Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
Ralph Nelson grew up in northern California and studied journalism at San Jose State University. But he dropped out a semester before graduating to take a job with the San Francisco Giants. He ended up being a vice president of the National League ball club before moving over to the management of the rival Arizona Diamondbacks. Then he became a vice president of Major League Baseball in New York, where he was in charge of umpires.
He resigned from MLB during (though, not, he said, because of) a dispute over whether he had shredded documents related to the accuracy of a computerized pitch-tracking system. At the time, Nelson said, “The thing absolutely did not happen. It was an accusation made by a disgruntled employee that I let go.” Nelson now says that he still has ties to MLB officials and remains close to his old boss at the commissioner’s office, Sandy Alderson, now general manager of the New York Mets.
So how did he end up living in St. Johnsbury, and (however briefly) serving as its town manager?
“Strictly by accident,” he said.
By accident and because of dogs. Nelson and his wife have five golden retrievers. In the area on vacation in 2010, they came upon the late artist Stephen Huneck’s “Dog Mountain,” and decided to rent a house nearby while Nelson, who is now 58 years old, worked on a computerized sports-officiating system he had devised. A couple of months later, he said, someone suggested that he apply to be interim town manager. He was hired, and then, even though he had no experience in municipal finance, he became the permanent manager after going through the application process administered by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
The problem is that St J may be too small for two big dreamers.
Nelson seems to have been chosen in part precisely because he was new in town, and therefore not part of either of the two factions – roughly the establishment and the populist opposition – that had been fighting each other for years.
According to someone who has worked with him, but who, like many others, did not want to be quoted by name, Nelson was “a dreamer” who had grand plans for the town. So it’s not hard to see why Jim Rust, the chair of the select board, wanted him for town manager. Because Rust is a dreamer, too. They both have grand designs for making St. Johnsbury a better place. The problem is that St J may be too small for two big dreamers.
It wasn’t that other officials had done nothing to perk up the town. Using federal and state aid, St. Johnsbury had built apartments for senior and lower-income residents and had helped some businesses expand. Officials also intended to clean up and develop the run-down, under-used area between Railroad Street, the town’s main drag, and the Passumpsic River to its east. Plans had been in the works for years, but little had gotten beyond the planning stage. Rust and Nelson were both determined to take it farther.
Nelson even thought of trying to attract a minor league baseball team to town by building a stadium near the river, and he said baseball officials he knew were interested.
“We pledged that it would be private money,” he said. “The concept was that if we had a magnet, I don’t care if it’s baseball or ballet,” visitors would be attracted to town, and while they were there they would patronize shops and restaurants. “St. Johnsbury is an hour away from a lot of people,” he said.
“There are people in this town who eat steak and there are people who eat hamburgers,” noted Michelle Fay.
For a while, the two men seemed to work well together. But that didn’t last. Maybe they disagreed with each other’s plans; Rust indicated he thought the ball park idea a bit grandiose for St. J. Maybe they both wanted to be the top dog in town. And maybe they were just different kinds of people, from different backgrounds.
Which is how many St. Johnsburyites describe the general cleavage in their town – the more educated, affluent establishment versus the upstart, rougher-hewn populists now in the majority.
Michelle Fay, the director of the Umbrella social service organization who was just elected to the state House of Representatives, said in the view of some St. Johnsburyites, “There are people in this town who eat steak and there are people who eat hamburgers.”
Members of the two factions often see each other as … the other, a foreign and even hostile tribe whose ideas should be opposed just because of their source.
Like all such easy explanations, this one may be too easy. Jim Rust said he has a master’s degree in business administration from National University in California, and he appears no less affluent than many of his critics. Though he is often described as a Tea Party supporter, he doesn’t govern like one. He governs like someone who believes in government as a positive force, and he goes after every federal dollar he can get.
“That (federal) money is going to be spent somewhere,” he said. “The job of the select board is to get as much as possible for St. Johnsbury.”
Having run for office because he felt the people had not been “permitted to speak,” Rust permits everyone to speak. “I listen to everybody,” he said. The first agenda item at every select board meeting is “public comment,” and, boy, does the public comment. It’s not unusual for 40 or more people to come to board meetings, and many of them use the public comment period to assail Rust.
Rust does not try to stop them, but sits impassively in the middle chair behind a small table, flanked by vice chair (and political foe) Alan Ruggles to his right, and member (and political ally) Rod Lamotte to his left. At the left end of the table sits Rust supporter Bernard Timson; on the other end Kevin Oddy, who is often paired with Ruggles on the short end of 3-to-2 votes.
But while Rust accepts harsh criticism without apparent rancor, he does display a touch of bitterness when he discusses his political foes.
Rust even sat quietly during one recent board meeting as Ruggles, sitting not two feet away, read a long statement assailing Rust as “a bad chair,” who bullied town employees and ordered them not to speak to other board members.
Without raising his voice or showing any emotion, Rust responded that the “crap” besetting the board this year was the result of decisions made last year, when he and his faction had been in the minority. Timson had lost his seat in 2010. He regained it last March by one vote.
But while Rust accepts harsh criticism without apparent rancor, he does display a touch of bitterness when he discusses his political foes.
“Most of them (his critics) don’t come talk to me,” he said. He dismissed his regular board meeting antagonists as “the four horsemen,” who can not get over the fact that “the old guard lost control” after the town decided to vote on annual meeting articles by all-day voting (the Australian ballot) instead of at the town meeting, a change for which Rust and his allies agitated.
“They used to do whatever they wanted to do,” he said.
He has a point. Three of his four regular antagonists have run for select board themselves.
Like many another embattled politician, Rust also claims that he is the victim of a hostile press, specifically the Caledonian-Record, St. Johnsbury’s six-day-a-week newspaper.
The Caledonian, as its commonly known (though some locals prefer “Cal-Rec”), occupies an unusual niche in American journalism. Not because its editorial page is conservative; so are most newspaper editorial pages. Nor even that it is ultra-conservative. It is that even some conservatives in town concede that the editorials sometimes cross the line separating rational analysis from fulmination.
“If (Rust) makes good moves, I would laud them. My recollection is that for the past six or eight months, it’s been the Wild West. Clearly, they don’t know what they’re doing.” ~Todd Smith, editor of The Caledonian-Record
But publisher Todd Smith insists that when it comes to news coverage he and his staff are “journalists, and the newspaper people here are as down the middle as possible,” and the evidence supports him. Todd Wellington, one of the reporters covering town news, said no editor has ever suggested that he slant his coverage, and in covering the town’s tumult, the Caledonian has been guilty of nothing but good journalism.
Rust said he was so upset about one editorial that he “went down to the paper that day” to see Smith.
“They told me he’s busy and I said I’d wait,” Rust said. “They made me wait close to 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and then he came out and said he was late for lunch. I said, I’ll walk you out to the car. I told him the next time he wrote an editorial based on one of his reporter’s stories he should first get the transcript (of the court filing cited in the story). He said he’d look into it, and if he’d made a mistake he’d run an apology. I won’t hold my breath on that.”
“I never met with Jim Rust,” said Todd Smith. “He’s been here at times and wanted to meet with me. He’s met with my staff. I have no recollection of that (encounter) whatsoever.”
As to his editorials, Smith said, “If (Rust) makes good moves, I would laud them. My recollection is that for the past six or eight months, it’s been the Wild West. Clearly, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Pausing for a moment, Smith noted, “Local politics around here is very personal.”
Correction: We originally gave Alan Ruggles the appellation of Jim.
