Listen: How to Really Run a City Podcast

Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt talk about what it really takes to get sh*t done in cities on The Citizen’s newest podcast, How to Really Run a City. New episodes, with a special guest joining, each month. To learn more, read Platt’s article on the birth of the podcast.

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When Republican Stephen Goldsmith was Mayor of Indianapolis, IN, he ran his city by “devolving” decisions down to the grassroots level. He created partnerships with the movers and shakers of local areas – community-based organizations, small businesses, faith leaders — to decide together how best to spend money in their neighborhoods.

“Government had neglected those neighborhoods,” he told our podcast hosts, former Mayors Kasim Reed of Atlanta and Michael Nutter of Philly. “And no amount of expenditures would have been sufficient if we couldn’t lift up the civic infrastructure of the neighborhoods themselves.”

This, said Goldsmith, who was a deputy mayor under Mike Bloomberg in New York and is now a professor of urban policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, is the true power of mayors: the ability to convene and inspire a city to greatness. Despite the circus coming from Washington, D.C., Goldsmith told our hosts that he has great hope for cities. “This is the time to be mayor, because if you want to lead, you can really make a difference.”

Goldsmith also garnered some unexpected praise from our hosts. “I was struck by your book, Putting Faith in Neighborhoods: Making Cities Work through Grassroots Citizenship,” Citizen Co-Founder Larry Platt told him. “I remember thinking it was a model for cities to follow.”

“This is exciting,” Goldsmith replied, “You’re one of five people who read that book. What sort of life do you live?”

“We’re working on it, Mayor Goldsmith,” laughed Nutter and Reed. “We’re trying to help him!”

Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. And watch for new episodes on YouTube and Piksel+ as they become available.

As cities go, so goes the nation!

Join us for an episode about cities tackling entrenched problems and the public-private partnerships like Bloomberg Philanthropies that support them.

When it comes to facing these intractable issues, as Nutter said, “You have to deal with the consequences of not.”

Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. And watch for new episodes on YouTube as they become available.

As cities go, so goes the nation!

Full transcript below:

How to Really Run a City: Unpacking a Mayor’s Superpower

Larry Platt: Welcome to this episode of “How to Really Run a City” powered by accelerator for America, the nation’s leading do tank for cities. I’m Larry Platt of The Philadelphia Citizen, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that seeks to defibrillate democracy in the American city where it was born.

Check us out at thephiladelphiacitizen.org. “How to Really Run a City” features two accomplished practitioners of the art of urban changemaking: former two-term Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and former two-term Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

If you’ve listened to past episodes, you know the drill. If you’re frustrated by the bickering, the mean spiritedness, the performance artistry coming out of Washington, D.C., this podcast is a testament to the notion that there are really three political parties in America: Democrats, Republicans and mayors, who have no choice but to really get things done and be practical problem solvers.

First of all, welcome Mayors. Hello, Mayor Nutter. Hello, Mayor Reed,

Mayor Michael Nutter: Hello. Larry, How are you?

Platt: You’re both looking very sharp. Mayor Nutter in his fancy hotel lobby.

Nutter: My office.

Platt: It’s your office!

Nutter: Mayor Reed n always on message, always on point

Mayor Kasim Reed: Down here in the trenches … I’ve been looking forward to having a conversation with Mayor Goldsmith.

Platt: Mayor Reed has always got message discipline. It is. It is an art form.

Mayor Stephen Goldsmith: First of all, I think I must have been on an old link or something. I apologize I was on so it’s alright to keep Nutter waiting. But Mayor Reed — that’s a whole different issue.

Platt: Ha! This is going to be great. Let me introduce you. Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, former Mayor of Indianapolis, former Deputy Mayor of New York City under Mayor Bloomberg, current Derek Bach, Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and director of Data Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, hosts the “Data Smart City” podcast, and also as a frequent writer. I read him in Governing magazine. I’ve been looking forward to this welcome, Mayor Goldsmith.

Goldsmith: Thank you very much.

Platt: So Mayor Goldsmith, I first became aware of you, it’s got to be a quarter century ago, when you wrote a book called “Putting Faith in Neighborhoods.” And to be for our audience to understand: You were a two-term Republican governor (he means mayor) in Indianapolis. But your whole point in this book is — I remember because it stuck with me — was devolving decision making down at the into the grassroots, neighborhood level.

And I remember being struck by it at the time, and I also remember thinking it was a model for other cities to follow. Can you go into that a little bit and tell us if that mindset works today?

Goldsmith: This is a remarkable question. You’re one of five people who read that book. This is really quite exciting, quite an exciting thing. Thank you.

Platt: It’s, it’s what a nerd I am, yeah.

Goldsmith: Gosh, you know, and I’m really intimidated in this whole podcast, because I’ve got two of the country’s best mayors over the last quarter century, you know, here rebutting or censoring or listening to my comments. So I’ll do this quickly and try to stay out of trouble.

I was elected Mayor in Indianapolis. The Council was split pretty evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Indianapolis — Mayor Reed, this a little bit, the Atlanta story; Philadelphia too — had done pretty well downtown, but a lot of resentment by the urban neighborhoods that they were left behind and they were honestly. And so we started a pretty major initiative in that regard, which we have time I’ll chat about.

But what I wanted to do was … Government had neglected those neighborhoods, but no amount of government would — or even government expenditures, which we made a lot of investments — would have been sufficient if we couldn’t lift up the civic infrastructure those neighborhoods themselves, right?

So we wanted them to be partners, and so identified all the neighborhood assets, community-based organizations, small businesses, faith-based institutions. And most of the faith-based institutions were like 400 members or less and a part-time pastor. But we identified those, and then we looked at how they could participate in the decisions about spending money in their communities. Right?

Which sidewalks got repaired? Which … Did a library need fixing? Which cops were treating them well, which weren’t? You know, all that sort of thing. And so I wondered, did you evolve some of the authority, including fundraising? One of the most effective Democrat city councilors came to me and said, you know, and he was really one of the best, and said, You know, I’m elected to do this job of listening to these constituents and telling you, Goldsmith, what to do. So don’t set up these — we call it municipal federalism — don’t set this thing up without us, because that’s our role.

So though the long answer to your important question actually is there was too much top-down decision making, too little collaboration, too little actual participation, but we made only limited progress because of the politics of the legislature. And there was a lot written about and a few people copied it, and I think we’re seeing more of it now, actually, than we have in the past.

Platt: Do you guys have a reaction to that? I was struck by that, Mayor Nutter … Mayor Street was the mayor here, and I thought: This is a playbook for revitalizing Philadelphia, but that we never really quite got there, actually. I think you did some of this more so especially regionally.

Reed: I think we felt like Maynard Jackson in Atlanta, who developed what’s called “neighborhood planning units.” And so throughout the city, we have NPUs that are able to vote and give voice to how different communities feel. And so they run citywide, and so that if you make a political decision that’s inconsistent with the people that live in a part of our city, then at least there’s a public record that the folks are not with you.

And so I’m a part of the one of the five readers of the Mayor’s book, because I visited Indianapolis and was amazed at how charming it was, because it feels like Chicago, except it’s more accessible. And so I had the chance to visit the city, but that’s what it felt like to me.

I do want to go back before we get into the policy part of our conversation, because I think an awful lot of folks that listen to our podcast, from the comments I get, are people that are interested in actually running for office as well, not just in the policy space. And I want us to also be a home for people that want to get in the fight, who are thinking about running, or who are thinking about rising, or running for a bigger job.

Mayor Goldsmith, I want to … You’ve had this amazing three-decade-long career in the public space. I want to go back to the grittier field that you had when you decided you should be mayor of Indianapolis. I want you to take us through the decisions and what you felt in your chest that made you put your name on the ballot.

Goldsmith: So I was in high … I was in a public high school in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the school board president — I got elected to some job, Student Council President — the school board president wrote me a congratulations note. He later became Mayor of Indianapolis. His name was Dick Lugar. He was the, like the most honest, smartest mayor, right? We’d had honest, not-so-smart mayors and smart not-so-honest mayors, but he was, he was really smart and really honest and took over at a period of time when cities were not doing so well.

So I decided when I was, like, a senior in high school, I wanted to be mayor of Indianapolis, because I thought that was, like the toughest job, and the job closest to the folks. But you can’t go to mayor’s school. So, you know, I went to college school and law school?

Nutter: Well you can now.

Oh, yeah, you can. Now Michael and I are involved in one now.

But so and then was a lawyer, and I went back to Indianapolis and just did all my volunteer work in neighborhood organizations, right? Just relentlessly trying to build that up. And eventually I got elected District Attorney, which I shouldn’t have done, I shouldn’t have gotten elected; it was an accident, but I always wanted to be mayor, and I wanted to be mayor — I’ll just close with this, Mayor Reed, because maybe it has some relevance — I was a Republican, but I wanted to get elected mayor because I thought the folks in those communities we talked about in the last question had been neglected.

And if, to me, if I could change the quality of life in those communities, that was, that was really important to me. So that was the reason I ran, and that’s how I kind of organized the work that I did. And I tried to make the case to suburban folks inside the city, but suburban folks and and outside the city, that you could not have a successful city if you had a core that was impoverished and hopeless, and then you had folks with money that was outside of it — that was not a recipe for long-term success. And so I tried to kind of bridge the two communities with some limited success.

Reed: What do you think helped you win? Thinking about thinking back today; think about the race and give us some insight on why they picked you instead of the other folks.

Goldsmith: Well when I ran for prosecutor, they should have picked the other guy. He was a lot better qualified than me. But look, if you’re … there’s a lot of people, not including the two of you, who want to do these things but are unwilling to work hard enough to do them. So my goal was just to outwork everybody.

I mean, like, and when I ran for office, I didn’t have much political-backed support, so I recruited high school kids, and we knocked on 40,000 doors. And, you know, in Atlanta and Philadelphia and Indianapolis are all, you know, Philly’s bigger, but they’re all relatively large cities, but not very many people vote in a primary for mayor or district attorney. So you actually know the voters, if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can get to most of the doors that make a difference. So it’s just hard work to kind of go … It was just retail politics at the most basic level.

Nutter: Yeah, I’ll keep, I’ll stay in that, in that theme. And Larry, I’m sure you know, because I know you do all the, do all the research. So Mayor Goldsmith came in at the same time as Ed Rendell in Philadelphia. Indianapolis and Philly, or seem to be on the same election cycle. And so with every respect to our good friend to the north, Mike Bloomberg, but Mayor Goldsmith was actually in office before Mike, but was already, as he touched on earlier, was already focused on using data and information in his decision making.

And so, Steve, again, it’s kind of easy to do stuff when everybody’s doing it. It’s not my recollection in 1992, because I came into City Council at that time. And I think Mayor Reed, were you in a general assembly in 92?

Reed: I was.

Nutter: I don’t think, I don’t think data was the big thing back in the early 90s. And so how did you end up again? You’re an innovator. But, I mean, that must have been, there may have been some fights and battles about that. I mean, how did you; how’d you do that?

Goldsmith: In my 150 years of local government, you’re about to hear my favorite story. So in my district attorney job, I was responsible for collecting child support, and that was mostly for moms who were on what was then AFTC, which is what is now TANF.

And these sheriff’s deputies that guard me were bored because I wasn’t doing enough. And so they, one of them said, Well, let me find some of the absent fathers. And so he started using these old computers, and he found more absent fathers in like a week than all the rest of the people running around the city had found.

Our collections for moms went from $900,000 to $38 million in two years — without hiring a single additional person. And so those moms who had been neglected by the system and ignored by the fathers of their kids, received that amount of money because of the use of technology. It was a very palpable story to me, which motivated and also represented something else that you you two are so good, you would know as well — and I remember, Michael, we worked with you on technology …

There’s this kind of patronizing attitude that, well, you know, poor folks don’t understand technology, and why were you going to invest in technology? and they’re not going to use it anyway? Which is really kind of demeaning, because it basically says they’d rather have bad services than good services. And so that pushback at that time, we actually put a body in to answer the phone calls, we got so many calls. And the response from moms who had been neglected by the bureaucratic system to technology, which gave them real time answers and a check? It was one of the most important events in my public sector career.

Nutter: I’d never heard that story before. And so you went from that and obviously you just continue to replicate down the road. And certainly when you came into the mayor’s office, I mean, you were one of the leading innovators during that time. I don’t know the political demographics of Indianapolis. But I mean, is it a particularly partisan kind of election? Has there ever been a Democrat? And I mean, you are nowhere near any kind of prototypical — if there is one — prototypical Republican. So, I mean, I didn’t know for a long time what your registration was.

Goldsmith: Yeah, most people don’t. I’m so old, by the way, that we were the first city to have e-government. Indianapolis owns the URL eGov, I’m that old.

Indianapolis had Republican, Democrat mayors. It was pretty 50-50. Here’s what was different: The council was about 50-50 — I think there was one more vote Republican. But I’d follow the Republicans. So the Democrats actually were easier for me to get along with, because Republicans wanted the status quo and I wanted to change everything. So that was kind of inverted the politics, but the Democrats may have disagreed with me, but if I could convince him that what I proposed was good for the residents of the city, they would vote for it.

Unlike today, you know, people won’t vote for something of the opposite party, even if it’s the right thing to do if it makes the other guy look good, right? So just a long way of saying it was a pretty partisan election and not totally pleasant, but after that, if I could convince the Democrats that this was the right thing, I never lost a vote. And I did a lot of, you know, I did a lot of stuff. Didn’t all work.

You know, Mayor Reed, one of the first classes, one of the first cases I taught when I went to Harvard, was a story about Andrew Young. And I’ve got the case; I’m sure I got the case wrong, but what I recollect is, after a really unpleasant kind of racial political mayoral campaign.

One of the first stops he made was to the white business establishment, right? And that’s just like the best story to me about how you need to kind of pivot and be the mayor of all the folks.

Reed: Yeah, he went to a meeting at the Coca Cola headquarters and had the CEO of Coca Cola assemble our business community and said, I can win without you. I can’t govern without you.

And that has been the template for every mayor since. So the business community rarely gets the election outcome correct. But we’ve had people that understood that you can’t love jobs and hate business. So that if, if you’re going to do the number one job, which is to make sure that people can wake up in the morning and have some place to go and earn a living, you can’t be you can’t be at war with your business, economic sector and and that’s why, that’s why there’s a boulevard in Atlanta named Andrew Young, a school of public policy named Andrew Young and so many other things. And people wouldn’t have won the Olympics without that kind of big heart and smart mind.

Nutter: Well, I mean, Atlanta just has a longer history of producing incredible leaders over a long, long period of time that have shaped and reshaped the United States of America. And you know, the country has benefited tremendously from leadership coming out of Atlanta.

Mayor Goldsmith, I want to take you now to, I mean, obviously you do a lot of work. Obviously at Harvard. We’ve got, you know, probably 50 years plus 60 years plus of public service experience on this, on this podcast. What’s your assessment of the state, the state of cities today, as you look back over the last 30, 40 years and and the up and down relationship with the federal government.

Goldsmith: You know, I hate to ever go on a podcast or go to an event where the guy asking the question knows more about the answer than I do. I find that really like a really big challenge, so I’ll give it an answer. Then you, you each can give your answers.

Well, as you mentioned, when Ed [Rendell] and I were elected mayor, actually Rich Daly was in that group, early 90s. We’d come off of a period of time where the federal government had reduced its, you know, revenue sharing to cities, and it was like a tough time. And cities, Philadelphia, New York and the like, were not totally pleasant places to live in, throughout the city. And mayors had gotten into this habit of saying, you know, woe is to be me, my I’m mayor of this tough city, and I need help.

And so there’s, I think we’re back to that with a couple caveats. One is that as you mentioned, as you suggest, in your question, the reductions, not just in funding to cities, but in funding the folks who are most in need in cities, is really problematic, right? So if you looked at who most needs after school Support Services. Who most needs Medicaid services, who most needs SNAP services most, who most needs community health services, who — whatever the question is, it’s the same folks in those same zip codes in those cities. It’s a very, very difficult time.

At the same time, I’m worried about that early 90s syndrome, which is all right, life’s tough. We’re not getting enough federal money. I think we should use that as a chance for mayoral leadership to change the way we operate, to see how we can deliver higher quality services for less money.

So I’d say in terms of opportunity, the opportunity gap has never been greater. The resources have never been less. But I think that’s a moment you two represent it: For mayoral leadership to say, you know, let’s inspire people in our cities and do a better job.

Nutter: Yeah, well, I appreciate you laying it out that way. I mean, Mayor Reed and I are the, you know, the Great Recession mayors. Mayors and Larry, you’ve touched on this. From time to time, we end up in these cohorts, to some extent, right? So, you know, same and I were in office around about the same time, President Obama is the president. You know, you go, you know, Tom Menino in Boston, you go Mike Bloomberg and New York, and you go Doug Palmer, Rich Daly, the son, then in Chicago. That was during our time. So that was, that was our crew. I mean, we were, you know, baby mayors at the time. And we got these incredible stars, you know, superstars, national, international leaders and you, so you operate in these cohorts. And so we were the Great Recession mayors.

Now you’re dealing with post pandemic mayors. You have this other crew, the pandemic mayors, right? And which had, which wreak havoc. I mean, not only obviously the devastation of the disease, but I mean, it also had a political impact: the people who lost, the people who decided I’m not doing this anymore. This is just too crazy. I’m doing press conferences everyday, talking about how many people died yesterday. And I mean, part of where I’m trying to get to is: Governing today is vastly different than during our time. But the people, your main point, Steve, is the people who need a service and needed to govern in their lives in the 90s are the same people, in many ways, who need it in 2026. And I just think that sometimes people lose their way and seemingly forget why they got into public service in the first place.

It’s actually to help people.

Reed: Yeah, I feel a little different. I feel that in politics, being mayor is where you can be Picasso. I think that you can actually make change faster. I think you can see it faster. I think there is a reason Mayor Bloomberg wanted to do it three times. I think it’s where you make art.

And I think that the argument about the future is really over, and economic prosperity is in cities. And in Georgia, the metro region is an exporter of money. And the city has the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 businesses. So people want to be in cities. And I think that that allows people who want to be mayor in the future, I think it’s the job is going to get more and more fun, always with things that we don’t foresee, but with more tools than I think most folks have.

I say, in Atlanta all the time. You know you can do anything with the mayor and eight votes. And so, you know, I hope our listeners hear that cities are where art happens. And by that, I mean we’re doing … People want to be there. Because as technology continues to move at its pace, community is going to be more important. Being around people is going to be more important.

I think the biggest mistake that all of us made, our biggest failure, has been to have mobilized our political power to get around block supports to states that never reaches our folks. And if I were, if I were advising current mayors, certainly as you come into ’26 and ’28 I think if the three of us had known what we know today, certainly with the quality of mayors that we had during our time, there was an opportunity to reshape the old deal where you send money to a state, and the governor can just say, I don’t want to give it.

Nutter: Yeah.

Reed: What do you do when you got a governor? You got a terrific idea and vision, and you got a governor that will literally hold a billion dollars.

Nutter: Yeah.

Reed: And just won’t give it.

Nutter: Yeah.

Reed: I think that there ought to be a lot of deep work being done on cutting a deal to deal with that issue, because if cities could access the money that was meant for cities and interrupted by state leaders that have a different feeling. I think our economy would be even more dynamic than it is, and I think the job of Mayor and the folks who represent, yeah, life would be so much better.

Nutter: Yeah.

Platt: Just so I’m clear here. What you’re saying is that money and federal money intended for cities has to go through this effective pass through of the state, and doesn’t always find its way.

Nutter: If that’s what the Congress decided to do. And Mayor Reid is certainly specifically talking about AARA. What was that? American? Reinvestment …

Reed: and Recovery Act,

Nutter: Recovery Act, AARA, I think an acquired moment, certainly by the second term, the Obama administration fundamentally acknowledged that sending that first tranche of money to the states was an absolute mistake.

I know for a fact in Pennsylvania and many other states, some of the governors to get votes for what they needed. They were paving roads in certain parts of Pennsylvania that had more cows and other animals on those roads than cars to get a legislative vote. I mean, it was just … it was insane. And so the fights about getting that money to come down … And so in the second term, when they had opportunities, they were much more focused on sending the money directly to the city. There’s no question about it.

Part of it was, you know, President Obama had been a state legislator, it was easier, right, to deal with 50 governors than, you know, 500 mayors, right? So, and dealing with the Congress. So we’ll just send it there, and it’ll be local and blah, blah, blah. And, man, it was, it was, it was crazy.

Platt: Interesting. Mayor Goldsmith, I want to ask you, we got into, we talked about innovation. I really think you, you are branded as the guy when it comes to cities and innovation, and I noticed you recently convened, I think it was 10 cities at the Harvard Kennedy School for a discussion about using the Compstat model for the application of AI in cities. And I think this is going to be, obviously, everyone’s freaking out about AI, and it seems to me, like you, again, are on the cusp of understanding the next iteration of technology in cities. Can you delve into that a bit for us?

Goldsmith: The problem with your questions is each one requires like, a three-hour answer. So trying to kind of condense this, right? I have so much to say about what the two mayors said.

Okay, so quickly, if you if you think about Compstat and Bill Bratton or CitiStat and Martin O’Malley, these were systems where strong leader had a couple data nerds in the back room, they would convene their top officials, cabinet members or or precinct commanders, and ask pointed questions about why robberies up in here are not there, or why streets … right?

This is a very top-down hierarchical system where the data capability and the ownership of identifying the problem is done at the top. It’s accountability, but it’s accountability top-down. Today, right with generative AI, a broad array of city officials, the Deputy Director of Transportation for South Philly, or whatever the case would be, should be able to use natural language to say: Does this street have more potholes than the other streets? Does it have more potholes than North Philadelphia? Oh, it does? Well, show me the drainage problems underneath that road. Tell me how many times we have … right so you the ability to use data throughout the system to preemptively solve problems is about to be unleashed. So if we, if we give more discretions to our middle, mid-level supervisors, we give them the ability to use normative, normal language inquiries, we can change the performance of government. We can increase the trust of our residents through more responsiveness, through preemptive and. And preventative action generated.

Platt: That’s really interesting. Are there cities that are leading the way in this now?

Goldsmith: Is there? What we have with generative AI today is a lot of experimentation, not and not a lot of broad use. In part, is a different story — maybe we can have another podcast; maybe, I can get the two mayors to come on my podcast — we can talk about, we still have to reform the way we do way we manufacture government. It’s still kind of, you know, it’s 100 years old the way we do it. So we have the structures of government that are affecting it, but you have cities that are experimenting.

Boston is doing a lot of really terrific work. They’ve got a terrific mayor and a great CIO. Denver’s doing some good work. San Francisco, the new mayor, he’s hired half the tech talent in the Bay Area to go to work for him. So he’s doing some remarkable things on technology as well. So the issue will be, can we unleash it broadly? And that’s what we’re trying to work on now.

Platt: And now a word from our partner, accelerator for America.

I’m Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, President and CEO of Accelerator for America. Across the country, cities are navigating a moment of profound economic, technological and political transition, with a worsening affordability crisis touching every community. Mayors are balancing long term planning with residents’ immediate needs. As one mayor said to me: People are just trying to make it through this week and next week.

That pressure is reshaping how cities approach investment, innovation and risk. Our recent accelerator for America advisory council meeting in Riverside California offered a snapshot of how local leaders are responding to this moment with urgency and creativity. Riverside itself is a prime example. Once the richest city in America per capita, thanks to its citrus industry, the city is now positioning itself as a green tech hub.

With opportunity zones now a permanent incentive, cities have a chance to organize their local capital ecosystems and direct private investment toward community priorities. The goal is to identify “Goldilocks zones,” areas ready, just right for investment, but still deeply connected to local needs. For example, Opportunity Alabama secured funding for a $36 million housing development project on property that had been blighted and vacant for over 20 years.

Technology, especially AI, presents both a challenge and an opportunity for city leaders. Tools like Riverside’s AI-powered chatbot show how cities can improve accessibility and efficiency, helping residents get answers quickly, while freeing staff for higher value work. Local innovation is driving national change, and this dynamic era demands local leadership to meet the challenges head on. Cities aren’t waiting for permission. They’re building the future from the ground up.

Platt: And now back to our show.

Nutter: I mean, I remember, and this is where — again, make reference to our good friend Mike Bloomberg — I mean, the mayors on here, recall there was an error of when the release of data was a big thing having a Chief Information Officer, Chief transformation officer, you know. And it seems the next thing really has to be the chief AI officer, or someone who is directly in charge and responsible, you know, for that area, develops a team and spreads it, you know, across the government.

Even though I don’t really know that much about it, I have to believe that virtually every department and agency in, especially a local government, but probably any government, will be able to find a way to use this technology properly, deliver services better, quicker, cheaper, and at the end of the day, the citizens always benefit from that kind of innovation.

But you know, the flip side of it is most people don’t understand it. Don’t know what it is. I’ll put myself in that category. Did you go see the story about some town where they wanted a data center, and the citizens got so upset that they put in a ballot initiative to recall the entire city council and the mayor?

News voice: A group of neighbors started the process to recall the mayor, the Mayor Pro Tem and a city council member after a recent vote to annex and rezone the land.

News voice 2: What started as a concern over a proposed data center has now turned into a political fight in Temple. Residents opposed to the $700 million project are now working to recall city leaders. They say are not listening to the community.

Voice 3: The city council sat back in their seats. Like the money was already in their bank.

Nutter: You know, it’s like everybody, we want all this stuff, right? We want to upload, download, get this thing, do all the things. At same time, we’re afraid of technology, or we want it to just be somewhere else.

Platt: The same. People are freaking out if their Netflix movie is buffering for like …

Nutter: Seven seconds. That was that conversation. Seven seconds.

Goldsmith: The opportunity for transformation is really quite, quite remarkable. I have a lot of stories which I won’t bother you with, but …

Just the other day, in about a half hour, we ran the following kind of test, one with somebody more technical than I am, but just with basic AI services, asked the question in of a city, which of your Title 1 schools has the worst air quality? Got the answer in like four minutes from Open Data, which of these, what is the cause of that in these schools? They asked AI to look in the Open Data. And they said, Well, this is the traffic count. This is this …

I mean, so it nominated the possible causes as well as identified the problem. And that whole exercise took 30 minutes, right? It didn’t take weeks. It didn’t take, you know, three guys in green eyeshade in the back of the room. So the ability to solve problems is really quite remarkable.

Platt: Mayor, you also I read your writing in Governing.

Goldsmith: What sort of life do you live? You read one of my five readers, and you read my Governing work. Oh my gosh …

Platt: This is true. These guys will tell you, I don’t know. I just …

Nutter: We’re working on a miracle from this. We’re trying. We try. We’re trying to help him.

Reed He’s our Ernie on our TNT. That’s right, somebody has to know the stats.

Voiceover: Ernie Johnson, but they call me EJ, I host a little show called inside the NBA.

Platt: No, recently you profiled a mayor I’m a big fan of, and I don’t think we’ve had him on the podcast yet, but it’s Birmingham, Alabama, Randall Woodfin, young African American mayor, and you said — this stuck with me, and I think these guys are testament to it — you said: The greatest power a mayor has is not written in a city charter. It’s the power of convening.

Can you go into that a little bit and explain what he would why, why you singled him out? But also, like, what that means?

Goldsmith: Well, just for a minute, because actually that your other two mayors on on this podcast are also exemplars of that very thing.

So, you know, Mayor Reed kind of mentioned this with the number of people who can make changes in Atlanta as well, you know, if you really wanted to do it. So what we hope mayors will be is leaders of their city, not just leaders of their government, right? So that means, any complex problem is going to be multi agency, multi sector, multi government, levels of government. And what I wrote about with Mayor Woodfin was economic mobility, right?

Mayors don’t have the control of the workforce investment boards, which is a whole different issue. They don’t have control of the chamber of commerce, and they don’t have a lot of the states retaining a lot of the control over social services. And I could go on, it’s a very fragmented system.

But a mayor could pull that group together, and Mayor Woodfin pulled in technical resources from the local college, right? So he had technical resources, and he decided he wanted to lead an economic mobility effort, and he identified underserved kids in high school who needed scholarships and the promise of a job. He identified the data necessary to create what jobs do we need more of in the area and how do we train people for them? And you go, you can go on and on.

You can’t solve those problems if you just look at what you control. If you’re limited by … if your aspirations are limited by just your own authority, you’ll never make a difference in the city. So convening — rhetoric and convening — are two of the most powerful assets of mayors.

Nutter: Agreed, Mayor Reed, not take your call to come to something or to be somewhere, or you’ve mentioned in the past, you had trouble getting people to take your calls from time to time.

Reed: Generally said, yes. Say yes. I remember one fella didn’t answer my call. I think I took his phone out of his office, but that was within government. That wasn’t in the convening function. I think I removed all of the electrical equipment out of there. I took all of the equipment. I mean, I was calling the guy, and I’ve been calling him for like five hours. Nobody could find him. His assistant couldn’t find him. And I made a decision that he no longer needed any of his phones.

But I got that from Willie Brown, who had a vote during the California Assembly, and there was a some of his members were avoiding his phone call, and so when the member got back to the to their office, there was a little phone on a wooden on a box that was all that was in the office. And he had moved the poor guy’s office to the far side of the Capitol, near the janitor.

Nutter: On a box.

Reed: He did, yeah.

Platt: So that’s interesting, because the message, you’re not, you’re not really sending a message to that employee. You’re sending a message to that employee’s colleagues.

Reed: We have clocks. I mean, the bottom line is, when you’re when you’re a mayor of a government, you got eight years tops, typically …

Nutter: 2,922 days.

Reed: Either the government’s going to move. I think that Mayor Goldsmith was speaking to a broader issue. I think it would have been impossible for us to have done pension reforms in the first year without the collaboration of the private sector, and the help of companies like Coca Cola and Delta Airlines, UPS,, to really create the energy to change the dynamic from Atlanta being a city that was constantly broke, and to try to just to deal with that. I think that’s the kind of convening that he’s referencing.

Nutter: Yeah. Yeah.

Reed: I think you know, when you have a big issue, it’s always nice when the city has a chip on its shoulder about something and so something that needs to be fixed, something that needs to be done. And I think the mayor is the right center of action for that, because in my own experience, when we did pension reform, when we came up with the three recommendations, none of our corporate community would put their names on the recommendations. But they did give me a level of bandwidth and expertise that I couldn’t have paid for in a gazillion years.

Nutter: Right.

Reed: But when it was time to make the recommendations public, none of our CEOs wanted to be associated with the recommendations, and so that was the job of the mayor to say, this is where we’re going. And so I thought that the comment about the mayor being the leader of the city was really elegant and accurate, because it does, it really does capture the job. I mean, it’s all of it.

Nutter: Yeah, I saw that in, you know, oh 809, you know, we’re in a full blown recession. Federal government, you know, finally announced the knowledge that we were in a recession in September. 2008 actually told us that it had started in December. 2007 that was not mentioned in any of my briefing memos, as I was transitioning after the general election. Nobody told me, right. But I had been the leading tax reduction advocate in the city, we’ve we literally led a march with the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce down Broad Street.

Platt: Charlie Pizzi. And Judee von Seldeneck.

Nutter: They called it “the briefcase brigade.”

And there were probably 100 or so both march from the Chamber’s office at Broad and walnut to City Hall demanding tax reduction. So that was my history. Fast forward. Now, 2008, 2009, who was the person standing up saying, we need to raise taxes so that we don’t run out of money, right? And folks are like, but wait a minute, and you know, I’d say somewhat similar to Mayor Reed. I wasn’t expecting anybody to stand up in support, but no one stood up in opposition,

Okay, this guy is serious. He would, he would not be saying this if it didn’t need to be done, and we have the faith and trust in him. And I went to them, and then went to the executive committee, went to the full blown, you know, board, and laid out what we were trying to do.

And people rallied around, you know, like, this is what we need to do. And we got it done. We raised taxes four different times during the course of, during the course of, that stretch, including in 2011 when myself and all of City Council was running for reelection. We raised taxes in an election year because we had to.

Platt: Funny. I don’t really remember that.

Nutter: I do.

Reed: You would remember that if he hadn’t gotten reelected …

Platt: That’s right, that’s exactly right. Then that’s the story,.

Nutter: Things were so bad at the time, nobody else wanted the job. They said: Let Mikey keep it.

Platt: Mayor Goldsmith, again, I guess a final question is: Are you hopeful about the future of cities today? And what would your advice be to any young mayor or aspiring mayor in a city in America today?

Goldsmith: Well, of course, I’m hopeful. I’ve spent a lot of time with cities, but you have to be realistic. I’m hopeful that with the right leadership, a city will succeed, but these are very difficult times, and if we don’t have more attention to the inequality of opportunity, not results, but inequality of opportunity, cities are not going to be such pleasant places, because we’re going to have these segregated pockets of poverty that will be quite problematic.

So the problems are real. There are answers to those problems. It’s not like we don’t know how to solve these problems. We just, we need to have the resources and the commitment to do it. The worse the job, the more important it is to have it right. So this is the time to be mayor, because if you want to lead, you can make a difference.

And Michael said something earlier, I didn’t have a chance to comment on it. May have interpreted the wrong way, but it is time to get elected mayor in order to do stuff. There’s too many people getting elected in order to get elected, like that’s the end, is to get elected. That’s just the means to get elected. So I would encourage young folks, despite how difficult it is and how angry people are in social media and how much nasty stuff will happen, now is the time to serve. Whether you get elected or you’re a senior official or not, you know, these are people who want to make a difference, right? And it’s our job to motivate them to do it.

Platt: I think that’s great. And by the way, I love that you brought up the word opportunity. I was just saying to someone that I fear that every Democrat has adopted the affordability word, which I understand, and that’s straight out of polling and so forth. But I think the better word is an opportunity agenda, because I think that’s what people want, is a fair shot, and they don’t feel like they’re getting it right now.

So I’m curious, and I think you were all opportunity mayors. And I’m curious this, I do promise this as a final thing, about to get your perspective on on that, on the framing issue.

Goldsmith: Let me give the two mayors the last word. I’ll do this for one minute, and I know we’re out of time.

If your children are taxed with violence or taxed with bad air or extreme heat or bad access to health care or little access to food, they will not have an opportunity to succeed, right?

So when we think about an opportunity index, we need to go back to the jobs that Mayor Reed was mentioning, that you need to bring into your city. But you need to think about the pipeline for those jobs and the and that part of the opportunity effort needs attention as well. And so I think opportunity means, look, and I’ve heard Mayor Nutter talk about this:

Opportunity means that you can get to school or work without getting beat up by a gang, right? It means you can get to your work through reasonable transportation. It means you can have access to the job training that will bring out the best in who you are, right? And it means that you’re not so penalized when you’re young through these other issues like violence and poverty, that you don’t have a chance. That’s an opportunity index, and that will lead to affordability.

Platt: Great point.

Nutter: I got nothing.

Reed: These comments were the essence of why we have this podcast.

Why? Why we should be having these conversations, and why what we’re talking about is so vital, as 70 percent of the country’s GDP is going to be in the places where we’re talking about, if not more, over the next decade.

Platt: That’s right, and that’s largely a result of the commitment of leadership of men like you three. So I thank you for — borrowing from Teddy Roosevelt — for spending your lives in the arena. So until next time mayors, I’ll see you, Mayor Goldsmith, thank you so much. It was an honor.

Goldsmith: My pleasure. Honor for me as well.

Nutter: Good to see you, man.

Goldsmith: I’m going to try. I’m going to try to get you two on our podcast. Yeah, if that’s OK.

Nutter: Mayor Goldsmith has to tell you. Mayor Reed has some particular requirements.

Platt: Uh, green M&Ms.

Nutter: Certain issues about transportation, laundry, type of microphone.

Reed: Says the guy who films our podcast from a Ritz Carlton.

Platt: Well, that’s it for this episode. Of how to really run a city. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell your friends about us. We really want to widen the conversation, because by 2050 something like two thirds of the world will live in cities. As cities go, so goes the nation, and so goes the world.

For now, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.

Remember to check out the good government show podcast where host Dave Martin conducts conversations with elected leaders about how government can work for all of us, Check out “The Good Government Show” wherever you get your podcasts, or visit goodgovernmentshow.com.

How to Really Run A City is powered by Accelerator for America, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “Do tank” that delivers solutions, connections, and resources to mayors and other local leaders working to create greater economic mobility in underserved communities.

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The Sweet Smell of $1 Million for Cities

With Lafayette, LA Mayor President Monique Blanco Boulet

One of our favorite sayings here at How to Really Run a City is that there are really three political parties in the U.S.: Democrats, Republicans and Mayors — and only one of them have no choice but to be practical problem solvers. We believe if more politicians acted like mayors, there’d be much less bickering in D.C. Turns out, Bloomberg Philanthropies agrees. For the past six years, the civic-minded global organization has held the Mayors Challenge, a competition that awards cities $1 million prizes to spur innovative solutions to ingrained urban problems.

The Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge leader Aparna Ramanan and Challenge grantee, Lafayette, LA Mayor President Monique Blanco Boulet, join the pod for an eye-opening conversation about what it takes to innovate in a city. (Lafayette’s problem might sound familiarly stinky to Philadelphians: old, failing, sewers.)

Blanco Boulet believes true innovation must start with a change of mindset. “Critical thinking is just not natural in government. If I don’t know where we’re having flood issues, I could just choose anywhere [to put the money]. That happens. That’s not abnormal for government in the absence of real decision-making.”

Breaking Through Media Tribalism

With Sirius XM and CNN Host Michael Smerconish

Michael Smerconish is a Sirius XM and CNN host, a prolific political commentator, a nationally recognized author — and leader of the fight for a political center in the U.S., which means having a robust media.

Smerconish is also an activist for voters who refuse to align with either of the two major parties. “I became so disenchanted with the Bush administration (W.) for their inability to go kill bin Laden,” he said. He then swam against the tide of his own listener base by announcing his support for Barack Obama’s presidential run in 2008.

“[My listeners] went crazy, but it was a breaking point and a wake-up call for me,” Smerconish said.

Full transcript below:

How to Really Run a City: Mayors and the Media

Michael Smerconish: I know I’m gonna sound like the, the, old guy now, right? Get off my lawn.

But I look at like, we use Slack, okay, and, and these people who are younger, they go back and forth, back. I’m like: Pick up the fucking phone! Like nobody wants to speak to anybody, you know what I mean, much less take a meeting or go have a drink.

Larry Platt: You know, you’re absolutely right.

Kasim Reed: I had a sign on my door that said: If you want to change the people, change the people.

Platt: Is that right? Was that? That was the sign? Yeah. How did that go over?

Reed: I think it was what most people generally said, Yes.

Platt: I remember a clip. I think we might have played it, of you firing, was it the airport guy?

Reed. I fired the airport commissioner and the water and sewer commissioner in the same day,

Platt: But I think it took place on, like, live TV.

Reed: I didn’t fire them on live TV, but I mean, it was the sound. Mean, it was the same day they both needed to go though. I think the city is always improving and always evolving. And we had really talented people under them. And so … No. if you want to change the people, change the people.

Platt: I first became aware of Mayor Reed in, I forget what year it was. Thomas Friedman wrote a column in the New York Times about this young mayor who was embarking upon radical pension reform, and — correct me if I’m wrong here — bringing groups of city workers into his office with charts that showed what will happen (to your future) if we do nothing to your future, and what will happen for your future if, in four years we make these, these, these changes.

Reed: Yeah.

Platt: And in four years, reelected in a landslide, because it, it your, your vision became true.

Reed: Yeah. Yep.

Platt: But I love what stuck with me was that communication.

Kasim Reed: … of New York Times. So Tom Friedman came and we met. That was my first year in office, when we were doing pension reform, and we did the most sweeping pension reform in America. And folks said we wouldn’t, wouldn’t be able to do it. And we did it with a 15-0 vote, after an awful lot of work. I mean, the city was going to go bankrupt. We were going to be the next Detroit. And now, now we’re triple A.

Platt: You use that, that’s that old Rahm Emanuel line, right? You use that crisis as an opportunity.

Reed: Yeah, yeah, Rahm and I were actually mayors at the same time, and we were talking, and, you know, he was, he was taking on school reform, and I was doing pensions. So he was advising me to do school reform. And I said, that might work for you, but that work for a Black mayor of a major American city, that if you’re a Black mayor with a city that’s in bankruptcy, you’re, you know, your career is kind of over.

Platt: Laughs.

Reed: You have to do you have to get the finances right, was the point that I was making, in order to change the trajectory from being a typical Democrat city. I mean, our credit rating was a couple of levels above junk. By the time we got done, we were double-A plus from standard, Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch, just raised us to triple A.

Platt: Wow. And job growth in Atlanta, especially black job growth, is like off the charts.

Reed: Yeah. The state of Georgia’s now got the largest number of black millionaires in America. I believe that stat’s right.

Platt: Wow. All right, so let’s, let’s just dive in. I, we are honored to be with author, thought leader, media legend Sirius XM and CNN host Michael Smerconish, one of the smartest thinkers about politics, the media and culture in these trying times.

Smerconish: I should leave now. Leave now. Gets no better. It’s all downhill.

Platt: I have to be transparent with you and the mayors and Michael Nutter is five minutes out, a apparently, we’re good friends.

Smerconish: Yeah, we have been for years, for decades, right? I posed naked for you.

Now, Mayor Reed. Mayor Reed took interest in that.

Reed: I’m like: Yeah, we’re off to a great start. I’ve got three podcasts worth of material now.

Platt: Now we’ve got to give some context. When I was editor of the Philadelphia Magazine, I don’t even know how this came about, we did a big feature on Michael Smerconish, and the opening spread, so to speak, was literally him naked from behind.

Smerconish: Wasn’t my idea. Was your idea.

Platt: I seem to remember you were hankering to be shown.

Smerconish: Shown no, you wanted my wife to pose naked, and then you sent the photographer to the house when you were profiling me, and I, you know, I sort of called the bluffer. He called my bluff. Who the hell knows what? My kids, my kids were horrified, that I can tell you.

Reed: Tell you what, this episode is getting off to a roaring start. I don’t know what’s going on.

Nutter: What the hell kind of question is that, Larry?

Reed: And the friendship’s still intact..

Smerconish: I took it as a compliment. I took it as a compliment. What can I tell you …?

Platt: We were doing a health issue, and I thought, who’s healthier than Lavinia Smerconish? Right?

Nutter: So what’s that got to do with her naked? Show a bicep.

Platt: Hey, I was also looking to sell magazines. Man, it was a different, different media era. So anyway, I will say fellas and welcome Mayor …

Nutter: And he’s still on TV?

Smerconish: You would think they would have found it by now. I mean, it’s not so hard to Google Smerconish’s ass, and you can find it, and now I’m proud of it. I mean, it is from the back, by the way, just so we’re clear, it is not frontal. But although I’ve offered if he wants to sell mags, now that he’s back in control, we can talk.

Platt: Yeah, I feel like, I feel like that ship has sailed on a number of levels. I should say that ship has sagged on a number of levels.

Reed: Damn.

Nutter: I’m with Mayor Reed. You know, I don’t even know what this episode is about.

Reed: You gotta role with it.

Nutter: We may not have anywhere to go.

Platt: Well, we had to get our friendship on the table. But I also, the reason I wanted, we have not talked about this, the media and the state of media on our podcast. We’ve done it in passing, but I don’t know anyone else who’s a better thinker about the state of media in America and who’s a more entrepreneurial, innovative thinker. You are your own brand. You built a brand.

Smerconish: I’m trying.

Platt: Yeah. So talk to us about your take on the state of media and politics right now, and how that how they intersect to create the crap that we’re in.

Smerconish: Okay, I was, I was thinking in … Thank you for having me, and nice to meet Mayor Reed. I know Mayor Nutter. And I was thinking, in anticipation of this, that one of my favorite stops when I go to Atlanta is to stop at The Varsity on the way back to the airport, which I get, you know, hot dogs and a bunch of things I should not be eating, right?

But Mayor, when I was most recently at The Varsity, and this kind of sums up the answer to Larry’s question, there was a Fox room and there was an MSNBC room. I don’t even know if CNN had a room, but literally, there’s a television in different dining rooms.

Reed: Yes, CNN has one.

Smerconish: Does CNN have a room? Okay, thank God. I mean, I’d like to think of it as our town, but, but, doesn’t that kind of sum it up? Like, are you now going to take your hot dog and eat in the Fox room or the CNN room or the MS Now room? It’s crazy.

Platt: Yeah, that’s that’s really and you contrast that to like, when we’re roughly the same age, when we were growing up, it was Walter Cronkite. It was … Where we live, it was The Philadelphia Inquirer or the Evening Bulletin, right? We were all operating from the same set of facts.

Nutter: Jim Gardner, …

Smerconish: Jim Gardner, Larry Kane.

Platt: We were all operating for the same set of facts. That is no longer the case anywhere in America, I think, right.

Smerconish: And I had a front row seat for the whole progression of this, because I get it, because when, when Rush Limbaugh was syndicated, it made sense that he would have success, because conservatives didn’t feel like they had a home. It was pre satellite radio. It was pre cable television. Your choices were very limited, and they did skew left of center, so Limbaugh rolls out this red carpet for conservatives. Suddenly, stations all across the country, including where I was just getting started, here in Philly, they wanted to have Limbaugh and they wanted to have a stable of his imitators.

Then, Fox News comes online. They take a page out of that handbook. MSNBC struggles to find their voice. So too, CNN, but everyone has resorted [sic] into this very partisan corner, and unfortunately, today, you’ve got so much choice, but very few people seem to be exercising it. Whatever you want, you can find it, but I say you got to use that remote, man, mix up your media diet.

Platt: Well, I was, I was watching your CNN show after the Colbert issue. I love this guy, Talarico, by the way. I’m very impressed with him. But. So, he was scheduled to go on Colbert,

Smerconish: Right.

Platt: The FCC commissioner basically vetoes it …

Smerconish: Not really directly, but close.

Nutter: He uses the Equal Time Rule.

Platt: An Equal Time Rule that is sort of that has, has heretofore been, accept the exception on force, rarely …

Smerconish: Rarely, yeah, and not with regard to late night television, rarely for, enforced with it was all premised on scarcity like it made sense when your choices were so narrow that if Mayor Nutter is running for re-election, okay, we better bring in his opponent. But today, I don’t think you really need to do that.

Platt: That’s right, but your advice to the nation right was,

Smerconish: Use the remote. Mix it up. Don’t, don’t rely on government to do it. Do it yourself.

Platt: That’s exactly right. I thought that was exactly right. But I want to get get you guys in here and talk about your experience, about with the media, and how it’s changed, and how it’s changed our politics, even from the time that you you both were in office.

Reed: Well, I think it’s being hollowed out. I mean, in Atlanta, aside from The Varsity, a staple was The Atlanta Journal Constitution, which is owned by one of the wealthiest families in the United States, the Cox family, is no longer in print anymore. And that was always a very important value. But I think in January that last printed edition, the investigative departments, which were very tough on me, and I’m fine with that, are all gone. So you used to have a Dale Russell* and Richard Belcher. These are people that used to have time to do deep dives into stories. They’re all gone. So the press is functionally gutted. There’s no longer a paper on your porch. It’s digital. And I think that government is suffering. And then there has been a conservative effort to buy up local media across the United States, because local media still has credibility with folks. That’s what I’ve seen since I left off.

[*Dale Russell was a reporter for Atlanta’s Fox affiliate station.]

Nutter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were, I would say, pretty much the same. You can change the names, Larry, and Michael certainly know the kind of coverage in the 90s and the 2000s coming out of City Hall, coming out of North Broad Street, you know, where The Inquirer and the Daily News used to be, the amount of reporters … You had your day-to-day folks, and then there were always a couple names. They were the longer term people, right? And when they called your office, you’re like: Aw, shit, What does he want? What does she want?

So, you know, and I think to Michael’s point, now, there are so many choices and options and so few on the ground reporters, that they can’t keep up with all the things that are coming either, you know, out of City Hall or the State House, and, you know, D.C. is a whole, whole other story. But at the local level, I mean, they, they, they just, they don’t have enough players on the field.

You know, it’s like one team is playing with 11, and the other team is playing with five. You just can’t cover you can’t cover everybody. Somebody’s always going to be open. Somebody’s up to something. At the end of the day, I think the public loses.

Smerconish: Can I? Can I add to that, that the public loses, not only from the watchdog loss, and I have to, I have to add to what the mayors just said. Because in a prior life, in the first Bush administration, I was a regional administrator for HUD, and I had responsibility for public housing in five states, including …

Platt: I remember you moved into public housing.

Smerconish: True, that didn’t go over so well, but I, but I did do it. But here’s the point to Mayor nutter’s point. There was a guy named Matt Purdy at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Do you know what his full-time gig was, covering housing, covering public housing. Like the idea that, and today he’s at the New York Times in like the two or three position, so I completely understand what Mayor Nutter is saying, but, but to Mayor Reed’s point about the hollowing out, then the media gets nationalized.

Forget the big city mayors on a local level, like I grew up in the burbs, you know, there aren’t suburban newspapers anymore. And so consequently, people now look nationally, and everything becomes far right and far left, which is a shame.

Platt: That’s right, and where you can really have impact is in your backyard. And one of the reasons everyone feels so helpless and hopeless is because they’re blinded by the national debate and national discourse, which is so frustrating. If you focused on the local, you could actually do something. It’s this real interesting conundrum.

Nutter: Larry, so, Michael brought it up first, but actually I wanted to, I’m taking style points from, from Mayor Reed. This is the kind of question, he would, he would ask.

[laughter]

Nutter: Tell us …

Smerconish: What did I get myself into here?

Platt: A comedy show.

Nutter: Tell us about your transition. You know you were at HUD. I think Jack Kemp …

Smerconish: Yeah, was my boss.

Nutter: … was the HUD secretary. So when I was thinking about being with you today, I said, you know, Michael Smerconish is like a, it’s like a Kemp Republican, which immediately disqualifies him from the current state of affairs.

He can’t be MAGA. He’s in the media, so he can’t technically be anything. But Michael, how did, and Larry started out talking about, you created a brand so, like, seriously, in the classic Mayor Reed style, walk us through: How did you move from government into media to this branding to now this, you know, kind of mega-person/ What was that? What was that process?

Smerconish: Okay, so it’s a long story, and not an all that interesting story, but the short version is, I had unique political experiences. I had the bug when I was, when I was, young. My dad, who was a high school teacher turned guidance counselor, ran for the state legislature in a Republican primary in my senior year of high school, and lost. And I got all wrapped up in his campaign. I mean, I remember handing out rulers with our very long name on them at a local Acme. And I was …

Nutter: You would need a long ruler for that.

Smerconish: Exactly. And I was just totally, you know, like, taken with it and worked my way in different Republican political campaigns. Something fortuitous happened to me with papa Bush, and I ended up doing advance work for him while he was still in college. And all the while I was pursuing my education and became a lawyer, the politics interested me and the local Philly outlets then came to me for sound bites, including on election night. And the ego of it consumed me. That’s the honest answer, and I hoped that I had a skill set for it. And all the while that I was going to law school and trying to establish a career, the media bug was kind of gnawing at me.

And when I had the opportunity to reverse careers and stop practicing law, I had a good thing going. And I was with Jim Beasley. He was a trial lawyer of, you know, great reputation in Philly, but I made that move, and I never looked back. And so consequently, for 30 years now, I’ve watched all the changes that have taken place in the business, most of them not for good.

Platt: But you’ve also maintained or built yourself this, I think The Washington Post called you, the “betting his career, that there’s a great untapped center in American politics.” And JP, do we have the theme song, the Smerconish theme song? It’s, it’s called, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” And how did you become the center guy in, in, in media today?

Smerconish: Well, the break point for me was 2008. I had been a Republican my entire life. I’d voted for plenty of Democrats, but I’d always voted Republican at the top of the ticket, and then I became so disenchanted with the Bush administration — W. — for their inability to go kill bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, and this junior Senator from Illinois came on my radio program, even though I was on a right of center station, and my politics at the time much more conservative than they were liberal, and established this rapport with Senator Obama.

And it got to the point where, and largely predicated on him saying — this is kind of interesting in retrospect, that he would — if necessary, he’d even go into Pakistan to get bin Laden.

Reed: He would kill him. I remember that.

Smerconish: In Pakistan, though, and he was ridiculed by Hillary Clinton and by Joe Biden and by John McCain for saying that. So now I decide I’m going to cast a ballot for Obama in ’08. Am I going to tell my audience this, because they’re going to go batshit? But I’m not going to tell them what they should do, but I feel like I’m being dishonest if I don’t tell them, here’s what I’m about to do. So I did and I published it as well, so there’d be a written record of it. And people went crazy, and it was just sort of a break point and wake up call for me to stop reading off the consistent hymnal.

Platt: Boy, that’s really interesting.

Reed: How do you feel about that vote today?

Smerconish: Oh my God, I feel great about it. I sleep well about it. And everybody who gave me such hell then, and so many in my own personal space, you know, expressing their disappointment with me. And it was really a brutal time. It was really just a very, very professionally difficult time for me. But I feel great about not only that, but how I voted in 2012 too. I felt a little .. the only thing that hurt me was I knew John McCain. I had hosted him. He would come to Philly for the Army-Navy, the Army-Navy game, and every year he’d come and do my show, and I’d do live events with him. I just thought he was a very decent and honorable guy. But I’d had enough …

Platt: And you had enough of what?

Smerconish: I’d had enough of, just the doc- … the increasingly doctrinaire view, and I also felt led astray, because now it’s, it’s ’08, and we haven’t gotten those who were responsible for September 11. Instead, we took a left turn and we went into Iraq. And I just that was, that was the whole part. It was foreign policy. Why did I vote for Barack Obama? It was foreign policy.

And then the whole Tea Party thing with its undertones, and I thought, okay, good riddance.

So I haven’t become a Democrat. I have no interest in becoming a Democrat. You know, I’m an independent, or whatever we call it in Pennsylvania, and I feel very comfortable there. I wish I’d done it sooner.

Platt: Wish you’d done …

Smerconish: I wish I’d changed my registration and, and, and had made that break at an earlier point.

Platt: Interesting, but it may have taken someone like Obama to … I think there were a lot. I believe I could be wrong about the stat, but I believe that 13 percent of Trump voters voted for Obama, which, is a fascinating …

Nutter: Yeah. I wanted to get into that myself. And Michael, if you have some perspective on this, I mean, so many, many years later. And it’s interesting, you know, it was often used as a, I’m a good person, kind of validation. You’d have … White men in particular. You know, I’m, I’m not racist. I voted for Barack Obama two times, and then voted for Donald Trump. And I’ve just never been able to — what do you call it? — I’ve just never been able to square that circle. Some perspective on that. I mean, how do you go? How do you go two times …

Smerconish: Well, that doesn’t describe me. Let me, let me, let me just make let me just make that clear. That doesn’t describe me, but I understand that. I think there were a lot of people who were looking to get their own ticket punched. For me, I was again, I told you … the ego of the business that I’m in was a large part of the reason that attracted me to it. It’s just the fact.

And once I had established roots in Philadelphia and did well in morning drive, which is where all the action is. Now, I wanted to be, I wanted to be syndicated. And I was on the cusp of syndication right when that ’08 campaign came up. So in my case, and the Mayor’s not saying that I was looking at it that way. And I get that.

But I do want to make this point that it was against my professional interests … One short, quick, indulge me one more story, guys, because this is, this is worth it. So now it’s 2012 and it’s Romney and Obama, and I am, I am invited in to do half-hour long, one-on-one, Oval Office interview with President Obama a week before the election, and it was right before that storm hit, where Chris Christie gave him the hug like just to place you in the time …

Platt: Sandy.

Smerconish: In the time period. OK. Sandy. What I remember is now I am syndicated, and I see a sales memo that goes out from the syndicator saying, Hey, we regret to inform you that Michael’s decided to go into the Oval Office and interview the president for a half hour. They were scared to death that the affiliates were going to abandon my program because I was now going to go be courteous to the President of the United States. That’s how crazy the business has been.

Platt: Wow, wow.

Smerconish: I have that memo. You know me.

Platt: And you think back to 2012 as more normal than now.

Smerconish: Now, yeah, for sure.

Platt: Which is that’s, that’s just a really interesting trajectory of how we’ve gotten here.

Reed: 2012 was a terrific presidential battle. I mean, Michael and I lived through the night that Mitt Romney dominated President Obama in the first debate.

Nutter: First debate.

Platt: Kicked his ass.

Reed: You want to talk about a total whirlwind. I did, I did Pierce Morgan. I was directed to do Pierce Morgan. I had been doing a ton of Meet The Press, and I got rolled out to do Pierce Morgan after that debate, because we were in free fall.

I mean, I remember the calls where they were sending everybody everywhere because President Obama just had ring rust. He hadn’t been touched in four years. He hadn’t been questioned in four years, not in a serious way. And then he goes in and Mitt Romney just smokes him.

And after the debate, he didn’t think he had done that badly.

Nutter: [Laughs.] Right?

Reed: And Michael, I remember, the only way that we could get through was to compare him to Muhammad Ali …

Nutter: Yeah.

Reed: Which is what we did in all of the press. So the only way that you could acknowledge that we have not prevailed, we’ll be able to get in the White House, was to frame it as Muhammad Ali losing to Joe Frazier in the first fight.

So that was something psychologically that he was comfortable with being compared to Muhammad Ali, which just shows you how you have to navigate and deal, you know, deal with a candidate. But I love the 2012 campaign. I actually think it meant more to President Obama. In fact, he said it, than the ’08 campaign, because if we hadn’t won in ’12, it was a fluke.

Platt: Michael, I wanted to get your … you mentioned that you’re an independent and you’re also not just an objective journalist. You’re also kind of an activist. You have sued the state of Pennsylvania.

Smerconish: That is true. It is pending now.

Platt: So give us the background of this, of this wild-eyed activism.

Smerconish: So it’s not as nutty as it sounds, but I’m a non, nonpartisan affiliate. I guess we call them. I’m an independent in Pennsylvania. We call it something different. You can’t just register as an independent.

There are 1.4 million of us. We comprise 16 percent of the, the electorate, and we don’t get to vote in primaries. And yet, we’re, you know, to take that Ronald Reagan line from the ’80 campaign, “I paid for this podium, Mr. Green,” or whatever the hell the line was. And we are the largest growing area of the electorate, both nationally and in the Commonwealth. Forty-five percent according to Gallup, say they’re an independent nationally; 27 percent say they’re a D; 27 percent say they’re an R. We want to vote in primaries.

And I know you’re going to say to me, Well, why don’t you go join one of the parties? I don’t want to join one of the parties. Why should I have to in my case? That would, I think, jeopardize my profession? Now I’m going to be identified as an R or a D when I’m not one.

Platt: So where does this case stand?

Smerconish: So we attempted to go directly to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and we were unsuccessful. A king’s bench petition was filed that would have spared us going to the Commonwealth Court and work our way up the ladder. So okay, we went back to the front of the line. The case is pending right now, and you know, Mayor Nutter probably knows, and maybe, you know, there have been talks in Pennsylvania about the legislature doing this, which would be a nice, much cleaner way to make it happen. But when we didn’t see resolution, we decided: Let’s force it and take it to court.

Platt: I love that. I love that you did that, and I’m also, you know, it makes total … Why not let people vote? We have this closed primary system. Do you have a view on that Mayor Nutter? I don’t know how it is in Georgia.

Reed: No. I’m not for that.

Nutter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that might be, maybe it’s a generational thing, although Michael’s, I think, it’s around the same age as this, but. Yeah, I’ve never really been for that. And Michael, I heard your argument. You know, you’re obviously in a particular situation, but you know this, sometimes you do, you got to pick. They’re not interchangeable.

And you know, we’ve had, you know, I’ve seen campaigns. I mean, it’s an interesting tactic where, you know, one party will try to recruit the other party to switch during the course of, you know, for a primary, to help someone, or to hurt someone, in some instances. But, yeah, I’m not for the free-for-all, vote wherever you want, do whatever you want, kind of thing. I think this is, it’s of a nature that like you got to pick, you got to pick one.

Reed: I am in favor of folks. If folks want to go and build an independent party, have at it. I mean, I think we’re moving to a point in the United States of America where independent party for all of the challenges that both Democrats and Republicans put in front of it, will form. And I’m favor for competing independents, Democrats and Republicans. But allowing an independent to wake up and just pick between Democrats and Republicans, that, I’m not for that.

Platt: Does that come from a, a self-interested partisan view, or do you think it’s better for the country to have these, this or some combination thereof?

Reed: Yeah, I think it comes from both. I think it comes from a person that’s had their name on the ballot an awful lot of times, wanting to be able to understand the electorate and the people that I’m for. I think you choose parties by, by, by the individual or group of folks that you most agree with at the moment of the election. And so I would not be in favor of having folks get in my primary, influence my primary and primary results, who don’t have motives that I believe are as good as Michael.

Nutter: I have to agree.

Platt: So that’s, that’s it. That’s interesting, because I think one of the problems with this moment is our obsession with team colors.

Smerconish: Yeah.

Platt: I think you and I agree on that. So I think we’re, we’re, we need a, we need a tiebreaker here, because we have an even number of folks here. I get what you’re saying, but I do feel like we’re, we’re, we’re contributing to the polarization by not opening up the process.

Smerconish: My premise is, I want more people voting, because I think we water down the fringe on both ends. And too much fringe. So often, you’ve got the weakest candidates for a general election who get nominated, and then all of a sudden they’ve got to do battle. And you mentioned Talarico, and I think this is a great example of I think he’s a stronger general election candidate than Jasmine Crockett. We went through it here in Pennsylvania, you know, a couple of years ago, in our, in our Senate race, I looked at Conor Lamb and I thought, this is a, this is a guy who, who could be unbeatable in a general election, but he couldn’t survive a primary.

Platt: So I had that same thought, but is that? Is that the product of two guys, middle-aged, suburban, White guys?

Smerconish: Could be, yeah, could be. But I feel it nationally. I mean, again, the largest growing area are people who are done with both parties. And I’m for, I’m for change.

Platt: “I’m for change” is the, is the for me, and I think, I think we see this in our recent history.

Nutter: I think the parties have to do a better job of developing and recruiting strong candidates, you know? I mean, what about that?

Reed: But, I mean, I think getting your ass kicked does, does something to you, and if, as a party, you keep getting your ass kicked, and you don’t change your candidates, then you just keep getting your ass kicked. I also, also don’t think it’s a bad thing for us to not agree. I think that’s a great thing about podcasts to actually have to take your thought out and explain why you’re where you are. I think that this is a totally appropriate forum.

Nutter: Yeah.

Platt: Yeah, no. I love it, and I also feel like …

Nutter: And nobody called each other name and didn’t talk about your mama … It’s a san conversation.

Platt: Michael, you said “I’m for change,” and I do feel like since the ’08 election, that’s all we’ve had, is The electorate saying to us in the media and us in the professional political class: We want change.

Smerconish: Trump was a manifestation of that.

Platt: Trump and Obama was, I mean, I feel like like, and that’s and that’s where I feel like candidates like Josh Shapiro, who’s immensely talented, but if he is still from central casting, he’s not going to, he’s not going to play to that change, uh, mandate that we’re still seeing out there.

Smerconish: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that the forces that gave rise to Trump’s election are still going to be with us when he’s no longer the president. Whether somebody else can marshal all that? I don’t know.

Platt: Guys, what do you, what do you make of that?

Reed: I still think it’s the candidate, stupid.

Plat: It’s the candidate, stupid.

Reed; It’s who you put up. Donald Trump was a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. You say whatever you want. Everybody knows how I feel about it, but in raw politics, he was better than Hillary Clinton was. Barack Obama was better than everybody. And Michael’s opening comments about President Obama being on his, on his show, having the political savvy and skill at that age to take risk, because everywhere he went, he would tell you: I don’t have to win a rural district. I just got to not get beat 95-5. I just got to be beaten 85-15. And maybe when he was on Michael show, instead of getting beat 90-10 somewhere, he gets beat 78-22, and those small amount of votes across all of the precincts in the United States is exactly how he won in ’08. He dominated in ’12. And so I think that our challenge really has to be the candidate that we put up.

I think Biden was the perfect candidate in ’20 when he was still physically capable of running the vigor.

Nutter: 2020.

Reed: Yeah. I think it was malpractice in 2024 to bring Joe Biden to Atlanta and have him do five events and put him on TV, and everybody who was involved in that should have been fired the next morning. That man should have been in a hotel asleep.

Nutter and Platt: [Laugh.]

Reed: Everybody on here does politics for real. That’s why people tune in to the podcast, because they want to hear somebody that’s been in the trenches in a ditch.

Nutter: Yes, yes, yes.

Reed: They want to hear they want to hear somebody that’s had their name on the ballot or been in real situations. It’s the quality of who you going to, you put up your best. Is this your king? Is this your king? That’s what both parties do. They love Mitt Romney because of his hair, the way he looked and he was rich, is the truth. That’s how he won.

Platt: So that would have …

Reed: They gave Obama everything he can handle. Anybody who knows anything about the Obama reelection knows the person they feared the most was John Thune. They freaked out over them putting up John Thune because of the way he looked and he was modeling. He comes off as kind. He was a good match to Obama’s, you know, energy and charisma. And we got to get back to picking who can win.

Nutter: Well, this goes back to, but it goes back to ’20, It goes back to 2020, and I’d actually like to try to double back even on 2016. But everybody understood, at least on a D side and maybe some other sides: Once the truncated primary got truncated, and it all kind of collapsed, going into the pandemic, and everybody dropped out, pretty much was done after both Super Tuesday and South Carolina. The general consensus was Vice President Biden, not only can win, but will be the bridge to the future.

And you can’t say it publicly — but everyone understood privately — this is a one term thing.

Reed: That’s right.

Nutter: Back to Mayor Reed, because we want to win. This guy can take Trump out, and he did it.

Reed: And he did.

Nutter: The next campaign should have started in 2022 with an understanding that there will be a full-on eight people, 15 — however many people you can fit on a stage in a full-on Democratic primary in 2024 — not 107 days at the tail end of, you know, the most painful public process.

Reed: But imagine this, guys. There was a group of people who did an analysis of Hillary Clinton losing, right? She looked … I believe she lost because she took, she let that incident involving the Attorney General take Bill Clinton off the field. I never would have done that.

Platt: Loretta Lynch when she … on the plane?

Reed: Yeah. They send Bill Clinton to Siberia. After that, they disappeared the guy. Nobody would have gotten me to take Bill Clinton off the field. She loses, and then 54 percent of White women don’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

Nutter: Right.

Reed: Just just check out this analysis that these folks did, and they said, We’re going with Kamala. Now, if 54 percent of White women didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, where do you come up with the math if they’re gonna vote for Kamala Harris?

Nutter: Late.

Reed: I’m just talking about when the, when the United States is on the line, right, which is how I view the Trump presidency because of his threat to the NATO alliance, right? So I view our global positioning in the world. He is reshaping the strategic framework and world order between him and his Secretary of State, right? And that’s the decision we made.

Smerconish: Can I just say in follow up to something that Mayor Nutter said relative to and people knew this was like a one-term thing: I was going to say, but Joe Biden never got that memo right. And imagine … I feel sorry for him, because imagine the old Kenny Rogers, Know to hold them and fold them? If he knew it’s a one-term thing, and gracefully decided to get out, allow a primary or not, you know, endorse Kamala, whatever. But imagine how different it would be today and how people would look at his legacy.

Platt: And his presidency would be seen as like when you look at it legislatively, he got a ton of bipartisan stuff done. And now it’s all gone.

Smerconish: Now nobody remembers that.

Nutter: That’s because no one wants to have the tough conversation.

Reed: Tip of the hat to our podcast, which we said when the whole kerfuffle happened, he shouldn’t have left with 107 days without the ability to have the party go through an appropriate process and pick a new leader. All of this conversation, I think, is very important as Democrats approach the 2028 process …

Nutter: Lack of discipline …

Reed: … which is wondering why we’re having this conversation with this vigor.

Platt: By the way, I never thought of this before, but you reminded me, Mayor Reed, that when you said that Hillary took Bill off the, off the table. Al Gore did the same thing in, in 2000 because of the intern scandal.

Smerconish: Because of the intern scandal.

Platt: Yeah, for sure. So twice, I think the greatest political actor of my lifetime was, was sidelined by, by his own party. I never thought of it before, but it’s sort of malpractice, politically. Although I understand the reasoning behind it and so forth. But turns out that reasoning wasn’t right. I mean, I think, I think he still could have made a difference. That’s fascinating.

Reed: Republicans would never have taken a weapon like Bill Clinton off of the table, Never, not in a million years. The guy is, the guy is, as talented a human being in politics, and Michael Nutter and I were involved in Secretary Clinton’s campaign. You knew you were going to lose when you walked into the campaign headquarters.

Platt: Why is that?

Nutter: It was rough.

Reed: The energy was terrible. They were rationing out Coca Cola is …

[Laughs]

Nutter: Which you know is a mortal sin with, with Kasim Reed.

Reed: Michael Nutter, they charged people to get a Coke. Do you understand me? They had a pay Coke machine. Are you serious?

Nutter. Right. National campaign.

Platt: And to you, that’s a sign of something’s wrong with this campaign.

Reed: Yes, yeah, and the mood in the campaign headquarters was a tomb.

Nutter: Yeah, yeah. And there was a disconnect between the campaign operation and the streets. This is when we did that was the whole Mayor Reed, do you remember? That that was, that was the era of analytics. We’re going to analyze our way to victory. And I like data as much as the next person, but I like being in the street, right? When I, when I was, when I was running first, first time, you know, Neil Oxman was my, did our political stuff.

Platt: Neil Oxman a famous political consultant who, had he done a presidential … would be as as much of a media darling as James Carville.

Smerconish: And did the commercial with Michael’s daughter. That was, that was the commercial.

Reed: That was that I hired my firm.

Platt: Was, that’s right, you hired the same firm.

Nutter: That’s right.

Reed. It was wonderful.

Nutter: So I’m sitting there in fifth place on my thing. I’m going to candidates, candidate forums almost every night. And, you know, slugging it out with these guys and the whole thing. And at some point I go to Neil and I say, You know? and no one was paying any attention to me, because no one thought that I could win, right?

So Congressman Brady, he’s fighting with Tom Knox and Dwight (Evans) and Chaka (Fattah) would mix it up every now and then and then, and then it was me. So finally, one day, I said, you know, I think I need to, I think I need to start mixing it up with these guys. I need to get in the fray. And he said, Well, why would you do that? How’s it going at these forums? I said, Oh no, I think we’re pretty much winning. He said, Well, why would you do anything different? Did anybody give you a snake eye when you were at the transit stop the other day? I said, No, everybody’s been very nice. He said, So keep doing what you’re doing. You don’t need to fight with these people.

Platt: Interesting. So. Was like: You act like the front runner, and you become the front runner … swagger.

Nutter: That’s a little bit of it. We would put on a press release at every one of the major forums? The press secretary who had one of these portable printers. Right after the, right after the forum, we would hand out to all the press “Nutter wins again” The thing’s been over two minutes. “Mike Nutter wins the forum him tonight.” Just creating our own momentum.

Reed: Yeah, I was so far behind they didn’t even show my face when they would mention the mayor’s race. You know how they show the pictures? They wouldn’t even put mine up. They were just like, put a little name …

Platt: Well that’s what I love about both these guys were, like, last in the polls in their initial runs for, for, for mayor. I do think that builds character.

Nutter: It builds something.

Platt: I do think that, like, that’s a you get, you get tested.

Before we close. I want to come back to this issue of Michael’s media activism. Can you share with these guys? Because I think you have the answer. I hate to give him more credit because of that big head of his. But I think you have the answer.

Nutter: Larry: Your heads are the same size. Two bald White guys.

Platt: I mean, we’re like the Hair Club for Men — the Hair Club for Growth.

Nutter: How many barbers you putting out of business?

Platt: I think this Mingle Project that you’ve devised, is the answer for America. Can you explain what it is and the genesis of it?

Smerconish: Yeah, it’s shorthand for me trying to explain what I think most ails the country. And the short version is lack of common experience that, fueled by technology, we’ve just all self sorted gone into our respective corners. The Internet makes it easier to find people with whom you have some particular interest. You know, it could be an obscure hobby, or it could be politics, and it also enables you to stay away from people who don’t have your mindset.

So it’s, it’s kind of a crusade of sorts that I’m on to say: Maybe it’s the JCs, maybe it’s the Urban League, maybe it’s the Knights of Columbus, maybe it’s that local newspaper, the kind that has the honor roll and the pictures and the obituaries, but somehow, everybody’s got to find their way … volunteerism? You know, the King Day of Service that we have in Philly with our buddy Todd Bernstein?

People need to find a way to be connected in the community. My parents were joiners. You know, my dad refereed high school and college football in the fall, and that was a way that he gave back. And he was in the Rotary Club, and he was a Mason. And my mom was a part of a group of women that raised money for a local hospital. Mom was in a bridge club. Dad was in a poker club. They were both in the Moose Lodge.

Platt: Wow.

Smerconish: And like that kind of connection is, I think, what’s most lacking, especially with young people. So, I’m not here to prescribe what you should do. It has to find your own level, but find a way that you can be plugged in and meet people who aren’t like you.

Platt: And what you’re doing is having these meetups.

Smerconish: Well, Larry, I deserve no credit for that. Like this is a part of the pitch that I make on radio and television, any chance I get, and I interview guests solely about this, like, Mingle idea. But listeners of mine then took it upon themselves to organize Mingle meetups. And there are, I think, 40-plus of them, all across the country. I’ve attended some just as like a surprise guest.

And it’s kind of funny, because sometimes I walk in, it’s a small group, maybe 20 people, and they have no idea who I am, except for the organizer, because they heard about in social media that there’s a get-together. And it takes on, like a whole dating kind … I don’t care, as long as you’re getting out of the house and meeting people you would otherwise not meet. I’m cool with it.

Platt: That is awesome. Guys. Do you have thoughts on that?

Reed: I think, I think it is a very strong remedy for what we’re going through. The bottom line is connection, yeah, but I do think people need forums. You know what Michael is doing, he’s not just saying connection. And so to the extent that Mingle gives people a view, you know, in Atlanta, they have this thing called Go Say Hello. And so Go Say Hello is this app that shows when you have similar interests, but it will actually show you if you’re near someone. You’re in a restaurant and another person is a part of Go Say Hello, it lets you know whether they feel like talking. And it was something that came up …

Smerconish: I love that. I hadn’t heard of that, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Reed: Yeah, so and you have to ask for permission, but you wave, and if the other person clicks and waves back, it shows, hey, you’re in the same room. So I am on board with connectivity.

Nutter: Yeah, I’m not saying that everything was perfect and sunshine and rainbows before the pandemic, but I think we continue to suffer the deficiencies and the impact of the pandemic still to this day, and the and the bonds and the ties that were broken during that time, many of them have not reconnected, have not healed. And people are trying to literally — and both of you are saying it — trying to find their way, like, where, you know, where’s my crew? Where are my people? Where are my people, right?

Reed: Right.

Smerconish: Everything, everything that we used to do in the company of others, we now do at home, you know? And by the way, when we’re at home, maybe we all now have a flat screen, but we’re not even watching the same TV shows anymore.

Platt: Right. Right.

Smerconish: Now, somebody recommends a TV show to you, and you’ve never even heard of it, even if you’re paying for the streamer on which it’s being carried. And it used to be, you’d go to work the next day and have something to bullshit about. Only now people aren’t going to work! So consequently, they’re not being mentored. They’re not going to happy hour; they’re not going to lunch. You know that, that whole part of the work experience to bring this all back to where we started?

Platt: You’re absolutely right. This is … I regret that these guys were in Philly in November, and we had this amazing dinner. I want to invite Michael to our next dinner, just to just for shits and giggles, because I think, I think, it would be great. We went to Borromini and Mayor Reed …

Smerconish: I can’t get in there, so please do invite me. I can’t get into the place. So please ask me.

[Laughs]

Nutter: Give me a call, Mike, I’d be glad to help.

Platt: Thank you so much. This has been awesome, and thank you guys. So much fun with Michael Smerconish.

Smerconish: Can I, can I plug the Mingle project that I made reference to? I delivered a full-on presentation for an hour, and we put it online, and people are enjoying it. So if it sparks any curiosity, it’s very easily found, and I lay it all out with data like it’s very data driven. I tell a lot of stories, and hopefully there are a couple of laughs, but I tell the story through data about the impact of lack of connection with our kids and with and with our seniors. I mean, with all of us, frankly.

So please watch it.

Platt: So we’re going to link to it, and maybe, and maybe we can also run it on our platform as well as thank you.

Nutter: Do you have one coming up in Philly anytime soon?

Smerconish: I do not in Philly, but I, but I’ll figure out a way that I can make all the data accessible to you, because you, I think, Mayor, you’d really love it. I think you really would.

Reed: Where do we find it, Michael?

Smerconish: All you’ve got to do is Google Smerconish and Mingle project. I know that’s a mouthful, but, you …

Platt: Don’t google Smerconish naked.

Smerconish: You could Google that too.

Platt: Save yourself.

Nutter: You know, some things you can’t unsee. I like Michael the way he is, and I just, I don’t want any of that interfering.

Platt: This is awesome. Thank you all so much. I love all you guys. See you.

All: Thanks, man. Thank you.

The Cities Doing Transportation Right

With Jannet Walker-Ford

Jannet Walker-Ford is a nationally recognized transportation expert who worked on the recently released Special Event Transportation — Guidance and Opportunities Playbook (SetGo) to help transit agencies navigate “mega-events” like the upcoming FIFA World Cup and semiquincentennial.

Walker-Ford explains how a city can you use such events as engines of future growth, while engaging the community. She lists U.S. mayors she feels are getting transportation right in Los Angeles, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Kansas City — and even Philadelphia.

Mayors Confronting ICE (and ice)

With former Mayors Kasim Reed and Michael Nutter

This special episode discusses recent crises plaguing the leaders of prominent cities: federal troops — ICE — as well as snow and ice, namely, here in Philadelphia, where the first winter storm seemed to strand many residents, who waited days for their streets to be plowed – or watched plows cover their cars in snow.

Mayors Reed and Nutter have weathered crises before, and they don’t pull their punches on this episode.

"The Mayor Dude wit the Skater Attitude"

With Allentown Mayor Matthew Tuerk

Matthew Tuerk is a wicked skater, punk-rocking tattoo connoisseur, marathoner, and the popular second-term mayor of Allentown, PA with a mission to bring back his city’s manufacturing success.

“We had this idea that you could still make stuff in cities,” says Tuerk. “Soot and smog-filled cities are not what the future of manufacturing looks like. Manufacturing needs people. It needs good, high-paying jobs. There are a lot of folks that came to Allentown looking to tap into the American Dream. Empowering people should be our motivation.”

Join us for an entertaining and informative episode about a city with its first Latino mayor “restoring a little bit of faith in the power of government to actually meet people’s needs.”

"Spare Me Your Bullsh*t"

With former mayor of Baltimore and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley

As mayor of Baltimore and then governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley used transparency and statistics to drive his city and state forward into the Information Age. And then he — literally — wrote the book on the subject.

His conclusion after more than a decade in public office? “We live in a time of enormous opportunity,” O’Malley said on the latest episode of How To Really Run A City to our hosts, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt. “It’s the dawning of the Third Industrial Revolution. People want to believe that tomorrow can be better than today.”

O’Malley, a former Social Security Administration Commissioner and Irish clan chieftain, knows the stakes of the current political moment. Yes, you have to lead with joy. But to get people back from the brink of political despair, you’ve got to get shit done at the local level, because if we can’t deliver the goods of a republic — the services that make a republic worth having — then we can’t blame people for not following us.

“Over the last 20 years,” O’Malley said, “trust in the federal government has fallen to an all-time low. But trust in local government – in city government – has held steady.”

Join us for a no-nonsense episode with a no-nonsense leader who knows how to get shit done at multiple governing levels — and whose prescription for both his Democratic party and the country write large are lessons we should learn to preserve what matters about living in America.

Leading a City ... With Jokes

Recorded live at our Ideas We Should Steal Festival with Rochester Hills, Michigan Mayor Bryan Barnett

This special episode of How To Really Run a City was recorded live at The Philadelphia Citizen’s eighth annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival presented by Comcast NBCUniversal. Our hosts, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Citizen Media Group President and CEO Larry Platt were joined on stage by a return guest, five-term Rochester Hills, Michigan Mayor Bryan Barnett, a Republican.

Barnett is a consummate showman, as evidenced by his increasingly elaborate State of the City addresses (full-scale musical productions). Here, Barnett and the hosts discuss the importance of leading a city with joy and finesse, and how the Democratic party is fumbling the ball — in messaging and in the recent government shutdown. As Mayor Barnett points out, there really is no Republican or Democrat way to fill a pothole. You just fill the pothole.

“The moment you put your foot on the sidewalk,” Nutter responded, “people are looking to see how’s the mayor doing? Is the city upbeat? Is it grumpy? There’s a public impact to this job.”

Join us as we dive back into Rochester Hills with Mayor Barnett and explore how to really run a city with style and good humor.

A Job, A Hospital, A Park — All Within 15 Minutes

With Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb

On this episode of our podcast, former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter and former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed speak with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb on creating a city that’s easily accessible for all residents.

“I don’t care if you live in urban America or rural America, everyone wants the same thing,” Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said on the latest episode of The Citizen’s How To Really Run A City. “They want a job they can get to in 15 minutes, they want a hospital or pharmacy within 15 minutes, they want a park or a grocery store or bars or restaurants, all within 15 minutes.”

Bibb went on to explain to our hosts, former Philly mayor Michael Nutter and former Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed, how he is turning his Ohio city into a convenient, accessible, bona fide 15-minute city — and what is needed to sustain that work.

“People really want walkability,” Bibb said. “They want safety and thriving neighborhoods and overall thriving cities. But we as mayors can’t do this by ourselves. We need a federal government that’s actually working. It has to be working with our governors and mayors.”

Bibb, a charismatic 38-year-old (and cousin to the first Black primetime newscaster in Ohio), will almost certainly be reelected next week, and both Reed and Nutter quickly picked up on his “get sh*t done” vibe.

“A mayor is a reflection of their city,” Reed said, “how it feels and how it will be there [for its people].”

“Absolutely,” Nutter said.

Join us for an episode about a mayor who is laser-focused on making the lives of his constituents better in ways that anyone taking a stroll to the park can feel.

A Political Asshole No More

With former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh

On this episode of How To Really Run A City, innovation in cities takes a backseat to a more pressing question: How do we find our way back to recognizing the humanity in one another?

Our guest: Joe Walsh, a former Representative from Illinois. He was a self-described Tea Party arsonist, right-wing radio provocateur and mentor to Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk. All of that changed when Donald Trump rode down an escalator and completely captured the Republican Party.

“It was never this way with Reagan, with Bush, with old-man Bush, this is something completely different,” Walsh told our hosts, former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter and Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt. (Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed was unable to attend.)

Walsh’s public split from his party made him a target of MAGA loyalists, who to this day threaten him and his family. Still, he’s not backing down. “I helped to divide this country,” Walsh said. “People like me helped put us on this road. I have to live with that.”

As a newly-minted Democrat, Walsh tours the country connecting with people from across the political spectrum. “Do you leave these conversations hopeful or less hopeful?” Platt asked.

“I’m right down the middle,” Walsh said. “Half the folk out there are ready for a national divorce. They tell me, ‘Joe, I want it to be peaceful, but we just can’t coexist anymore.’”

Listen to this episode now for a passionate conversation about a return to civility and the true stakes of our national debate with a public figure who describes himself as a former “political asshole” trying to make amends. And for more from Walsh, join us at The Citizen’s 8th annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival, presented by Comcast NBCUniversal, where he will talk with former foe-turned-friend Fred Guttenberg, a gun rights activist who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting.

Detroit is Back, Baby!

With Detroit, MI Mayor Mike Duggan

When Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan took office in 2013, his city had just filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Nearly half of the streetlights didn’t work. Unemployment had topped 20 percent and 200,000 residents had fled the city over the previous 10 years.

Today, business is booming, crime has fallen to a 60-year low and it’s no understatement to say that Detroit is back.

Mayor Duggan, now running for governor of his state as an Independent, joins former Mayors Michael Nutter and Kasim Reed and Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt on this episode of How To Really Run A City to roll up their sleeves and lift the hood of Detroit’s success.

“The last time a [Detroit] City Council member was elected mayor was 1947,” Mayor Duggan told our hosts. “For the last 75 years, the city was going so badly that nobody wanted to vote for anyone who had been associated with it. My successor, who won the primary in a landslide, is president of City Council. It shows how much politics has changed. People are proud of their city government now.”

“You decided to run as a White man for mayor of Detroit,” Reed said. “What were the mechanics of that decision?”

“Sometimes I was the only White person in the room for six blocks around,” Duggan responded. “But I listened to very powerful stories. And it’s a funny thing, when you sit in people’s homes and break bread with them, what divides us fades to the background. The average Detroiter isn’t interested in us vs. them, they just want a better quality of life.”

Join us for a powerful conversation about turning an entire city around, despite the challenges and barriers that had entrenched decades of decline. Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. Watch and follow new episodes on YouTube.

One City's Answer to Tribalism

With Denver, CO Mayor Mike Johnston

When Denver, Colorado Mayor Mike Johnston isn’t sparring with congressional Republicans over immigration (and being threatened with jail time), he’s pushing his city to eliminate homelessness, continuing his crusade for high-quality, affordable education and inspiring Denverites to give five hours of volunteer service each month.

“I love the Give5 Mile High program,” said Citizen co-founder Larry Platt. “It’s kind of the answer to Trumpism, right? All of us coming together in common purpose?”

On this episode of How To Really Run A City, Platt, former Mayors Michael Nutter and former Kasim Reed join Mayor Johnston to dissect the initiatives that are making Denver a prosperous and communitarian city for all its citizens.

Reformers Are the Future of Cities

With Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti

“Just keep doing the next right thing, even though it’s hard.”

This mantra has become a political north star for Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who knows what drives a city forward is everyone doing their parts at all levels.

At a special live taping of the podcast at Philadelphia’s OpportUNITY Summit hosted by United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, a rousing, good-natured conversation featured high-minded reminders that the future of cities depends on practical local government reformers.

“What can all of us do to move the [political] needle back to sanity?” Platt asked.

“Tell the stories that reflect your reality,” Cognetti said.

Can AI Make Cities More Effective?

With Bloomberg Philanthropies' Rochelle Haynes

The AI revolution is upon us, and it will certainly have an impact on local governance.

“Let’s have an open conversation about its use,” says this week’s podcast guest, Rochelle Haynes, Managing Director of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative at Results for America.

Haynes, who previously served as Chief of Staff at New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, saw firsthand what happens when policy and politics clash.

“A lot of fears out there are about losing jobs,” she continued. “But we need to show people that this is about making your job more effective. The human touch is still needed. AI is just the tool to [streamline] the data and priorities for cities.”

The Next Green Tech Hub in America

With Riverside, CA Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson

While Washington implodes and other cities resist, Riverside, CA Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson is moving ahead with an ambitious tech agenda — and battling youth homelessness in her city.

“I feel positive about the direction California is taking,” says Riverside, CA Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson, our guest this week on How To Really Run A City. In the wake of reduced support from Washington, D.C., she optimistically declares, “We’ll find our way forward. We’ll keep fighting.”

In this episode, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed joins guest host Scranton, PA Mayor Paige Cognetti, fresh off a stunning primary win.

“I think a local leader’s superpower is empathy,” Reed says. “You have to feel what they feel.”

“You can’t ever lose that feeling of being a constituent yourself,” Lock Dawson concurred.

Join us for a special episode about being a woman in office, mirroring the best qualities of your citizens and building a vibrant, growing city despite the politics in Washington. Remember to subscribe to keep up on all the latest episodes. You can even watch the conversation play out on YouTube.

Drones and License Plate Readers

With Garrett Langley of Flock Safety

“Traditional license plate readers were developed in the 1950s and 60s,” says Garrett Langley of Flock Safety. “But you can go into Flock and say I’m looking for a black Sedan with after-market tires and a dent on the left corner, and we will find that car.”

Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter, along with Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt, chat with Langley about his cost-saving approach to public safety, which made national headlines last year by promptly apprehending a would-be Trump assassin and an Atlanta mass shooter.

“I love citizen entrepreneurs who are in the civic problem-solving business,” Platt told the mayors. “That’s who this guy is.”

Join us for a deep dive into an idea that keeps cities safer while avoiding the typical pitfalls of street surveillance.

"Governtainment" in City Hall

With Rochester Hills, MI Mayor Bryan Barnett

President Trump’s tariff policies pose an economic threat to Rochester Hills, Michigan — and Republican Mayor Bryan Barnett has not been shy about speaking out. Barnett has held onto the mayoral office for 18 years — in no small part because of his unique style of “governtainment,” and the realization that cities are firmly in the business of customer service.

“Our competition isn’t who you think: It’s Amazon,” Barnett says. “If you can get something delivered to your house from across the world in 24 hours, but it takes four or five visits to city hall to get a dog license, people say this just doesn’t make any sense. Most mayors are more practical than political … Most of my day-to-day work is solving problems for our community.”

Where Local Matters

With Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti

Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti is demonstrating how cities are blazing a way forward amidst the daily chaos spilling out of Washington, D.C.

“This is where local matters,” Cognetti says. “At the local level, we’re nimble, we’re able to try things that are harder at the state level, and definitely at the national level.”

This episode reveals “green shoots of encouragement” coming from Scranton, PA. Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. Watch the conversation play out on YouTube.

The "Elusive Wizard" of Housing

With Bruce Katz

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and an architect of the National Housing Crisis Task Force at Accelerator For America. He offered his remarkable, wizard-like insight on the current gutting of federal agencies and funding

“This is a war on the poor,” Katz says. “This is a war on science. This is abandoning our allies and the dismantling of the federal government. We should be very scared.”

There’s still hope though.

“The U.S. has always shown the power of the local. We are really unlike any other place in the world. We have a long tradition of volunteerism, philanthropy and corporate engagement. It’s local. People are committed to place. This will be our salvation,” says Katz.

Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. You can even watch the conversation play out on YouTube.

Will Civility Save Us?

With Diane Kalen-Sukra

Years of acrimony and conflict in our national politics has trickled down to cities, where disdain for civil servants — and each other — has had a chilling effect on the work needed to get things done. So what can we do about it?

Diane Kalen-Sukra, a former city manager, current evangelist for political civility and author of Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What To Do About It — explains how we can bring down the temperature of our political conversations … and what happens if we don’t.

“Civility is not about being nice. It’s about having the backbone to boldly speak the truth, even in difficult situations,” Kalen-Sukra says.

Cities Under Siege

With Emergency Expert Tom Henkey

In the wake of weather-related emergencies all across the countries, not the least of which being the horrific fires that have devastated Los Angeles, Tom Henkey, formerly Chicago’s Senior Emergency Management Coordinator and currently the Director of Emergency Management for Titan Security Group, is a timely expert.

Emergencies like those above, Reed said, show why being a mayor is one of the three toughest jobs in government. “During every mayoralty, there is something unforeseen that happens.”

Baby Qs and Barbecue

With Kansas City, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas

Two guests this episode: First, Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, President and CEO of Accelerator for America, the nation’s preeminent city “do tank,” and our dynamic new partner on this podcast. Next, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas, known affectionately to Kansas Citians as “Mayor Q.” Lucas rose from experiencing homelessness to running Kansas City and he came into office with ambitious, fresh ideas.

“I think good mayors find a way to remove barriers,” Lucas told our hosts. Also, expect a little Eagles-Chiefs smack talk.

What the World Needs Now ...

Is a Good Laugh with the Mayors

On our closing podcast episode of 2024, we thought listeners could use a good laugh.

Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt takes us through the year’s funniest moments, from how former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed gets his gangsta lean on, to former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter’s “drugged up” call-in from his car. This year we had randy guests, mayors incognito and a dead tree in Wilmington, Delaware that just won’t be removed.

This special episode tries not to take 2024 too seriously.

Topple the Machine, Make Fairer the City

With filmmaker Joe Winston and New Yorker writer / Macarthur “genius” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Chicago’s late, legendary first African-American mayor, Harold Washington propelled his charisma and grassroots support to topple his city’s just-as legendary machine and remake its government — a story brilliantly told in Punch 9 For Harold Washington, which The Citizen screened on the opening night of the 2024 Ideas We Should Steal Festival.

How to Really Run A City hosts former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter, along with The Citizen’s Larry Platt, spoke with filmmaker Joe Winston and New Yorker writer / MacArthur Genius Award-winner Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explored what Philadelphia can take away from Washington’s political courage in a live taping of the podcast.

“Fairer is harder,” Reed told the audience, “if you want a bold, inclusive form of politics, it’s just harder … all of us have got to show up.”

Watch an extended version of the live, onstage conversation play out on YouTube.

You Can't Nice Your Way to Victory

Mayors Mike Nutter and Kasim Reed

On this special episode of How To Really Run A City, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter get together just days after the 2024 election to hash out how they’re feeling and what they think turned the tide to President-elect Donald Trump. Despite a “painful, painful map” and impending federal policies that target vulnerable communities, Reed and Nutter offer a few rays of hope.

“Presidents have very little power to reach into cities,” Nutter observed.

“Make [the president] staff these efforts,” Reed agreed. “It would take four years just to staff up.”

Impatience ... One Dead Tree at a Time

With John Carney, Governor of Delaware

Delaware Governor John Carney is doing something that almost no other governor has done — turning his sights from the highest executive office in a state to the role of mayor (in this case, the mayoralty of Wilmington, DE).

Reed and Nutter offer some sage advice and everyone on the show reminisces about what it really takes to get shit done in a city. There’s a dead tree that mayoral hopeful Carney has been obsessing over that illustrates this point perfectly.

“Be impatient,” Nutter told Carney. “Everyday. Be impatient in doing good for your constituents.”

The Key to an Economy that Works is ... Workers

With Devin Cotten, founder and CEO of The Universal Basic Employment and Opportunity Initiative

In Cleveland, OH, Devin Cotten is helping extend universal basic employment to one hundred Clevelanders through a pilot that guarantees a living wage of $50,000 a year. This initiative bypasses the common criticism about universal basic income being just a financial handout.

“I think this is a more effective tool, politically,” former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says on the podcast, “because you’ve got somebody getting up and going to work, just like the rest of us. It’s hard for people to hate on someone who’s doing the very best they can.”

A Masterclass in Levelheaded Politics with a "DEI" Mayor

With Baltimore, MD Mayor Brandon Scott

In March, a cargo ship lost power and smashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, thrusting Scott into the national spotlight amidst ugly insinuations that the tragedy was a result of Scott being a “D.E.I. mayor.”

Find out how he creatively shut down the criticisms, as Mayor Scott takes our hosts through the tragedy of that night and details his city’s stunning success in reversing the trend of shooting victims and fatalities. He even digs into the hilarious bet he has with the youth of his city as they try to unearth the mayor’s D.J. alias. (Hint: He ain’t worried.)

To the Americans who are "Politically Homeless"

With Mesa, AZ Mayor John Giles

Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed catch up with the Republican mayor whose speech supporting Kamala Harris ignited the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Why’d he do it? To honor the ideals and memory of Senator John McCain. “There is no longer loyalty to principles,” Mayor John Giles of Mesa, AZ, told us. “It’s all loyalty to Donald Trump. It’s been heartbreaking for not just me, but millions and millions of Americans who are now politically homeless.”

What if a Bullet Cost $5,000?

With U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of NJ

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey never expected to find herself paired policy-wise Chris Rock, but both came up with the same solution for curbing gun violence in America: Make bullets prohibitively expensive.

Coleman joins the podcast to discuss her game-changing legislation (which she reintroduces every year to no avail) — The Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act. She also discussed the dearth of collegiality in Congress, and Mayors Nutter and Reed talk “ultimate retail politics” — and the vital role of a call time manager.

How to Innovate in Education

With former Providence, RI Mayor Jorge Elorza

Jorge Elorza, former Providence, RI mayor and current executive director for Democrats for Education Reform talks to Nutter and Reed about reclaiming the language, ideas, policy and vision around education, what voters want, who is making the needed change, and how to design an education system that is innovative, accountable and offers choice.

“We’re no longer just armed with the policy case or the moral case for reform, there’s also political self-interest,” Elorza says.

A Special Episode on Citizenship

With Michael Nutter and Kasim Reed

As hand-wringing over the state of our democracy has become a national pastime, we here at How To Really Run A City aired a special edition highlighting moments from previous episodes which demonstrate that high-minded civic virtues like tolerance and pluralism and communitarianism don’t only belong to the past.

Hear Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s guide to public action — “Mayors belong to one party — the party of getting shit done” — Mayor Nutter’s stirring recounting of the Athenian Oath and Mayor Reed’s somber assessment of the importance of the upcoming election — “We all love to think about what we would have done if we’d been around with Martin or Lincoln. Well, this is it.”

Join us for a few reminders that citizenship and good governance also lie in our present and future — an antidote to Nutter’s assessment of our general mood: “The daily dose of crazy is tiring. People are worn out.”

The Bobby Womack School of Good Governance

Part 2 with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

To bestselling author, public intellectual, Baptist preacher and Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson, Bobby Womack’s 1981 hit “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” is a message to the progressives who’ve said they’ll sit out this election cycle — or cast a protest vote — over Joe Biden’s handling of Israel and Gaza.

In the second of our two-part conversation with Dyson, he says, “If you are upset with Joe Biden because of his distressing and problematic relationship with Israel, think about Bobby Womack: ‘If you think you’re lonely now, wait until tonight.'” In other words, the non-Biden option would be even worse for Gaza.

How to Really ... Run Against Donald Trump

with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

According to recent polling, former President Donald Trump is projected to secure 18 percent of the African American vote in the United States — and 23 percent in Philadelphia — in part because of the support of high-profile rappers.

To bestselling author, public intellectual and “hip hop” professor Michael Eric Dyson, that is a result of a basic lack of civil understanding — “Trump didn’t write you a [Covid] check. He don’t got no money,” Dyson told former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter on the latest episode of How to Really Run A City — as well as misconceptions about masculine “swag.”

“They think he’s got swag. He’s got borrowed swag. It’s a shame and a trauma that they see him as legitimate. It’s an indictment of [poor messaging on] our side,” Dyson said.

How to Really ... Manage a Public Protest

with Richmond, VA Mayor Levar Stoney

Nutter and Reed join protégé Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. The trio compares notes on the handling of public protest — “It’s a little more art than science,” says Reed — and dive into Richmond’s record economic growth under Stoney. They also discuss Stoney’s history-making removal of his city’s Confederate monuments.

Lessons from America's Fastest-Growing City

with Fort Worth, Texas Mayor Mattie Parker

Fort Worth, Texas Mayor Mattie Parker won her second term with a whopping 70 percent of the vote. On this episode, our hosts talk with this superstar Republican mayor about managing a citywide boom while maintaining a small-town feel. What lessons can Philly learn?

Show Me the Money!

with Enterprise Center CEO Della Clarke (pictured below) and JP Morgan Chase's Michele Lawrence

After chatting about the recent State of the Union address, as well as the stakes for cities in the upcoming election, our hosts invite Della Clarke, CEO of Philadelphia’s Enterprise Center and JP Morgan Chase’s Michele Lawrence to discuss the power of investing in Black and Brown entrepreneurs. “This is what the podcast is all about,” observed Reed. It’s about getting past safety net politics and figuring out how we really grow into the future.

Reverse Racial Migration, Misogyny, and the Math of Democracy

with Charles Blow, columnist for The New York Times and author

There is a line in Spiderman, Across the Spider-Verse, when Peter Parker laments that he’s sick of hearing about the fate of the multiverse. He’s turned off by, had enough of, all the highfalutin, esoteric jabber.

The Marvel dialogue feels fitting in an election year when even folks within the same political parties can’t seem to agree. And it’s a sentiment that in some way captures the crux of the most recent episode of How to Really Run a City. Their guest is the polymath Charles Blow, columnist for The New York Times and author of the 2021 book The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto and last year’s companion HBO documentary, South to Black Power.

In a wide-ranging and impassioned conversation, Blow makes the case for a type of new Black Power movement by calling for a Black migration to the South (he moved to Atlanta, GA, four years ago) and opining on the diminishing Democratic Party loyalty of Black men in America. The mayors and their guest dive deep into the risks run when politicians focus on philosophical debates over more day-to-day issues like jobs and the economy.

Check out Blow’s provocative book and documentary.

Part 3: The State — and Future — of Policing in Cities

With Charles H. Ramsey

Good policing stems from standards and standardization, a sort of codification of integrity. Good policing also comes from having, wisely using and analyzing good technology and good data. By analyzing trends, patterns and emerging trends with real-time data, you can develop strategies to get everyone working together.

Analyzing trends also enables police to call on other service providers — like mediation and social services — before situations escalate to crime. New approaches must be applied constitutionally, insists Ramsey. He also has something to say about he role of unions when it comes to strengthening police and communities.

Part 2: How Tree Trimming Fights Crime

With Charles H. Ramsey, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner

“Everyone has a role to play in public safety,” says former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. It’s not just about police and fire: It’s also about tree-trimming and keeping streets well-lit, because crime tends to happen in the dark. It’s about mental health services and schools.

“I think of it more as community safety than public safety,” says former Philadelphia (and Washington, D.C.) Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey.

To be effective, multi-department efforts can’t be haphazard or uncoordinated. As co-host and Citizen co-founder Larry Platt observes, that’s what’s meant by the latest governing term of art: “A whole of government approach.”

Find out what your role can be — and where the future of policing lies — in part two of this special three-part series.

2023 Year in Review

Catch up now

Missed the debut year of How to Really Run a City by Citizen co-founder Larry Platt, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and a different policy all-star each episode? No worries. We have a year in review here.

Each episode, guests — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, gun violence prevention expert David Muhammad, author and tech pioneer Jennifer Pahlka, for example — unearth tangible tips leaders in all sectors can embrace if they’re serious about practical problem-solving. Also, they laugh a lot.

But don’t take our word for it: Bloomberg Cities Network, the authority on city innovation, recommended How to Really Run a City as one of just 10 city-related podcasts from around the world worth listening to.

Part 1: Tuxes, Blackberries and the Key to Effective Policing

With Charles H. Ramsey, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner

Former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey joined us at our most recent Ideas We Should Steal Festival to share commonsense solutions to collaborating with a city leader (in his case, former Mayor Michael Nutter) to achieve a record low crime rate. Ramsey has more than 50 years of law enforcement knowledge and service. The former co-chair of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing is now the Principal Deputy Monitor for the Federal Consent Decrees in Baltimore and Cleveland, a law enforcement analyst for CNN, and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.

In this first of a two-part episode, we begin on the questions: How much of a police chief’s job is about reversing public opinion? What’s the secret to making citizens feel safe in all corners of their city? And what’s the most important trait any Mayor should look for when hiring a police chief? Also: What’s a Blackberry?

What Mayors Can Learn From...Toyota?

With Brian Elms, the CEO and Founder of Change Agents Training

Toyota, Motorola, FedEx — as different as their products may be, they share at least one secret ingredient: an investment in training their employees to become leaders, and to learn critical, creative problem-solving skills.

Why, then, doesn’t the public sector invest as deeply in supporting the evolution and advancement of its workforce?

It’s the question at the heart of this installment of How to Really Run a City, the acclaimed Citizen podcast co-hosted by former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, and Citizen co-founder Larry Platt. This episode welcomes Brian Elms, the CEO and Founder of Change Agents Training, which focuses on creating employee-driven innovation programs around the country.

For more about how Elms and his team transform organizations’ productivity and processes — and to get the scoop behind that time Mayor Nutter threw out the first pitch at a Phillies game in 2008 — listen to the newest episode here, then check out the episodes you may have missed.

Business as Unusual

with Kathryn Wylde, CEO of Partnership for New York

It’s fair to say that nothing big gets done in New York without Kathryn Wylde. As CEO of Partnership for New York — a nonprofit whose members are the city’s business leaders, collectively employing more than 1.5 million New Yorkers — she’s arguably the city’s most powerful civic and business force.

As New York Magazine reported, Partnership for New York is a “group that sees itself as functioning something like a permanent government, guiding city policy through the political vicissitudes of the moment and making sure New York remains welcoming to capital and investment … Its closed-door breakfasts are essential stops for the city’s political class and anyone hoping to join it.”

Wylde is adamant that the group is not a chamber of commerce, but “business working on behalf of the city.”

In this episode of How to Really Run a City, Wylde makes a compelling case for increased cross-sector collaboration, shares her optimism around the return-to-office debate, and calls on all of us to play a part in the social experiment we call cities.

It's the Implementation, Stupid!

with Jennifer Pahlka and Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.

This installment features two guests. First, there’s Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America and author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, which Ezra Klein touted in The New York Times as “the book I wish every policymaker would read.”

Next, there’s Little Rock, AK, Mayor Frank Scott, Jr., that city’s first African American Mayor. Now in his second term, Scott has brought some 10,000 jobs to the city, overseen an increase in population from 185,000 to 205,000, and led a 13 percent year over year reduction in violent crime.

Is L.A. Modeling the Way Forward for Cities?

with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

Within the first six months of her term, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has faced the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike and the teachers’ strike. She moved more than 14,000 unhoused Angelenos inside, relocating people from encampment tents into motels.

She’s also taken the helm of the city’s Metro system, and she pledges to make the 2028 Olympics car-free. How has she been so productive – and remained so passionate? To find out, listen to the latest episode.

The Secret to Being a Good Mayor? Swagger.

with Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser

“You know about the handshake, right?” Mayor Michael Nutter says. “You gotta get up in that web. You gotta own the handshake.” Mayor Kasim Reed agrees, saying that Nutter once also taught him an ancillary move: One hand on the shoulder while the other clasps the hand.

Get insider tips, like the anatomy of the mayoral handshake, from these former two-term mayors. They also compare notes on how to lead with swagger, and on the mentors who convinced them they really could lead their respective cities.

Your hosts then welcome current third-term D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser who shares what it takes to navigate the many obstacles to smart policy and governing in a city that is also (effectively) a county and state — and how she keeps focused on her goal of fueling economic prosperity without leaving anyone behind.

Building Black Business Density

with Newark, NJ Mayor Ras Baraka

Part 1:

Part 2:

Alarmingly, in a city that is 44 percent Black, Black-owned businesses with payroll represent less than 3 percent of the businesses in Philadelphia. This episode has our hosts sit down with Newark, NJ Mayor Ras Baraka and Nowak Metro Finance Lab’s Bruce Katz — two experts who have a litany of solutions to address one of the most pressing issues of our time: creating and supporting the success of Black businesses.

Overcoming Partisan Politics

with Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt

For all of the seeming division in our country, there really are leaders who are committed to bringing people together to achieve real change. Helming that charge? Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, an anti-Trump, tax-increasing Republican who joined this episode of the podcast. Whatever political party you ascribe to, meeting in the middle may be easier than you think.

Solving Gun Violence

with David Muhammad, Executive Director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform

In this episode, Nutter, Reed and Platt turned to one of the architects behind Oakland’s 50 percent reduction in gun violence over seven years: David Muhammad, Executive Director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. Gun violence has taken a toll in cities across America. Muhammad’s game plan will leave you with a sense that this problem is one thing: solvable.

Making Cities Greener

with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego

Did you know that changing the color of roads could lower their temperature by more than 10 degrees? Or that strategically planting trees could lower air temperature by up to 40 degrees? Neither did we, until we heard this episode, featuring Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego. Learn the ways she has made her city’s focus on sustainability pay off for its citizens.

The Secret Leadership Skill You Need to Solve Problems

with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf

There’s a secret leadership skill you can’t gain from a Harvard MBA or Stanford education: It’s connecting with the people. In this episode, hosts Reed, Nutter, and Platt explore the power of relationship to make positive changes, then welcome Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to share the replicable ways she’s made a difference in Oakland, CA, about problems ranging from gun violence to potholes.

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Breaking Through Media Tribalism

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With Jannet Walker-Ford

Mayors Confronting ICE (and ice)

With former Mayors Kasim Reed and Michael Nutter

"The Mayor Dude wit the Skater Attitude"

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"Spare Me Your Bullsh*t"

With former mayor of Baltimore and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley

Leading a City ... With Jokes

Recorded live at our Ideas We Should Steal Festival with Rochester Hills, Michigan Mayor Bryan Barnett

A Job, A Hospital, A Park — All Within 15 Minutes

With Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb

A Political Asshole No More

With former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh

Detroit is Back, Baby!

With Detroit, MI Mayor Mike Duggan

One City's Answer to Tribalism

With Denver, CO Mayor Mike Johnston

Reformers Are the Future of Cities

With Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti

Can AI Make Cities More Effective?

With Bloomberg Philanthropies' Rochelle Haynes

The Next Green Tech Hub in America

With Riverside, CA Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson

Drones and License Plate Readers

With Garrett Langley of Flock Safety

"Governtainment" in City Hall

With Rochester Hills, MI Mayor Bryan Barnett

Where Local Matters

With Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti

The "Elusive Wizard" of Housing

With Bruce Katz

Will Civility Save Us?

With Diane Kalen-Sukra

Cities Under Siege

With Emergency Expert Tom Henkey

Baby Qs and Barbecue

With Kansas City, MO Mayor Quinton Lucas

What the World Needs Now ...

Is a Good Laugh with the Mayors

Topple the Machine, Make Fairer the City

With filmmaker Joe Winston and New Yorker writer / Macarthur “genius” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

You Can't Nice Your Way to Victory

Mayors Mike Nutter and Kasim Reed

Impatience ... One Dead Tree at a Time

With John Carney, Governor of Delaware

The Key to an Economy that Works is ... Workers

With Devin Cotten, founder and CEO of The Universal Basic Employment and Opportunity Initiative

A Masterclass in Levelheaded Politics with a "DEI" Mayor

With Baltimore, MD Mayor Brandon Scott

To the Americans who are "Politically Homeless"

With Mesa, AZ Mayor John Giles

What if a Bullet Cost $5,000?

With U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of NJ

How to Innovate in Education

With former Providence, RI Mayor Jorge Elorza

A Special Episode on Citizenship

With Michael Nutter and Kasim Reed

The Bobby Womack School of Good Governance

Part 2 with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

How to Really ... Run Against Donald Trump

with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

How to Really ... Manage a Public Protest

with Richmond, VA Mayor Levar Stoney

Lessons from America's Fastest-Growing City

with Fort Worth, Texas Mayor Mattie Parker

Show Me the Money!

with Enterprise Center CEO Della Clarke (pictured below) and JP Morgan Chase's Michele Lawrence

Reverse Racial Migration, Misogyny, and the Math of Democracy

with Charles Blow, columnist for The New York Times and author

Part 3: The State — and Future — of Policing in Cities

With Charles H. Ramsey

Part 2: How Tree Trimming Fights Crime