An Interview with Ed Rendell

Daily Pennsylvanian: They said it couldn't be done. They said back in January that Casey was going to beat you pretty easily, and now you're 20 points ahead and it's three days until Election Day.

Ed Rendell: Well, I'm not ready to say that it's over, and as I've said a couple of times to other reporters, I'm worried about complacency. I'm worried about our people in the Philadelphia region who've seen all these newspaper headlines not turning out. But if you ask me how we got to this point, with less than a week to go and 18, 19 points up in the independent polls, and how we won the primary, I think first of all I think I got some assists from outside forces. When I started out the campaign in January of 2001 this state had a good economy. Our number of jobs was increasing, our unemployment rate was going down, we had a $700 million surplus and a $1.3 billion rainy-day fund. 9-11 hadn't occured. Since January of 2001, not only did 9-11 occur and we dealt with all of the emotional and financial aftermaths of 9-11, but the economy nosedived dramatically. We went from this huge surplus to a $2 billion deficit and we went from over a billion dollars in a rainy-day fund to almost having no money in the rainy-day fund. We went from growing jobs to having lost about 100,000 jobs in the last 16 months. Our unemployment rate's up almost a point. A third of our school districts have serious deficits and the state is in a lot of disarray and I think those outside events were very helpful to my candidacy. I think 9-11 made people much more serious about government. I think 9-11 made people put a premium on experienced leadership. Both of those things I think were enormously helpful in my primary campaign with Bob Casey, who is a bright and able man but who I think appeared, compared to the experience I had leading the city back, appeared to be inexperienced and young and not a strong and decisive leader. So I think 9-11 very much helped me in the primary. I think people in the primary underestimated the depth of affection for me and the pride that people in southeast Pennsylvania had in the accomplishment of turning this city around and, as Bob Casey is fond of saying when he's campaigning for me, if he had known that almost one out of every two votes cast on primary day would come from southeast Pennsylvania, he wouldn't have run. The turnout in southeast Pennsylvania on primary day was the best in 50 years, the first time in 50 years that we outvoted the rest of the state, that southeast Pennsylvania outvoted the rest of the state in a governor's election. So I think the people who made me underdog didn't understand that dynamic. Forty-one percent of the Democrats live in southeast Pennsylvania but nobody thought they'd even vote at 41 percent. Our voter turnout had always lagged behind the rest of the state, but in fact the eight counties in southeast Pennsylvania cast 46 percent of the vote. So that was the explanation for the primary. I think the reason I've done so well in the general is that we got a lot of momentum from the primary, number one. Number two, I've run a positive campaign in both the primary and general, with detailed positions on issues and I think people appreciated that. My opponents have both gone heavily negative and I think there was a backlash against that in both elections, and I think the detailed specific proposals that we've made were one of the two reasons that I got in both the primary and the general almost all of the editorial endorsements. I think those editorial endorsements are very, very important particularly when I get to the Johnstowns and the Eries and the Pittsburghs and Harrisburgs because it's almost like saying, "we know this guy's from Philadelphia, folks, but we've listened to him, we read what he had to say, we know what he did in his time as mayor, and he's the best choice for Pennsylvania." And so I think that helped me get over a lot of the anti-Philadelphia wariness or suspicion. Again, in the end, I think I won the primary and I'm leading now, because we had a good story to tell and I was a good messenger in the campaign but it was a good message, the story of turning Philadelphia around. I think all those factors combined to lead us to victory in the primare and now t have us doing so well.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Given that people outside of Philadelphia were pretty enthusiatic, how is that going to help, if you're elected, how is that going to help you overcome regionalism in the state?

Ed Rendell: Well, if I were to win on Election Day like I won in the primary, just because I did outstandingly well in the southeast but didn't do particularly well everywhere else, it would easy for the legislature to say, "oh, he's just a regional governor. He doesn't have support across the rest of the state." If, however, I can win the southwest, win the northeast, win other places, I think that will add a tremendous amount of credibility and leverage to my chances of convincing the legislature to make the kind of significant changes I've been talking about.

Daily Pennsylvanian: You talk a lot about how you were able to get so much done in Philadelphia from 1991 to 1999, but there was a Democratic City Council. How are you going cope with Republican legislature and really get what you want?

Ed Rendell: Your premise is correct, but remember, even though there was a Democratic City Council, it had a two- or three-decade tradition of warring with the mayor. And I came in and by hard work, by meeting with councilpeople individually, by treating them with respect, by communicating with them early on, no surprises, by sharing credit, I was able to build a colation between the mayor's office and Council that worked extraordinarily effectively to do very difficult things to turn the city around. I think the same skills that allowed me to break through those barriers will allow me to communicate with a Republican legislature if that's what happens on Election Day. I intend to not just talk to leadership but to talk to individual members. I intend to tell them that the election's over, we're a bipartisan government, if they support me on difficult choices, they will not find me campaigning against them in their districts two years from now. I'm going to try to put together a coalition, in the government itself, of Democrats, Independents and Republicans. I'm not going to crash and burn everyone out there because they're Republicans. I'm not going to be that type of governor. I'm going to try to fashion a bipartisan coalition for change.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Why is your opponent talking so much about the tax return issue?

Ed Rendell: It's ludicrous. Number one, since March, the most detailed filing of all was available for anyone to see, and that was my wife's ethics report as a federal judge, which is far more detailed than an income tax return. An income tax return only requires you to show what your income is. In the ethics filing we have to show every source of net worth we have, including income, including specifically which stocks we own, etc. So I have no idea.

Daily Pennsylvanian: How do you intend to cut all this money from the state budget?

Ed Rendell: Pretty much the same we we cut money from the city's budget. You know, the naysayers always say what you can't do. I remember in 1991, when I was running for mayor, the finance director of the city, a very respected woman by the name of Betsy Reveal, she testified before City Council on a bill to raise the wage tax. She testified that the [Wilson] Goode administration had taken every nickel of waste, and every nickel of increased productivity savings, out of the budget. There was nothing more to cut. The next year, we came in and cut spending by 11.5 percent and eliminated the biggest deficit the city ever faced, without raising taxes. Now, this is after they said there wasn't anything to cut. In Harrisburg, they're singing the same tune, but it's BS. There's plenty of stuff to cut. I've outlined a lot of it and I'm happy to go into some specifics now. We purchase $6.2 billion of goods and services. We don't do any sourcing that the big national companies do, where they leverage their buying. Each department buys individually. If we leverage our buying together, we'd save five or 10 percent on our purchases. For prompt payment of bills, there's a 10 or 15 percent discount in the commercial world. If we just promptly paid our bills, $6 billion worth, that's a $700 million savings right there. There are so many things to do. We've got state employees, for example, who are married to each other and they're both on the same health plan. They don't need to be because in a health plan your spouse gets coverage. We should do what we did when I was mayor: we bought them out. In one cash payment, we bought one of the spouses out of the health care plan and saved thousands of dollars each year. The same thing holds true if you work for the state and your husband is a lawyer and he's got a good health plan. You don't need to be on our health plan, so we buy you out. Five hundred dollars cash and you save dramatic amounts of money not having these individuals on the health care plan. I'm going to do an employee bonus program where any state employee who comes up with an idea that we didn't have in the fold, an idea that cut rates or increased productivity or enhanced revenue collection, they will get 10 percent of the savings in the first year that we use the idea with a cap of $100,000. With the opportunity to make $100,000 bonus, it's a great deal of savings will come from these state employees who know exactly where to save money or enhance revenue collection. So there are so many different things we can do to cut costs and enhance revenue collection. We don't collect taxes well enough. When I became mayor, we eliminated a fourth of our deficit by collecting taxes better, by letting private lawyers and private collection agencies collect some of our taxes on a contingency basis. We wiped away 25 percent of the operating deficit just by collecting taxes better.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Pennsylvania has some of the strictest abortion-control laws and I know you're strongly pro-choice. You've said you won't allow any new laws. Do you intend to work to eliminate some of the existing laws?

Ed Rendell: The problem is, if you open it up, then you're opening up a Pandora's box. The only thing that I would try to clarify is the section of the act that makes it unclear whether we can do stem-cell research in Pennsylvania. The medical and research insitututions take the position that they can't do it under the existing act, and obviously we want to unleash that research capability. One of the things we're trying to do in Pennsylvania is become a life science capital.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Can you explain your stance on gun control?

Ed Rendell: I am someone who believes that there's no ideological answer to gun control. I believe that the NRA is right that we need stepped-up law enforcement. That's why we did Operation Ceasefire in Philadelphia, where we transferred all the simple gun offenders who didn't have another underlying crime to federal court, where they got far greater sentences. These are felons who are found in possession of a gun, drug dealers found in possession of a gun. As district attorney, I helped get a statute into law that put a mandatory five-year minimum for anyone who uses a gun to commit a felony. So I believe that the NRA is right about that, but I also believe that they are wrong about not having stronger laws to cut off access to handguns on the part of criminals. I favor the one-gun-a-month legislation that's passed in Virginia and South Carolina, which limits handgun sales to one gun per month. What that would do is eliminate gun traffickers, the people who go in and buy 12 9 mm semi-automatic Baretta pistols and everyone knows they're just going to resell them on the street for 200 to 300 percent profit to felons whose only intent is to rob and maim and kill with it. I believe it's a false choice to say you can either have hunters' rights protected and the rights of law-abiding citizens to have guns in their home or on their person and you either have that, or you have laws that cut off access of guns to criminals. I think we can have both.

Daily Pennsylvanian: What do you think of John Street's job so far as mayor?

Ed Rendell: I think substantively John's a done a very fine job. He's taken sigificant steps to clean up the neighborhoods, he's let the city's economy to progress, he hasn't fooled with it, and it's gone full-speed ahead. He did a good job on the stadiums, he did a good job on the PECO merger with the Chicago firm. And the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, which is just starting, is a wonderful idea. It could really revitalize our city's neighborhoods, and the Safe Streets program that he's undertaken has been a godsend to Public Safety and the neighborhoods. So I think he's done a fine job. He may not do the PR as well and the public part of the job as people would have hoped, but in the end, the proof in the pudding is, has he done a good solid job in improving the city and I think the answer is yes.

Daily Pennsylvanian: When you were mayor, is there something else you could have done to help out the Philadelphia School District?

Ed Rendell: No. I mean, we did everything from suing the state three times for funding to increasing funding for education by $71 million a year and we did that by passing a very controversial liquor-by-the-drink tax where all of the proceeds went to the schools. We also became the first political subdivision to give a direct grant to our school district ever. We gave them discounts on water and gas and we put a superindependent in, David Hornbeck, who did a lot of good things and, at my urging, David Hornbeck achieved full-day kindergarten and our test scores went up dramatically five years in a row in elementary school. I think on balance, we did a good job. The ratio of computers to students went from 30 to one to eight to one. I'm very proud of that. Our graduation rates went up. Our truancy rates went down. I'm very proud of that. I think we made a lot of progress. As USA Today said, Philadelphia's improving test scores should be the envy of every other large urban school district in America.

Daily Pennsylvanian: If right now, you were running for mayor instead of for governor, what would be the central issue of your campaign?

Ed Rendell: I don't know. I haven't gven it that much thought. I think it would be to just continue the city's progress in the ways that we've undertaken.

Daily Pennsylvanian: You're teaching at least one class at Penn next semester?

Ed Rendell: Yes, and if I do get elected I'm going to tell the students the first week that if they can't be flexible, they probably shouldn't take the course this semester because I'm going to need flexibility.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Are you getting a salary from Penn for the classes?

Ed Rendell: Yeah. I always have. I have to look at the state ethics law to see if I can accept a salary.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Because of the grants from the state to Penn?

Ed Rendell: Yes. The state gives very little money to Penn. The only money Penn gets is for the Vet school and the general appropriations. Occasionally, they get grants for economic development. Most of the grant money that Penn gets is federal.

Daily Pennsylvanian: One of the things we've heard a lot about during this campaign is stopping the brain drain. Penn students are probably the worst offenders. They never stay in Pennsylvania -- they go to New York. How would you encourage them to stay?

Ed Rendell: It's not a question of increasing the quality of life, because I think we've done that in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, our major cities. It's creating the type of businesses and corporations that offer steady career growth for college graduates. I think if those opportunities were here, people would stay. For example, if the underwriting firms had their corporate offices in Philadelphia, I think Penn students would stay in Philadelphia in droves. In many ways, you have to broaden and diversify your economy, you have to continue to pump money into the life science research area. I want to broaden our research and development tax credits dramatically, I want to give young companies the ability to sell their net operating losses to older companies and get cash infusions. I want to do a lot of those things. I want to do as we did in Philadelphia, create Keystone Opportunity Zones around the campuses so that so of the bright young graduate students and college students who have ideas for their own businesses don't take those ideas to the Silicon Alley or the Silicon Valley or Chicago. They set up businesses right here in one of our Keystone Opportunity Zones because they pay no taxes for a decade. We did that, as you know, with two buildings at the University City Science Center and they're all rented up with young growth entrepreneurial-type businesses that are owned by students and recent graduates.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Why did you elect to stay in Pennsylvania instead of heading back to New York?

Ed Rendell: I got a summer job when I was in law school at the DA's office and I liked it very much. I liked the office, and I just was comfortable here. I just found it to be a much more livable city than New York, where I grew up, a much easier city to raise a family, a much less expensive city to live in and I found that even then, and it's improved dramatically, I found it to be a city where most of the things I wanted to do existed. They didn't exist in the same numbers as New York, but per capita if you look at Philadelphia today, we have more good restaurants per capita, than New York does. We have every bit as much visual arts and performing arts and opprtunities per capita as New York does. We have the same porofessional sports available as New York does. It's a livable city with the highest number of available options for quality of life. It's an easier place to live, a better place to bring up children and much cheaper.

Daily Pennsylvanian: If you're elected, do you plan on looking to Penn for some of your government officials?

Ed Rendell: Oh, sure. I'll look to faculty and when I was mayor, we had six full-time positions in the mayor's office for Fels graduates. I think over the course of my eight years we had 20 Fels interns, so not only people from the insurance department or the political science department, not only teachers and professors, but also young students graduating from Fels and places like that.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Anyone in particular?

Ed Rendell: That I have in mind, no, no one in particular.

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