Cover Story
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Edward G. Rendell opens up about the nastiness of the campaign, ‘low-hanging fruit’ and why legalized gambling’s OK but legalizing drugs isn’t.
Last week, Ed Rendell popped in to City Paper’s offices (less than 15 minutes late, a Rendell punctuality record) to munch Bitar’s falafel and talk about the increasingly nasty Democratic gubernatorial primary with our editorial board: Interim Editor Howard Altman (HA), Managing Editor Frank Lewis (FL), senior writer Daryl Gale (DG), staff writers Jenn Carbin (JC) and Daniel Brook (DB), and publisher Paul Curci (PC). Five weeks ago — the same day we invited Rendell — we made the same offer to his opponent, Bob Casey Jr. More than a half dozen phone calls, a fax and an e-mail to the Casey campaign have so far yielded not even a list of dates acceptable to Casey. We’ll keep you posted.
DG: About this negative campaign: Those of us covering the campaign get blizzards of e-mails from your opponent’s campaign, none of which are complimentary.
ER: [Rendell asks for the tray of Bitar’s tabouli.] This is great, by the way. This is great.
DG: None of these e-mails are complimentary. Does the nasty tone of this campaign work out to your advantage in that the voters and those of us in the media get turned off by it?
ER: First of all, let me start by saying, as you know, I have been in state, national and local politics. I have never seen anything like this in terms of the nastiness.
DG: Is this the nastiest campaign you have been in personally?
ER: Oh, no question. I have seen negative ads, of course, but I have never seen the type of sniping and name-calling and demeaning and stuff that has come out of their campaign– I mean, they have a guy from their campaign who follows me around and tapes me, not only every word I say, but, at a debate, doesn’t tape any of the other people answering questions. But [he] keeps the camera on me, so if I pick my nose or do anything else, they have it on camera. If I announce on Wednesday that I found a cure for cancer, they would have a press release saying Rendell ignores heart-attack victims. In terms of the campaign, I have always seen negative commercials, but I have never seen a campaign with 10 weeks to go stop doing anything positive and just do negative. That is all they do, negative.
HA: Who is behind that? Who from their campaign is calling those shots?
ER: I don’t know. It may be the consultants, but in the end, the candidate has to sign off on everything. No ad goes on the air for us that I haven’t seen the text of and the ad itself.
DG: Do you think Philly Press [the Casey campaigner with the camera] is there just to get your goat?
ER: That is part [of it], and part I was waiting for — and apparently they are doing it this afternoon, or this evening — they have an ad saying I am against raising the minimum wage. And, of course, that is taken out of context. I am against raising the minimum wage for Pennsylvania only because that would cost small businesses — some to close down, some to move to other states. And it is another thing that creates the uncompetitiveness. Pennsylvania has the third-highest business taxes in the world, in the country, and it creates that premium for doing business in Pennsylvania that hurts us. Of course I am for raising– I fought hard with President Clinton to raise the minimum wage. So, it’s… And they are taking one question, Are you in favor of the minimum wage?’ There’s that and, of course, they would love to catch me losing my temper.
HA: Have you ever been tempted to pop off at Philly Press? It’s happened once or twice with reporters.
ER: No. There is a certain– You get into a campaign mindset. You know, if you are a veteran campaigner and I think I am a veteran– I know I am a veteran campaigner– you sort of lock into that mindset and it all rolls off you. I hear about the negative ads– They tell me the transcripts, I’ve never watched them, because I don’t want to lose my temper. I was watching last night, um, the editorial page editor of the Inquirer — Chris Satullo, Larry Eichel and somebody else.
DG: [Daily News Clout columnist] Gar Joseph.
ER: Gar Joseph on PCN [Pennsylvania Cable Network]. And they were saying things that aren’t terribly correct. I felt like picking up the phone this morning and calling them. But, what the heck, it is not going to get you anywhere. So I had a different sort of state of mind as a candidate than I do when I am just mayor, just freewheeling. Though I probably stay as close to myself as a candidate as any politician — as true to myself, within that zone –and say, Hey, what is this?’ and let it roll off me.
HA: Speaking of negativity, let’s take it back a little bit. At the outset, [state Sen.] Vince Fumo said if you didn’t get out, he was going to take you out. What was he talking about?
ER: [Laughs] I haven’t the faintest idea. With stuff like that, it just makes me laugh. [Rendell smacks his lips and takes another bite of falafel.] As I said, if this is my last campaign –and it might –I am going to go out pretty much as I started, and I started out at subway stops and El platforms and shopping centers doing hand-to-hand campaigning, and for the last four weeks I think I am here all but three-and-a-half days. That’s exactly what I am going to do. If I ran out of money, and I am not going to run out of money, but they couldn’t stop me from doing that. They didn’t stop me– I remember when I ran the first time in ’77 some people came to me and said, you are a nice guy, you speak well, you have a nice future. Why don’t you withdraw, because if you stay in and lose, you are finished. You know, I have been threatened by the powers that be in this city since I began, so if he is going to take me out, what is he going to do? You know?
FL: Is it different this time? You were so popular during your eight years as mayor, now you have so many political players lining up for your opponent.
ER: Why wouldn’t they? Some of them I fired when I took over as mayor, and we trimmed the Parking Authority by 20 percent. I fired them after I told [U.S. Rep.] Bob Brady to warn everybody that we would do that in 6 months and that they better get to work. So I fired some of them. When I was DA, I indicted some of them. Why wouldn’t they be for my opponent? If you were the union leaders– Unfortunately, the press made what happened in ’92 too much of a won-and-loss situation, as the press always does. You know, Rendell administration crushes unions. Crushes unions? Nobody lost their job. Washington, Detroit, New York — when they had financial crises, 17,000 layoffs, 19,000 layoffs — nobody lost their job. It should have been portrayed as a win-win. But A) the labor leaders weren’t smart enough, and B) of course the media can’t, the media wants crushing victories and exhilarating defeats, as we all know. So of course they shouldn’t be for me. You know? I don’t think I would be for someone who fired me or someone who indicted me. But I will tell you this: If I go down — and there is a chance, though we are doing a whole lot better than anyone expected. Not me, but everyone else; the media basically in October was writing me off and saying I had no chance. This is my last campaign. To lose because of things I did as mayor? If I had the chance to go back and change them, I wouldn’t have changed a thing, because I thought I had a unique opportunity to turn the destiny of this city around at the most desperate time of its history, and I did what I thought was right for the city, for the workforce, for everybody else, and it worked beyond anyone’s belief. If I had told– and I love the press, and, you know, I like the City Paper more than most people, but I love the press. But if I told any one of you all in January of 1992, when I took my oath of office, ‘Guys, I got good news for you. We are going to get out of this deficit in 18 months. We are not going to have to raise taxes. We are going to then produce five straight surpluses, the last three of which are the greatest in the city’s history. We are going to begin cutting the wage and business tax in my fourth year as mayor and cut them for all five years as mayor. Cut the business tax 9 percent, the wage tax 7 percent. We are going to stop the job loss, create new jobs. We are going to turn downtown into such a hot area that landlords bid for space.’ When Borders’ lease was up, they were outbid by somebody else for that space. People like Ikea and the best retailers in the world are dying to get into Philadelphia. University City is exploding. Andorra. Places like that. If I were to tell you all that, you would have thought I was absolutely smoking. Smoking something. And, of course, now everyone likes to rewrite history. ‘Oh, he picked the low-hanging fruit. That’s how he managed to save $250 million a year.’ Low-hanging fruit? For 18 months, everywhere I went, my car was rocked, I was yelled at by union guys. Special interest groups threatened me all the time. Low-hanging fruit? Well, if it was low-hanging fruit, it was hanging there for about five decades. The tax cuts are too small? Too small? If I told anybody that, in my eight years, I was going to cut taxes, they would have said, ‘Come on, be serious, just don’t raise them.’ If you can hold the line, it will be a great victory. It’s absurd, it’s really absurd how everyone reinvents history. No, I wouldn’t change a thing I would do, ever. And you know what? When I ran in 1977, I had the support of one elected official, state Representative John White — two, and state Representative Norman Berson. I had the support of two out of the 69 ward leaders. Nobody gave me a plugged nickel’s chance. I spent $58,000. The machine spent half a million. It was the powerful Rizzo machine. I got 70 percent of the vote. So, you know, that was when I was barely known. So I am not afraid of what they can do to me. The one nice thing about having lost a couple of elections: You know life goes on, and I will find other things to do and other ways to contribute. But I wouldn’t have changed a blessed thing.
DB: Among your critics who talk about you picking the low-hanging fruit, one of the issues they say you didn’t do much about was the school system in Philadelphia.
ER: What would you have done differently?
DB: How would you respond to it?
ER: No, no — that’s how I respond. Nobody has told me– Everybody says that, but nobody has told me one thing.
Let’s review what I did. On funding: In the toughest vote during my eight years, we passed liquor-by-the-drink [tax] — 9-8, as you’ll recall, and you’ll recall how rancorous it was. I pulled out all the stops, John Street pulled out all the stops to get our nine votes. That produces about $25 million a year for the schools. I became the first– We became the first political subdivision to give a direct grant to its school district, $15 million a year during the time that I was mayor. We cut back rates for water and gas for the school district. I wrote the legislature and the governor’s office each year when I would write my legislative priority letter — school funding was at the top of that [list]. We sued the state for … inequitable funding three times, twice in state court, once in federal court, and, as you know, the federal court [case] is still alive, but, as a result of this voluntary takeover, it’s being held in abeyance. So that’s what I did to get more money.
Now, the only other thing that you can say that I should have done to get more money is to raise the property tax. And everything that I have studied told me that raising the property tax wouldn’t work. Because remember — and again, we have to keep things in historical context — in the 11 years before I became mayor, we had raised our four basic taxes 19 times. Property, sales, business and wage. What had that got us? All that had done, it got us a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar deficit because it had driven businesses and homeowners out of the city. It was my belief that raising the property tax would have delivered a crushing blow to the things that I was trying to do for Philadelphia, A, and B, that in a short period of time we would have netted out less revenue. Because remember, it’s not just how high the rates are — it’s rates multiplied by base equals your net. And if you raise the rate and the base goes down, the net goes down also. So financially, what else would you have done?
Now, academically. And understand, I was under the old system — I had two appointments [to the Board of Education] at the end of my second year, two appointments at the end of my fourth year and two appointments at the end of my sixth year. I only got control of the school board in January of my fifth year in office, number one. Number two, notwithstanding that, I think it’s fair to say that my intervention, public intervention, that got us David Hornbeck [as superintendent], who — although he did some bad things in terms of relationships with Harrisburg and he wasn’t a very sagacious politician with a small p –did some great things academically. Secondly, when I became mayor, one-half of our students were going to half-day kindergarten, the other half were going to no kindergarten. And it was not unusual for a Philadelphia kid to begin their education as a 6-year-old in the first grade and be unable to identify letters. Letters. I insisted that Hornbeck achieve full-day kindergarten, and, at the end of my term, every child was going to full-day kindergarten. Computers: When I became mayor we had one computer for 30 students; we now have one computer per nine students. We attracted 14,000 volunteers to serve the schools daily, to help with discipline, help with security, help with recreation and sports. I helped David Hornbeck raise over $200 million from outside private foundations and businesses to match the Annenberg grant. And best of all, in my last four years as mayor, our test scores went up dramatically for elementary school — which I think was directly related to full-day kindergarten — and moderately for middle and high school. USA Today said Philadelphia’s risings test scores are the envy of every urban, large urban school district in America. The Council on Great City Schools in Washington said none of the large city school districts have experienced the type of consecutive improvement in test scores that Philadelphia has.
So tell me what I should have done differently or how I didn’t do a good job, in light of those facts.
DB: How would you raise money for education without touching the state sales tax or income tax?
ER: Just like Pennsylvania is 48 out of 50 states in economic growth, 49 out of 50 in population growth, we’re the second-oldest state in the union now, in terms of percentage of older people. We desperately need to revive our economy. And part of reviving the economy is — and we’ve seen this in the recent debate — is keeping tax rates competitive. We’re the third-highest state in business taxes, and we cannot afford to raise our taxes unless absolutely necessary. However, if you listen to what I’ve said, I’ve said that if I have to achieve my goals, if we have to raise the income tax, we will. I’ve said I don’t think it’s necessary if we do our job right.
DB: Would you do it in a progressive manner, or would you consider a flat tax?
ER: Unfortunately, to do it in a progressive manner requires a constitutional amendment. Just raising the flat income tax we could do in the legislature. Yet I regret– I wish that– Governor [Milton] Schapp did so many good things. But when the graduated tax was thrown out, it would have been great to go for a constitutional amendment way back then. But now with the anti-tax fervor that’s gripped the country, it would be next to impossible. See, I let them do this school tax reform without a ballot change, without having to go back. Bob Casey Sr. tried to do a half-assed plan, but he tried to put it on the ballot. It got defeated, I don’t remember, about three or four to one. It’s very hard. When people hear tax’ anything, they’ll vote against it. And I’m not a big believer in referendums to begin with, you know. I’d love to do a graduated income tax, but it’s just not going to happen.
HA: Speaking of taxes, what do you think of the recent wage-tax debate in Philly?
ER: Well, I don’t have the books, so it’s very, very hard to comment, you know. The mayor has the books and understands the fiscal situation better than anybody, maybe some people on Council. So it’s hard to say. I think in retrospect, John probably should have continued the modest phase-out. If he’d done that, it wouldn’t have created the fervor. And the modest phase-out, you know, 20-whatever-it-is million dollars, you can always find it. In a $2.5 billion budget, you can find that, and it would have avoided the stir. But give John Street a lot of credit — which, of course, I don’t believe the media gives him, and again he’s partly responsible for that– but give John a lot of credit for speeding up and making the business tax cut. The BPT [business privilege tax] tax cut is deeper and has real value. And that all got lost in this. I mean, in fact, I think somebody wrote a little piece about Charlie Pizzi, one who had never consulted Charlie Pizzi originally, and said, Look, I can double the rate of the decrease in the business privilege tax, but it may mean not doing the wage tax cut for a year, is that a good idea?’ Charlie Pizzi said it was a good idea. He later reversed himself, and explained that, you know, he had listened to other people and changed his mind. Which is OK, but give John some credit for speeding up the cut in the business privilege tax. That gets lost in this debate.
HA: Does cutting business taxes have a bigger effect on the overall economic health of the city?
ER: Yeah. But again, remember it’s businesses who led the charge on the wage tax too. So the wage tax can be onerous. And I think the goal, my goal, was to cut it between 25 and 50 percent, but over a course of time. We just can’t afford to cut it too much in any one year. And I used to laugh. Some of the media projections and Vince Fumo’s projections on where we could save money were ludicrous. I mean just ludicrous. You couldn’t do a wage-tax cut to 3 percent, for example, without laying off police and firemen. Let’s talk about it. And you’re talking about the guy who cut the most waste out of the city budget in history. You could not do that type of cut without laying off some policemen, firemen, social workers and the like. But you can do it incrementally.And I think John made a mistake in not realizing that that and just leaving the– That thing with the business-privilege-tax cut was excellent; he should have left the other one alone too.
HA: Is it partly his fault for not–
[Photographer Mike Regan enters the room, exchanges greetings]
Is it partly his fault for not explaining well enough, or what do you think it is about John that that happens?
ER: Well I think John is a very– It’s hard. Well, I think John’s very– Basically, a very private person and a very shy person. And he’s always been that way, number one. Number two, he has a tendency to, if he believes in something, to dig his heels in and not listen to countervailing arguments. And thirdly, I think he is like a lot of politicians in that — and he may do this more than most — they view the press as inherently hostile. And I never did. I mean, the press can be hostile, but they also can open to new ideas, et cetera. And regardless, even if you view the press as hostile, you have to get out there and explain your ideas. It’s the only way to communicate with people, whether you like it or not. And sometimes John just circles the wagons and doesn’t get out there and explain his position. I don’t think he did as good a job as he could have there. And this, to me, watching this is very sad, because I think substantively he’s been an excellent mayor. And if he can pull the blight program off, and it still remains to be seen, but if he can pull the blight program off, and not only do we remove blight, but we create opportunities for reinvestment that people take, then he should go down as one of the very great mayors in Philadelphia’s history, regardless of his personality. When people say to me, We miss you, it’s no fun anymore,’ I say, Where is it written in the city charter that the mayor has to be entertaining?
DG: Is the fact that Mayor Street hasn’t had an official press secretary for a year and a half of his two years a sign that maybe he’s not even trying to get his message out?
ER: Again, my belief is that John Street has been fundamentally an excellent mayor. He’s run the city well, he’s had no major snafu in any major department, he’s handled labor negotiations well, he got the stadium deal done through the usual thicket of problems. Economic development: He has continued the things that I have done, and Philadelphia today is literally a sea of black ink, I mean an island of black ink in a sea of red ink. Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey– the state governments all have massive, close-to-billion-dollar deficits or multibillion-dollar deficits. The City of New York has a $2.5 billion deficit, Philadelphia ran a surplus last year. And its revenues this year keep going up. They’re up over last year. In the peak of a national recession, our revenues continue to climb. And even if you say that all he’s done is let the things that I started continue to flow, that’s a decision. So, I think he deserves a lot of credit, and I think substantively he’s been an excellent mayor and I’m sorry that he doesn’t get the credit for it, and I think it’s probably because he doesn’t get his message out.
HA: Were you concerned at all about the timing of John’s endorsement?
ER: No. It turned out to be probably better than had he done it — I talked to him about doing it the day I announced my candidacy. Probably turned out better that he waited.
HA: Why?
ER: Well, because if I announced my candidacy, I wanted the message that I was talking about to be the thing that people picked up. If he’d have endorsed my candidacy, that would have been the story, and there would have been no message behind it.
DG: I want to ask about your opponent in the primary. There was a candidate’s forum on last night that was taped Monday night with the Pennsylvania [State] Association of Township Supervisors. Again, there was you and there was [state Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate] Mike Fisher, and no Bob. Is he ducking you?
ER: I don’t know if it’s ducking’ me. He’s basically not campaigning. They basically have him sitting in a room making fundraising calls. Because not only does he not appear on forums with me or with Fisher, but he doesn’t get out and do any retail campaigning, or any one-on-one, or any talking to groups of 50 people — you know, the things that just dot my campaign schedule. I don’t think he’s ducking me, I think we’re going to have about five debates, three of them televised. So I think that’s pretty much the regular amount of debates that these campaigns have. But he waited until late, and, like, one debate is at 11 o’clock Sunday morning and the other two are at 8 o’clock Saturday night. On a Saturday night in May at 8 o’clock. The only thing he didn’t do is schedule next to the Super Bowl. I think it’s just their approach to campaigning in general. It’s not just ducking m; Bob Casey doesn’t do a terrible job in those debates. He knows state government, he’s not a dumb guy at all. He’s very cautious in the debates, but you don’t look at it and say, Good God, that guy is incompetent.’ Not at all. And remember, I supported him in 1996 over the party endorsement. Remember, he ran for auditor general and wasn’t endorsed, and I supported him. So I don’t think he’s a bad guy, and I don’t think he’d be a terrible governor either. I deeply regret the way this campaign has gone, and it’s sort of ludicrous. Bob Casey knows I’m not a bad mayor. I mean, good God, when I endorsed him in ’96 over in City Hall, I forget what he called me, but I think I was somewhere between Moses and St. Thomas Aquinas. I was only halfway through my term, so did I get to be such a terrible mayor in my second half? No, this is all politics at its very worst. Its very worst.
FL: Any idea what motivated that? One political observer we know said that it appears Casey’s making his entire campaign about you — a referendum on Ed Rendell. Do you have any idea why?
ER: Well, once we went ahead in the polls. After people outside the Philadelphia media market got to know who I was through a combination of just this kind of retail campaigning that I’ve done since February of last year and the four weeks of TV [ads] where we got a jump. Once we did that –and then we spent two-and-a-half weeks of positive TV, so it was about six-and-a-half weeks of positive TV for me and people got to know me — we went ahead, and I think they decided they had no story that was going to get them back into the lead. They couldn’t get back into the lead by talking about him or his accomplishments or his programs; the only way to get back into the lead was to tear me down. Now, I forgot, I don’t think I really answered the question about has it worked.’ Well, it hasn’t. The negatives have been on for six weeks. Probably by far the most amount of money spent doing negative commercials against someone. And if you read this Keystone Poll [by Millersville University]–
DG: You’re at 39 [percent] with 22 [percent] undecided–
ER: And winning Allegheny County. So how successful do you think the negative campaign has been?
DG: That leads to asking, How are you going to convince that 22 percent?
ER: Well it’s both that and, remember, that poll showed that we were winning the undecideds. We’re going to continue talking about my experience and the things I did and my plans for Pennsylvania. And contrast them — when he attacks us — and contrast them to his pretty much lack of experience. And secondly, I think the turnout is going to exceed expectations.
HA: What’s your guess on turnout?
ER: No idea. I would hope it would be in the low- to mid-40s.
DG: Do you have a target turnout number you’ve gotta have?
ER: If turnout were to fall below 35 percent, there’s no way I could win. Well, see, I can’t say that. It’s all relative. You see, it’s not the turnout. If the turnout in the rest of the state was 20 percent and our turnout was 25 percent, I’d win a huge victory. So it’s all relative. So it’s hard to say. For me, if the turnout in Philadelphia is 5 percent below the turnout in the rest of the state, it’s not going to be impossible to win, but it’s going to be tough to win. And remember, when I say Philadelphia,’ I’m talking about the eight counties. The percentages are meaningless, but if it’s 5 percent below the rest of the state, that would create a problem.
DG: Tell us about your first 100 days as governor. What’s the first appointments you make, the first legislation you push through?
ER: Well, appointments is hard to say because I’ve got some people in mind, but gosh, until I win the election, I’m not going to talk to them. I actually said in Harrisburg Magazine, I said Leslie Miller, who’s a lawyer and former president of the Pennsylvania Bar and did the performing arts center, was the interim chief. I’d love to have her as counsel to the governor, but the first time she heard about it was when she read about it in the newspaper. So I don’t know, if I were to talk right away about appointments–
HA: Anyone else we can inform via this newspaper?
ER: [Laughs] Well, I decided that was probably a bad way to do it. But in terms of agenda, I have said, on the campaign trail, I would call, as Ridge did, a special session [of the legislature], right after I become governor, on education. And literally, I would not [let] the legislature leave for the summer until we had a bill changing education funding, upping the state’s share over 50 percent. Again it’s down around 35 or 34 percent. Reducing property taxes all over the commonwealth and then finding additional monies for my early-education initiative, which involves pre-kindergarten education first for poverty-level kids and hopefully for all kids. Full-day kindergarten for Pennsylvania. We have it in Philadelphia; we took us out of the state stats, but only one out of seven kids in Pennsylvania has it. And then I’d like to achieve, in my eight years as governor, smaller class size for K to 3, and the number I’d be looking at is 14. If we can do those things for our kids, I believe we can get our kids off to a great start in education, and I think a great start is crucial. If you try to take a kid in eighth grade and remediate their problems, it’s too late. Most educational experts will tell you, if a kid gets to fourth grade without good reading skills, good cognitive skills and good social skills, that kid is DOA and has virtually no chance of improving during their educational career.
FL: Would you support any kind of voucher program?
ER: I think vouchers, in a vacuum, are not bad. But they’re basically an excuse for not being willing to take care of the problems of public education. The problem with vouchers is there will never be enough of them. Take Philadelphia, with 220,000 students. If we had a real voucher system, Ridge was offering $1,500. $1,500 doesn’t get your kid into private or parochial school pretty much anywhere in the state. Say we were offering $4,000, which might do it. The Catholic, parochial and private schools here could produce, in my judgment, 20,000 spots for kids. And let’s assume for a moment that those kids get a better outcome. Nine percent of the kids in the public schools get a better outcome. You’ve done absolutely not one blessed thing for the other 91 percent. Arguably, you’ve made their lot worse, because the 9 percent — the 20,000 that would go out — were the kids who had the parental motivation, who had no discipline problems, who were good contributors in class, so you’d probably weaken the overall mix for the 91 percent. But that’s not the way to fix public education. You can get what vouchers offer. The best argument for vouchers is Mary Smith, chambermaid at the Hyatt, who makes other people’s beds. Breaks her back and then goes out on the weekends and is a clerk at the Acme. Does two jobs because she’s fighting to take care of her family. Her regional middle school stinks. It’s got discipline problems, it’s nonproductive. She desperately wants her kids to find a way out. She should have the right to not have to send them to that lousy middle school. Well that’s why we basically now have school choice within the public-school system in Philadelphia. If she’s willing to transport them, she can send them anywhere, and she can also send them to a charter school. So we’ve achieved the goals of the voucher system by public-education choice and by the charter-school system.
HA: Let’s take this a step further: It’s not going to cost the state any money, for people who home school their kids. Would you support any legislation giving parents more autonomy over the education of their children?
ER: Well, I think the home-school legislation right now pretty much has it right. I think parents have a pretty good deal of autonomy, but there has to be some checks and balances. I think they have it pretty much right. I haven’t seen anything to the contrary.
HA: What’s your take on the current situation regarding the state takeover and the privatization of education? You’re the governor, what are you going to do about that?
ER: You can’t do anything. They made it for five years, and I don’t think I would tinker with things that were already in progress. I don’t think it’s a bad experiment. I don’t think we should ever privatize the school district, and that’s not what’s happening here. We’re going to take 30 or 40 schools and subject them to private management in coordination with local community groups, and to do that as an experiment for a set period of years to see if it produces a better product, I have no problem with that. And I think this takeover question is a lot of sound and fury about turf and who’s got the power, and there’s very little concern about the kids. I don’t care what works — if it betters the educational outcomes for our kids we ought to be for it. We ought to give these things a chance. And by the way, I don’t have the slightest problem — I think the governor and the mayor put five terrific people on this reform commission. I think Jim Nevels is a great guy who’s going to try to do a terrific job and I think that Jim Gallagher, gosh, he’s someone I might try to persuade to be secretary of education again, he’s a great guy. And I have a lot of confidence in Mike Masch, who was my budget secretary, and Sandra [Dungee] Glenn is as good a representative of the community as you can find. I think it’s a good board.
FL: You were known as mayor for being everywhere about 18 hours a day. Someone whom we talked to recently mentioned the joke about [you being] the rolling press conference. Do you see yourself having a similar style as governor?
ER: Obviously, because the governor has such a wider area that you couldn’t do that on a day-to-day basis, but I don’t think you’d find me to be a governor who would stay in Harrisburg all the time. I think I would get out. And, in fact, I’ve said on the campaign trail. I would buy this bus that we’ve been traveling around in, or at least I would buy a different model, and while we were going from Harrisburg to Lock Haven to make an announcement — [usually] the governor flies in, the party is on the ground at Lock Haven for 60 minutes, and flies out. I would take the bus, set it up like it is now as an office. Get some work done on the bus, [there would] be with me some people from various departments, and at least have one meeting with the political, business, labor leaders, community leaders of Lock Haven and Clinton County before I left. I’d be there for two, two-and-half hours, trying to accomplish something, trying to listen, trying to get some ideas, et cetera. So yeah, I think if I was the most accessible mayor, I’d probably be the most accessible governor. Now, that still wouldn’t be 18 stops a day. You just can’t do it.
HA: Well, here’s a real tough question, just to throw this out: The Phils and the Pirates are playing this weekend. Who are you rooting for?
ER: [Laughs] Well, the Phils. And you know, I think that you have to — people don’t like phonies. And they asked me this — the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked me this question about the Eagles-Steelers possibility — and I said, ‘You are what you are,’ I’ll root for the Steelers against everybody else but the Eagles, and when the Mets and the Yankees played in the World Series, Rudy Giuliani — Yankee fan — made no bones about it, and all the Mets fans harassed him. The Mets fans harassed him, but they respected him, because they knew he was a real sports fan. So, I’d be for the Eagles. And I’d be for the Phils, absolutely. But look: I think people appreciate you if you are for real. People appreciate you if you are real. I just believe in that.
JC: How do you feel about the fact that some people take your stance on slots and even in the past, the riverboat casino thing, and refer to you as pro-gambling’?
ER: Well, I’m not pro-gambling. I’m pro-reality. And gambling exists. I mean, we are like the state that is akin to an ostrich with our head buried under the sand. And there’s gambling to the east of us — in Delaware, Delaware has slots at the track, and, of course, New Jersey has Atlantic City. There’s gambling to the north of us; New York has slots at all its racetracks. It now has gambling casinos in the Adirondacks and Catskills. There’s gambling to the west of us in West Virginia. And if you go down to Wheeling, West Virginia, or Dover Downs in Delaware, 75 percent of the license plates are Pennsylvanians. If you stand at the entrance to the Atlantic City [Expressway] on Friday night, and watch the license plates, 75 percent of the license plates are Pennsylvanians. We’re not stopping our people from gambling. If gambling has a downside, we’re not preventing that downside from occurring to Pennsylvanians. And if we can get a benefit of half-a-billion dollars from five tracks with 3,000 slot machines, if we can get that benefit, why wouldn’t we do it? If we can turn something that people are going to do anyway, Pennsylvanians are going to do whether we authorize it in Pennsylvania or not, if we can turn that into a positive and get something for it, it’s crazy not to. I mean, think of where our seniors would be without the lottery. Lottery’s gambling. Where would they be without the lottery? You know, the lottery’s starting to regress financially, and the pain is evident. We have to be pragmatists. I’m not pro-gambling or anti-gambling, and I know gambling causes some harm and downside, but by us not having it legal in Pennsylvania, we’re not stopping Pennsylvanians from gambling.
HA: How about drug legalization — same argument. Would you be in favor of that? We’re not going to stop people from doing it, and it really could raise some money.
ER: You mean the government selling drugs?
HA: Or taxing or legalizing it?
JC: Regulating it.
ER: I think the harm is a little different in gambling. I think in gambling, you can have a couple of people go bankrupt, but I don’t see any– I think the potential harm for drug use is enormous, even for marijuana. I mean, I know casual marijuana use, doctors debate whether that has any harmful … Consistent marijuana use over the course of time has a real detrimental effect on your cognitive abilities and on your emotional abilities. And I just wouldn’t want to get us into anything that would promote and make new users. And the second thing is, legalization always sounds good on paper, but then, how would you do it? For example, you’re [to Paul Curci] in charge of legalization; we’re now selling it in state stores, just like we sell liquor. What’s the age? Is there any age limit?
PC: 18.
ER: 18. You’ve just created a huge black market for drugs. Second question, do we sell all drugs? Do we sell hallucinogens? Do we sell LSD, where somebody could pop it and go jump off a building?
PC: I don’t know. I’d have to sample all of them to find out. [Laughter] I don’t have enough experience, really.
HA: Did you ever inhale? Did you ever smoke marijuana?
ER: [Mutters unintelligibly and waves hands in the air].
HA: Is that a no?
ER: Yeah.
JC: What about the idea that, despite increased arrests, the War on Drugs is largely failing. We still have people jumping off of buildings, and arguably we do have a black market that’s been created in much the same way that Prohibition created a black market for alcohol.
ER: But as I said, I have never seen anybody’s legalization proposal that can answer those questions. You still have a black market, plus I think legalization clearly would promote additional use, just like, there’s no question about it.
HA: What about gambling?
ER: But gambling’s all around us. If other states legalized the sale of drugs, then I might have to consider it. But gambling’s all around us. Legalization [of drugs] is not all around us.
HA: Do you go to casinos at all?
ER: Before I was mayor, I would go four, five, six times a summer.
HA: What would you play?
ER: Blackjack. I learned how to play blackjack in the Army. I just like it. But it’s clear gambling does some harm. But people that use gambling correctly, it brightens their lives. There’s no question about it. I would rather sit at a blackjack table — and I’d bring $200 in cash and no credit cards with me — and if I lose $200 playing blackjack, I’d probably have more fun than going out to dinner and spending $200.
HA: Do you ever double down?
ER: But only the right way. Unfortunately, I better go, unless there’s any burning question, or unless, as I said in the beginning, someone wants to give me $50,000 here. I’ll be happy to stay another 20 minutes for $50,000.
