure folks did their homework, and differing options were on the table for consideration. My style at times was to put off a decision that would be messy or make some people unhappy. Purcell would make sure the issue was resolved and not left hanging. He helped drive the agenda. He knew which buttons to push and how to get government to work.
I supported him as parks director. Despite his lack of background, he's a person who learns quickly.
He can take credit for creation of Headwaters Park. When Greg came aboard as chief of staff, he said if the commitment's there, we'd get it done by 1995, the next election. He got on it, and figured out how to finance the land acquisition. If Purcell hadn't been there with his bureaucratic sense of knowing when talk is enough and action is called for, we wouldn't have Headwaters Park. Greg was the one who pushed to get it done and figured out how to get it done. You need someone who can translate visions and speeches and architectural drawings and pretty pictures, and ultimately dreams, into reality.
He also was brutally committed to his sense of ethics. One of the areas was politics. I'm getting ready for re-election in 1991 and again in 1995. I wasn't the kind of person who said people had to contribute. I'm pretty low key, but I liked to invite people to fund-raisers. Greg never sent me a single contribution to anything, and other people knew this and it bothered them. He's a chief of staff and he's not doing anything politically. But he was honest about it. He was a member of the International City Managers' Association. In such cities, city managers are non-political because it's the way the system is set up.
I told him that's fine, but here in Indiana it's a political system. I'm not telling him to contribute, but I was concerned about his credibility with the staff. If he were seen as "holier than thou" and not writing checks, it would affect his ability to do his job. He wrote the ICMA for its opinion, and the organization was pretty clear about staying non-political.
It said a lot about him. He has a high sense of standards.
Instead, he would offer to make a contribution to charity like the group that was raising money for Headwaters to show it wasn't the dollars, but the ethics. Or he'd pick up the tab for parties for the staff.
Payne Brown
I'm really proud of him. Just seeing him grow into the job as public safety director over the years was really impressive. His mother, Helen Brown, used to show pictures of him to me because she was so proud of him.
He went on a Sister City trip with me to Plock, Poland, in 1991, and he wasn't yet working for me. I got to know him traveling in Poland; he had me listen to some of his rap music on his CD player.
He was bright, and someone who wanted to do a good job and make a difference. He was a fun person to be around. He took over after Mike McAlexander left as safety director. Despite being young, his law degree made him a great person to have on staff.
He met resistance; he looked at issues on his own and wouldn't consider how other people looked at things without skepticism. Despite being friends with police Chief Neil Moore, for example, he would question things. Sometimes the process of questioning made people angry and upset. But it's what I wanted from my advisers. Payne was willing to question things happening in the police and fire departments.
It's important to have civilian oversight over police and firefighters, and Payne did a good job with it.
He was not always good on follow-up; he needed a Greg Purcell next to him to make sure things were done. But he matured as a speaker and as someone who could handle conflict. When he first started out, he knew what he was talking about but he'd look at his shoes and mumble. I told him he couldn't do that and be effective. You have to project; he eventually developed a better preacher-and-politician speaking style.
He got criticized for a lot of things; one was for allegedly tipping off a drug dealer. The story behind it was the fact that police had suspected drug money was being run through some corporate books in the house of a suspect's parents. Payne knew the parents; they were well-respected in the community and elderly.
So he knew what police were planning to do; he was concerned police would go inside this elderly couple's home and start throwing over filing cabinets and knocking down stuff. So he called a relative of the suspect to make sure the relative is there when police arrive so they can go into the house at the same time, and the house isn't torn up and the mother left in shock.
I learned about this situation and had no problem with it. It wasn't advance warning but it became grist for a story Payne was tipping off drug dealers.
You don't want to second-guess the police, but the safety director has to keep an eye on things to prevent problems from happening. It's part of what Payne's job was, and it got him in hot water with police, with the community -- especially the black community -- at times.
Barb Schoppman
I've known her since the mid-1970s with the Young Republicans. She was someone who likes politics but her main love was neighborhoods. At first, she wasn't interested in a job with the city. She joined later on as citizens advocate.
Her concern was a landlord-tenant ordinance; she worked on it, despite running into brick walls. That's why I was glad we finally passed one in the last few months of my administration.
She helped existing associations get stronger, but also helped restart dormant ones. She also worked with Neil Moore to put together the community-oriented government plan, and pushed hard to get neighborhood involvement prominently. I give her credit for getting the neighborhood side of community-oriented government organized.
Don Schmidt
As senior City Council member who was in the minority for so long, it was tough for him to get used to having a Republican mayor and learn how to work with one. Our challenge with Don was how to get him on board. His natural inclination as a minority council member was to vote no or say no.
Don had always raised concerns with organized labor, wondering if the city was in a straitjacket with its collective bargaining rules. We also were concerned so we put together several changes to the collective bargaining ordinance. One was to get rid of the "me too" clause, where if one union got a certain percentage increase, the others should expect at least about the same.
City Attorney Tim McCaulay drew an ordinance and we knew the labor unions wouldn't like them. We wanted Don to champion the cause. We brought the proposal to the council, and looked at Don for leadership. Instead, Don looked at us and said, "I'm supposed to be leading the fight on this?" He wasn't used to being in the leadership role, and particularly not in this situation.
He always had a different look at life; it was insightful and intelligent, but often just a different perspective. I always had wished we could have gotten Don to work more closely with us.
He put together good working relationships with other council members, especially when he finally became council president.
The problem with Don, however, was the fact it was tough to get him to see the big picture. We'd send down budgets, and he'd attack minor budgetary items and miss the big issues.
Don did take activist roles on some issues, including the anti-smoking ordinance. How did it fit with Don's conservative, anti-government position? That was interesting. It was the same question with the landlord-tenant ordinance because of his ownership of rental properties. At first, he was resistant to change.
Tom Henry:
Even though a Democrat, Henry wound up a council member I worked with very closely. To get anything done in the beginning, I needed to work with Democrats and Tom was someone we worked closely with on annexation and a tax reform package.
He was in a different camp than Councilman Mark GiaQuinta and others. Most of the time, he could really do some good with behind the scenes give-and-take. He could deliver a couple of votes and get things done.
Also, Tom had good political sense. He had a political agenda but realized the benefits of working with the administration for the community's benefit. A fault was when he tried to do too much behind the scenes. Tom would try to put the whole deal behind the scenes and have council just vote on the issue in public without much discussion.
I believed there were times when the fight should have been out in the open instead of trying to patch it up privately. But he's been largely successful because of his ability to build coalitions to get things done.
Mark GiaQuinta
He was my council member, representing my 5th District neighborhood. I knew him from the legal fraternity. He's one of the most entertaining people you could find in the political world. He was a tricky one to deal with because he's bright but you weren't sure of his agenda or where he was coming from.
Early on, GiaQuinta was the defender of the faith, of the Moses administration. He questioned closely anything I was doing. The relationship was clearly adversary for the first 11/2 years. Mark's group was different from Tom Henry's group. But Mark was tough; he knew how to ask tough questions, knowing what had been tried before. It was good for us; it kept everybody on his toes. He was a good lawyer with good cross-examining techniques, who was able to find the weak spot and exploit it.
As time went on, he got to a point where he realized we knew what we were doing. It took some time to develop.
The one hot issue, however, was the Adams Center hazardous waste landfill. It's where he tried to be more conciliatory with us, because he didn't have a lot of allies and he needed some. It was a tense issue, one of annexing the landfill despite vehement opposition from strident landfill critics. Mark and the folks at the landfill, whom his firm was representing, didn't want to get annexed by New Haven, which was fine with me. If the property's inside the city limits, we could manage the landfill's future more so than if it was on the outside.
Mark, from his perspective, was looking for any safe harbor from New Haven for the landfill. So we worked together. The interests weren't always the same, but Mark saw the advantage of working with the city.
I expected GiaQuinta or Henry would want to run for mayor against me, and in polling, threw both of their names in the hat. But it never happened.
John Crawford
I knew him in 1987 as a contributor. He was really interested with the unigov issue at the time. When I ran in 1991, I had breakfast with him at the Window Garden and asked him for help. It's when he said he wanted to get involved in politics. I told him the GOP didn't have a full slate of at-large candidates at the time. If interested, here's an opportunity to get involved. And he did. He spent a lot of money, close to $100,000, and lost by about 100 votes.
It was interesting: When people try for politics the first time and lose, they usually say it's a stupid business and don't get involved again. With Crawford, he looked at it from his academic/medical mind-set, and analyzed what he had done wrong. He went to campaign schools and learned techniques on how to do things differently.
In 1995, he ran again, and it was a different sort of campaign. He didn't put that much of his own money into it. Instead, he had fund-raisers, in part, to show he wasn't trying to buy the election and to expand his base of popular support.
He tried some humor in his commercials. Instead of the John Crawford, M.D., in the doctor's coat, he was John Crawford looking for Elvis. The commercials came across as somewhat stupid, but at least he was trying to change the image from that of a distant doctor to more of a regular person.
This time, he won a tight election.
It's interesting watching Crawford deal with public issues. He's dispassionate. Some politicians go by gut level of what's right or wrong. His approach is cerebral. "Prove to me it is going to work or not." It's a good additional outlook for council. But he's also learned the limitations of the academic approach to politics.
It's interesting, like with Schmidt, watching Crawford's behavior on the smoking ordinance. At one level, it shows his academic analysis. As a doctor, he sees the dangers of smoking. At the same time, he trumpets himself as the fiscal conservative who believes government shouldn't be regulating things.
Maybe it's simplistic, but it shows how you bring politics in when it comes time to get elected. Then, when you're faced with the real world of actually governing, there's a role for government that might not always fit consistently with your political philosophy.
You learn really quickly in government it's not black-and-white academic discussions. It's give-and-take; where do you get the votes; what incremental steps do you take to get things done. It's probably a lot different than the medical profession, where it's clear-cut. The enemy is the disease and you fight it. In politics, it's not always so clear.
Rebecca Ravine
A really amazing story. Her persistence paid off in politics. She got elected in 1991 for an at-large seat at a time Republicans didn't believe the party could win a citywide council seat.
She's the council member who is willing to go out to see firsthand what's going on, like riding with police or going through training programs with firefighters. In contrast to Crawford, she has a more emotional approach to governing. It gives her some strength but some weakness as well. Her level of empathy might be great, but then the level of analysis isn't going to be the same as Crawford's.
Often, she doesn't fit into the "old boy" crowd on council and it's frustrating for her. There's a sense she gets shut out from some discussions, but nevertheless keeps on fighting hard. She's also been willing to get involved with national organizations, like the National League of Cities. My role with the U.S. Conference of Mayors was beneficial, and I was disappointed some longtime council members didn't play a role in those kinds of organizations. I encouraged Rebecca to get involved and she became a board member for the National League of Cities.
Sandra Kennedy
I had a good working relationship with the city clerk. I've spoken with a lot of mayors over the years, and you sensed a lot of mayors and clerks were constantly fighting each other. She's someone easy to get along with. She's one of the most popular vote-getters in the city's history, even when I was winning with solid margins on the GOP side.
People liked her and responded to her. The clerk is the one person we worked through to work with council, and was vital to an important relationship. We tried to keep her informed and recognized.
She also was someone who was active with the city clerks' organization, and I was proud of her for it. Sandra's a little bit more of the old-time politician as well. She's constantly checking out the politics of an agenda.
State Sen. David Long
I knew him from my lawyer days. We both got elected at the same time. The relationship at times was good; other times, tense. Maybe it's the nature of lawyers. We had competed in courtrooms and occasionally, we'd compete in politics, even though we were of the same political party. He gave me a lot of advice about who to hire when I got elected. Nelson Peters, for example, had been part of my campaign and he became my labor relations director.
Despite being allies, we couldn't get David on board for some of our initiatives. The most frustrating was the initial vote for the local income tax. He was really troubled by the vote. He had pressure from us to vote for what could be described as a tax hike.
Sometimes he was so torn, I felt I was dealing with Hamlet. It was hard to get him to figure out where to go.
David took issues seriously. He would brood and think and consider issues for a long time before reaching a decision. Sometimes it would frustrate us because of how hard we had to try to convince him to support us.
He was somebody who really fought for the 4th District. I remember early on, Brooklyn Avenue needed expensive repairs. We finally put together neighborhood and city funds, as well as Urban Enterprise Zone and utility funds, because of it's wide-ranging support. He was pretty dogged about getting the project done.
Also frustrating was David's ambition, then and now. There's nothing wrong with it; most politicians are. He considered running for mayor if I hadn't; then he opted to run for State Senate.
That race raised a lot of tensions. David was always supportive of our annexation efforts while on council. He never raised any serious issues and was one of our strongest supporters on annexation. But he was getting ready to run for the State Senate, and part of the area covered Aboite Township. It was presumed Mitch Harper would be running, a former state legislator, and he was raising annexation as an issue. David, in response, started to talk anti-annexation. Mitch ended up not running. But Long had already outlined it as one of his concerns.
Ron Buskirk, Linda Buskirk's husband, ran against him in the primary election and it added to the tension. Linda was one of my closest advisers and David saw that as the administration trying to take him on. Instead, it was Ron taking David on his own. I tried to stay out of primary politics while I was mayor.
He won the primary and the general election. We've had a pretty decent relationship with the Legislature, except over some of the same kinds of annexation issues. His proposals, however, were always a lot more reasonable than Bob Alderman's and others.
Actually, we laughed about how we unwittingly did Long a favor. We sent down a minor annexation before he left City Council, and it gave him his first chance to vote against it and show his anti-annexation fervor by doing so.
It bothered me he had been such a strong supporter of annexation for 71/2 years, and then when he was running for a different office, he wasn't. Part of it fits in with David. He knows how to see both sides of an issue. He was convinced, probably with our help early on, annexation was the way to go. When he was running for Senate, he heard from those who didn't like it and started to change over because of his new constituents in Aboite.
I basically stick with one position, but others sometimes change and I understand. I hope politicians don't change just because their constituencies change as well. With David, it was such a strong reversal and certainly one that bothered me.
Bob Alderman
He and I never got along very well, particularly over the annexation issue. Bob was always one of these legislators who is fun to see, who pats you on the back and has some inside information he wants to share with you. But you're never sure where he's coming from. He's always coming up with new ideas, new jobs he's going to take. He even talked about running for mayor.
Bob was talking a lot and it was up to us to figure out when he was going to do something. When the annexation issue got hotter, Bob talked more seriously about anti-annexation legislation.
He's particularly successful with Second Amendment changes, where you haven't introduced a bill, but sit and wait while the bill gets to the floor of the House. Then, you stick your language into it.
We believed we kept things in check most of the time, but it was tough. One year, we reached a compromise with Bob for him not to try anything else in the legislative session if we wouldn't do anything further with the Aboite annexation that year. It stabilized the situation for a while.
When West Hamilton petition was filed to create a new town, however, I saw it as voiding the agreement. Bob wasn't necessarily involved with the decision, but it put the city in jeopardy.
Bob was helped out when other communities, like Elkhart and Carmel, were doing aggressive annexations; it gave him several anti-annexation allies.
The tricky part with Bob was you could never rest easy with him, because he knew the legislative process so well. If you weren't careful, something bad would wind up in legislation at the 11th hour. Bob would have his fingerprints on it, and knew what to do with legislation.
Mark Souder
I'd known Mark since the 1960s. He's a year younger than I, and we used to go to Republican meetings for teen-agers together in high school. When I was student body president at IU in 1969-1970, he had a similar position here at IPFW. He was always a strong conservative, and further to the right on issues than I.
He was always bright, engaging and fun to argue with. In the 1970s, he used to write columns for local weeklies in the eastern part of the county. I remember clipping some at the time I was getting ready to run for Congress in 1980. I'd get into discussions with him about abortion, for example. Even though we disagreed on how to handle issues, he was somebody I got along with well.
When I ran for mayor, Congressman Dan Coats helped me with a contribution of about $5,000. Coats and I hadn't been close; we ran against each other for Congress in 1980. I believe it was Souder who pushed for the contribution. His point of view was Coats would be in stronger shape in Congress if there were a Republican in Fort Wayne as mayor.
He could see the big picture politically; what helped me could also help his boss at the time, Coats.
He likes politics. There are a lot of folks on the right with a conflict: They get into politics but they don't like it. They run for government but don't want government to do anything. Mark isn't for big government, but he enjoys and understands the political process. He collects political buttons, reads politics and is fascinated by it.
He's not somebody you'd pick as a successful politician. He's more of the staff-person, brains-behind-the-operation kind of guy.
He genuinely looks for ways to make life better. He looks to the faith community, and recognizes government has a role it could play with the private, nonprofit sector. It's a lot better than those who say government is bad and should stay out of things all together.
Frank O'Bannon
My father served with Frank in the State Senate back in the early 1970s. They were good friends, and my mother and Judy O'Bannon, the same. They used to go shopping for antiques together. I always heard good things about the O'Bannon family.
Despite concerns about his ties to Evan Bayh and his age, O'Bannon ran a great campaign against the much-younger Steve Goldsmith for governor in 1996. A lot of folks thought he'd be a one-term governor; but he ran again and won.
He comes across as grandfatherly; anybody who knows him, likes him. There's nothing personally to dislike about Frank. He is sincere and gracious; the criticism is, "Is he a good leader?" Sometimes issues are put off and problems occur with a do-nothing approach, similar to Bayh's. Then, when things go wrong, you don't get blamed for it because your fingerprints weren't on it.
O'Bannon's a nice person. You don't score any points by being nasty against Grandpa. It's how I've felt the times we have gotten together. It's hard to raise questions about his performance without coming across as nasty. It's the good feeling former Gov. Otis Bowen engendered.
O'Bannon was willing to make sure local issues were taken care of on the state level, especially with the 1997 tire fire on Creighton Avenue. We eventually got help from the state to clean up the mess.
Ian Rolland
He is an example of what a community wants in a corporate leader.
I've always said -- when folks have been upset with some of the things Ian has done -- at least I wanted a leader who got involved on issues, even on those I don't agree with, instead of one who doesn't. The trend more and more is for leaders in the business community not to get involved. But Ian cares about this community.
Whether arts, education or downtown, Ian got involved and really helped make this place better. You are not going to see too many people like Ian anymore. He grew up in Fort Wayne, went to school here, left, and came back and became top guy at an early age at Lincoln National. He put his mark on the community. We're all better for it.
I had a run-in with him over the ballet school. Michael Tevlin, the director of the school, was a friend of mine. There were some internal arguments over direction. Ian got involved on the opposite side of me. It was frustrating; I wasn't sure how much Ian knew about the ballet school or ballet itself. Instead, I wondered if it wasn't his staff telling him this was the way to go. If he got on an issue, he had a lot of cards to play, a lot of organizational support.
He helped make things happen.
He challenged the community on airport, economic development and educational issues. It came across a decade ago as a threat when Lincoln considered, and then rejected, expensive downtown expansion. It wasn't; instead, these were legitimate issues the company had raised about the condition of the city and its educational system. But it came across as Lincoln saying it wasn't building because the airport hadn't been fixed. It gave issues attention but reinforced those people who believed things here were in horrible shape.
My biggest complaint is that Ian retired when he did; I wished he had stayed on longer. He's made it harder for his successors; his shadow affects future decision-making by Lincoln. It's tough to succeed someone like Ian who's done so well.
Black leadership
As mayor, I watched leaders of the black community go through a period of transition. The standard leaders were going through changes. City Councilman John Nuckols had died, replaced by a slightly younger generation of Cletus Edmonds, Charles Redd, Archie Lunsey, and now, Glynn Hines; people like Payne Brown and Carl Johnson on the Fort Wayne Community Schools board; and Michael Cunegin on County Council. It was a generational transition also with the NAACP, Urban League and black churches.
When I was running for mayor, the leaders on the church side were people like James Bledsoe, Clyde Adams and Jesse White. They had been leaders for a good 30 years, and still very influential. But you started seeing a change of guard with the arrival of Ternae Jordan, Mike Nickleson and Sylvester Hunter.
I sensed there were generational tensions going on. But I dealt with all the ministers, and tried to get them all involved. Those who got involved tended to be the younger ones, especially Jordan on the park board and Nickleson on several task forces. It was important to have good relations with them, especially because of tensions between the black community and Police Department. We could disagree, but I trusted them and we remained friends.
I wanted to involve the ministerial community even more; I gave block grant money to the One Church, One Offender program, for example. It was the same with the Central City Housing Trust Fund that helped strengthen older, inner-city neighborhoods. Churches have traditionally been one of the anchors in this community. Their involvement and support was vital to any success in the central city.
Female leaders
We've always had strong female leaders, from Helene Foellinger at The News-Sentinel, for example. But there haven't been enough women in leadership roles. I tried to promote more in city government to leadership roles, like Sharon Banks as chief of staff.
Linda Buskirk, for example, showed women could do a good job in what's considered nontraditional jobs, like head of public works.
Women have challenges men have trouble being sensitive to. Often, the male politician is used to leaving the family home and traveling, and not worrying about details. Women in politics are still seen as individuals who have to handle family responsibilities. It's not fair. A male politician can show up at a gathering by himself, stay late, and it's seen as normal. A female politician is looked at differently. It's assumed she should have an escort; she shouldn't be alone.
We need more female leaders. Nineteen of my 40 department heads were women. But we need to do more. The community is becoming a lot more accepting of women in leadership roles. We'll see a woman elected as mayor here. Buskirk helped the situation, and it will continue.
Labor unions
We had about nine or 10 unions, with about the same number of contracts. David Silletto, controller, worked really hard to try to get along with the Machinists Union, the largest. Because on the relatively large number of unions and contracts for each, why not a standard contract for all of them, we asked?
As I grew in the job, I realized I shouldn't complain. A lot of unions gave the mayor a stronger position. They might give you more headaches because of their number, but no one union could really stop city government in its tracks.
I've got no problems with unions or collective bargaining, but as mayor you have to make sure you are looking out for the taxpayer. In the street department, for example, we brought in outside groups to help with team-building. The unions felt comfortable enough they wound up working closely with us to make the street department and utility operations run more efficiently. That's a model of the way things should work.
There were problems. At one stage, we had a payment window in the lobby of the City-County Building. It's where people could pay their utility bills. I believe it was the bus company that wanted to see if bus passes could be sold at the windows. We figured. "Why not?" It's not too busy and we could help out customers who were there to paying bills.
The union objected, saying it wasn't in the list of their duties. That's the frustrating aspect. We weren't asking for more time or a different type of work; it was good for the community and helped another government agency. Instead, we had to go through a grievance process to get the issue resolved.
With unions, it was harder to move quickly to get changes because of collective bargaining.
It's always a challenge to make sure 1,800 city workers work as hard as they are supposed to. There were a few bad apples. Part of my standard speech for all city employees -- and every month I met with all new workers during orientation, and at the graduation or the swearing-in of police and firefighters -- was to remind them who was the boss. It's not just the supervisor or mayor; it's the public. It applies to all, not just elected officials.
You can't just fire someone because a TV station has videotape of the person goofing off on the job. Employees have procedures to protect them, with city policies and union contracts. There's progressive discipline with steps to take to correct bad work behavior.
In the end, there's a message not to goof off because the public is watching. When your boss is the public, you are held to a higher standard.
There were tons of people who put in tons of extra time to do good things. My overall evaluation of city workers is a good one. People really cared about what they did and put out extra effort to make things better. The public often doesn't see the extra effort and caring. I wish there were more recognition for people who did a good job.
Intelligentsia
This town's got diffused leadership. It's changed over the years. About 25 years ago, the leadership was more readily defined. Now, it's been more weakened and spread out. The corporate climate in the community has changed; fewer of the local businesses are locally owned.
At one time, for example, you had Helene Foellinger as owner of The News-Sentinel. She, and others like her, had been around a long time, knew issues and didn't move in and out of the community very often.
After The News-Sentinel had been bought by Knight-Ridder, you had good people in charge but the situation had changed. Whether it's Peter Ridder or Scott McGehee -- people who cared about the community and played a role in it -- they hadn't grown up here or been in Fort Wayne all their life. Sometime, they'd move on after a few years.
They'd be members of the Chamber of Commerce, attend the meetings but got caught up a bit more in a revolving door in and out of here than in the past. Even those people who stayed longer, they became somewhat less influential.
These were sharp people, but with less of the history, and hence, less of the clout than people like them used to have.
Ian Rolland was the one exception to this, a local boy at a local headquarters of a large company. But the last people of that kind were leaving in the 1980s and early 1990s. The ones who came afterward participated, but became less influential in decision-making than their predecessors.
The change of corporate life was obvious: These people were coming here for a few years and then leaving. I'm not knocking them, but it's reality. I belonged to this group called the Corporate Council, an organization I helped get started in the early 1980s. The idea was to get a lot of private sector CEOs together to help look at things. They took on school desegregation, for example. Over time, new folks replaced them and some of the replacements weren't from here. They'd be active and then be gone.
Near the end of my tenure, Corporate Council was going through a self-examination. At one of the meetings, I realized I was the only one who had been at those meetings nearly 12 years earlier. I had the longest serving tenure on this group. That says something about the corporate structure in this town.
When you have less of that stable corporate CEO structure, it makes it more of a challenge to get things done. The old model said you turned to a community made up of such people when you needed to change things. You'd get the newspaper editors, insurance and bank presidents on your side, and you could get things done.
Now, you could still get them on your side but they didn't have as much clout as in the past. As a result, it made it hard to say we're going to build this or do that.
It's one of the reasons why we went to neighborhood partnerships and their involvement with local government. The strengths of the community, the power to push change, was not going to come from above, but from below.
These were people who have a stake in their community and would push to do things. The secret was to make sure it wasn't neighborhoods vs. downtown or the corporate structure. We were able to make neighborhood groups look at the broader city interests. It was part of the magic of what we had accomplished.
