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By ELIJAH GOSIER
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 26, 2000
In a day when TV newscasts are more Ed Sullivan than Walter Cronkite; when exposure on the big screen or in a wrestling ring is better preparation for winning political office than is building a strong resume of service and education; in a day when an elected official can take two minutes to deliver a say-nothing speech and news commentators consume hours attributing esoteric meaning and motive to the words; when it's not so much what you say as it is how you say it and how you look when you say it;
In a day so pervaded by shallowness that deliberate means dull, David Fischer, St. Petersburg's mayor for 10 years, should wear the moniker Mayor Mush like a medal.
It fits now as it did almost a decade ago when it was first thrown at him by a campaign opponent. Pride -- and a bit of understatement -- does sneak through when he's asked about it.
"I know I'm low-key. I don't have charisma. I've seen other mayors," he says, then delivers his clincher. "I look at the city, and it has moved exactly like I wanted it to move."
In other words, so what if the mush wasn't appetizing; it was nutritious. It got the job done.
He was a Tony Dungy mayor. He weathered some tough challenges and prevailed. He won, again and again. It was not pretty or entertaining. He didn't dance in the end zone. He just put another W in the win-loss column.
Fischer inherited an empty stadium; he leaves with it just a winning team away from being full. He inherited a downtown development effort that built little more than a barely used parking garage and unsteady hopes; he leaves with a promising BayWalk complex open for business.
He inherited a city divided because neighborhoods -- with good reason -- felt that their needs were being neglected by a city government throwing all its resources at pipe dreams downtown; he leaves with neighborhoods feeling that they are a part of the city's governance.
He inherited a police department that was seen as more problem than solution in some parts of the city, notably the predominantly black areas; he leaves with a department that is tougher on crime and not so hard on law-abiding citizens.
Like Dungy's wins, some of Fischer's can be attributed to luck, the coincidence of being in the right place when something good happens. But in governance as in sports, luck is a concept losers like. It takes responsibility for defeat out of their hands and attributes it to something out of their control. Winners know from experience that the better you are, the luckier you are. To winners, luck looks a lot like having the right people standing in the right places. Luck looks a lot like being prepared.
So Fischer was lucky. He was lucky he had Bob Gilder, lucky he had Mike Dove, lucky he had Goliath Davis, lucky he had a number of other people capable of taking their leg of the race and winning it.
Most of all, he was lucky he had the sense enough to use them.
After a life of involvement so broad that you insult his accomplishments by trying to categorize them, Bob Gilder was ready to retire and go fishing when then-city manager Norm Hickey asked him to come on board. By the time Fischer took office in 1991, Hickey no longer had a job and Gilder no longer knew how to define retirement.
"Bob was amazing because he had free reign to create virtually anything he wanted," said Fischer.
With the delight of a master mechanic rummaging through a junkyard, Gilder created the N-Team, a vehicle that helped homeowners revitalize their property. Many of the homeowners were in danger of losing their homes because of code violations that they were not physically or financially able to cure. He scrounged among other city departments for vehicles, talked the Corrections Department into allowing inmates to feel useful and gain employment training by working with him and encouraged merchants to donate materials.
The result was a collection of humanitarian and civic actions Gilder has called the proudest accomplishment in his full life.
Mike Dove was handed the daunting responsibility for bridging the gap between neighborhoods and downtown government and business. He created a new city department, unique to St. Petersburg, that has become the envy and model for other cities.
"I was the visionary," Fischer says, "He can go down as the father of the Neighborhood Department."
Through Dove's department, citizens were given a pipeline for getting improvements and repairs to their neighborhoods, improvements that used to become mired in bureaucracy.
Fischer tapped Goliath Davis to fix a police department that didn't have the respect of some of the city's poorer communities and was the target of complaints and outside investigations for brutality.
Fischer, hesitantly at first, acknowledges that there was a division in the police department when he took office. "I think (former police chief Darrell) Stephens and Go Davis have improved that, but there is an old guard there that's manifested itself in the police union."
The Police Benevolent Association and Davis have a contentious relationship that has sent many of Davis' personnel decisions into arbitration and court. Fischer has supported Davis in those decisions.
"Nine out of 10 cases have been decided in the city's favor," he noted.
"Davis has raised the bar, which is good," Fischer said. He pointed to Davis' demand that his officers treat citizens with respect and without profanity, and meet high standards of professional conduct.
Says Davis: "Some people say he's not a strong mayor, but I differ with that. He's not a bully . . . but it takes strength for somebody to appoint people and let them do their jobs."
As for the police department, Davis adds, "He had a vision, and his vision and mine were pretty compatible."
With Fischer leaving office and the controversy continually swirling around the police department, some mayoral candidates have made Davis' dismissal part of their campaign platform.
Mayor Mush delivers an uncharacteristically strong assessment of that strategy. "I don't believe there's anybody (running) who is stupid enough to fire Go. . . . Well, maybe there is.
"It would set us back because a lot of people don't understand what Go has done. He has brought the black community into the city community."
Fischer, the man who for some made the term "strong mayor" an oxymoron, says the historical context of being the first such mayor holds less significance than his accomplishments.
"I learned very quickly that a strong mayor can do things that a city manager couldn't because City Council couldn't fire me.
"I said, "Hey, I like this stuff.' "
Mayor, the city may not rename itself Fischerville, or Mush City, but I think history will record, in an appropriately low-key manner, that as you led this city into the 21st century, it was one of a few looking in the right direction.
You leave big, unshiny shoes to fill.