Kohut Defends Ganim’s Honor

Following a commentary from former city activist Josh Nessen condemning Joe Ganim, in response city policy wonk Jeff Kohut claims the former mayor is wiser for his experiences.

Josh Nessen wrote a detailed, factual piece about the battle between the grassroots movement of the 1990s to ameliorate the plight of the downtrodden people of the City of Bridgeport during the dismal days of the prelude to the election of Joe Ganim in 1991, during the ensuing years of the “Ganim magic,” up until the time of Joe Ganim’s fall from grace.

I want to put things in proper context–and fast-forward two decades to the present.

Josh Nessen was the executive director of the highly-successful (GBIA) Greater Bridgeport Interfaith Action-led, Bridgeport-centered, social-justice movement during this aforementioned period, two decades ago. I was the chair of the Program and Issues Committee of GBIA during much of this period, and later became interim executive director following Josh’s departure from the organization. During this period, State Representative Chris Caruso was the President of the Board of Directors of this organization.

I consider Josh Nessen to be my good friend, and we worked effectively together, along with State Representative Chris Caruso, and notable others, during Josh’s tenure–up until our departure from the organization following internecine warfare on the GBIA Board of Directors between suburbanite and Bridgeport board members over the issues, strategy, tactics and future direction of GBIA. The suburbanites didn’t want a powerful, strident agenda addressing environmental, educational, and economic development issues in Bridgeport. In 1999, the suburbanites, with prodding from political elements such as Congressman Christopher Shays, City Councilman (and later, State Senator) Bill Finch–in concert with Bridgeport Regional Business Council (BRBC) president, Paul Timpanelli–engineered the departure of the effective Bridgeport GBIA voices, leaving an impotent, dying organization that could no longer effectively advocate for Bridgeport.

Josh accurately portrays a Bridgeport in chaos during the early ’90s, when a young Mayor Ganim was trying to negotiate the myriad, existential issues of a city that had been undermined by political/economic exploitation by suburban interests for nearly four decades, and that had been written off and virtually abandoned by Hartford and Washington during the economic-political debacle that characterized the dysfunction of  national and state politics during the Regan/Bush and O’Neill years, respectively. As history reminds us, Bridgeport, and many other urban centers, were deliberately isolated and economically and politically cannibalized as part of the “trickle-down” Wall Street-engineered feeding frenzy of the time. (Which still continues, despite the “lessons” of 2008.)

It was on this hopeless backdrop Joe Ganim, with help from the political maverick, Governor Lowell Weicker, set about stabilizing Bridgeport.

No doubt, Joe Ganim had help in shoring up the social/public-safety foundations of Bridgeport via the enlightened efforts of Police Chief Thomas Sweeney (with whom I worked closely through GBIA and the Lake Forest Block Watch), as well as organizations such as GBIA and BCAC, et al.

What Josh Nessen forgets in regard to then-Mayor Joe Ganim, is Ganim was working within a regional, state, and national political culture that had an urban agenda definable in terms of keeping poor, “servant cities” such as Bridgeport, politically “manageable”–in specific terms, politically impotent, but electorally exploitable at election time. That is why the efforts by individuals such as Chief Sweeney and organizations such as GBIA and BCAC were given short shrift by the political and business “big boys” such as Chris Shays and Paul Timpanelli–who were able, by working together and with others with influence in Hartford and Washington, to keep Bridgeport “manageable” for the interests of higher-level political and business interests. (Hence, the defeat of the casino initiative by Stamford under the policy of “no big development/local jobs for Bridgeport” so Bridgeport residents are retainable as an available, affordable labor force for Gold Coast/suburban exploitation.)

So one by one, the effective Bridgeport advocacy groups and activists–as well as effective public-official advocates for Bridgeport–were sidelined/eliminated, starting with Chief Sweeney and GBIA. Only those able to be co-opted for Gold Coast/Suburban use, were left standing.

Joe Ganim, seeing his political prerogatives being manipulated and stolen by powerful, nefarious forces with deep Washington and Hartford connections, caved to the pressures of Gold Coast political coercion and blackmail (they couldn’t allow the risk of a popular Bridgeport mayor becoming governor), and in hopeless exasperation, abandoned his ideals and goals and succumbed to the temptations presented by the parasitic opportunists who gravitated to a politically hamstrung, state-and-federal-funding mollified Bridgeport. (Substantial “placation” money, meant to politically mollify Bridgeport, was promised to us with the proviso our re-development be directed toward low-value, no-job sectors that would allow our continued exploitation by Stamford/the Gold Coast/suburbs. (Hence, we were given help and encouragement for such low-job/low-value development as Steel Point and the Arena/Ball Park, but not for casinos or factories that would have employed thousands.)

Had Josh Nessen remained in Bridgeport past 1998, and had he taken the opportunity to incorporate that intervening experience and history into his analysis of the city’s present state and the forces behind the fall of Joe Ganim, I’m sure his analytical training as an attorney would have led him to the same trail this writer has traced.

A young, somewhat naïve and coercible Joe Ganim fell victim to the bullying and chicanery of the Gold Coast, hardball politics unleashed on him and his ascendant city for the purpose of keeping us exploitable. (Recall the bullying of a newly elected Joe Ganim by then State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal during Bridgeport’s bankruptcy trauma? Recall Attorney General Blumenthal’s activities in regard to the crushing of the Bridgeport casino initiative? And who is now-US Senator Blumenthal supporting for mayor in this election?!)

Josh Nessen is a good man, but he left Bridgeport not even realizing why he was separated from GBIA, who was responsible for his involuntary, unjustifiable, forced departure, and how all the political subterfuge from nefarious forces that happened during and since his tenure was actually emanating from regional sources, while only seeming to be Bridgeport based. (Blame Mario Testa. It’s easy! Never mind the edicts that circulate between the Stamford-Greenwich billionaires and their Hartford-Washington lackeys!)

Joe Ganim has discovered the truth about Bridgeport’s position on the regional food chain. Josh Nessen has only discovered the surface of the truth.

Joe is much wiser now. He knows the score. He knows he must lead Bridgeport differently this time around. He knows creating a Bridgeport renaissance will require a bitter political fight with nefarious regional power brokers and high-level political forces. And he knows Bridgeport’s socioeconomic recovery will require a massive, long-term effort, with respect to his comprehensive plan for redevelopment and job creation (with the focus on reindustrialization). He knows in the short term he must implement his tax relief and utility rate relief plans for homeowners in order to give us some breathing room, so our city can be stabilized politically and socially as our storied industrial and economic might is re-created.

Don’t let Bridgeport continue to languish in agony. Vote Ganim–vote Bridgeport! On Wednesday, September 16.