This morning, former Mayor John Street went off on former Mayor Michael Nutter in an email to Inquirer reporter Julia Terruso. In a follow-up to a question about whether he’d have a ceremony in City Hall in which his portrait would be hung up by Mayor Jim Kenney, Street called Nutter “a petty and incompetent micromanager.” He said, “I don’t really like him or respect him.”
Billy Penn has acquired a copy of the reply email Nutter sent Terruso today:
Thank you for sending Former Mayor John Street’s comments to me directly, since he has never once had the decency to share these feelings with me to my face, but it’s always easier I guess to hide behind an email. That’s one big difference between him and me, honesty and integrity. I can’t even imagine having the FBI bug probe to deal with while governing, since governing is hard enough. So my hat is off to Mayor Street for managing the public scrutiny that resulted from the numerous corruption probes that occurred during his administration and the embarrassment to our city in the public eye and before the nation.
Clearly Mayor Street has some unresolved anger issues and possibly feels underappreciated, but as for me, I’m very proud of my Administration and our team, who reduced crime to levels last seen in the 1960’s, invested more money in educating our children than at any time in the last 30 years, guided our City through the Great Recession and brought back jobs and economic investment, actually ran an ethical government with integrity (which may have upset some of the parochial interests in our town) and helped to make Philadelphia the great City it is today. I’ve remained active in Philadelphia and across the country, teaching at Columbia University, speaking on CNN and actively engaged in public policy matters in numerous cities across the United States. I have a life and I’m living it, so I’m just not going to respond in a personal way to the rantings of an apparently unhappy reclusive person. You and your readers though can take a stroll down memory lane and just refresh your recollections of Mayor Street’s time in office with the following.
I will leave his nastier comments about me and his bizarre assessments of “who likes whom” to sit wherever they may land. As for me, I was born and raised here in Philadelphia to proud Black parents, a strong black woman, my mother, a god-fearing proud Catholic woman, who taught me if I couldn’t say anything nice about someone, it’s just best to say nothing about them at all.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Nutter
Former Mayor of Philadelphia
David N. Dinkins Professor of Practice, School of International Public Affairs Colombia University
CNN Political Commentator
Chair, Airbnb Mayors Advisory Board
UChicago Urban Labs Fellow
Drexel University Executive Fellow
