'Mayor for life' Jerry Abramson says goodbye to Louisville
Even critics acknowledge he has been a progressive force for the city
Jerry Abramson never intended to become Louisville's "mayor for life."
He always expected his political career to take him beyond the city limits.
But when Abramson steps down next week, he'll have spent nearly a third of his life as Louisville's mayor - more than 20 years - far more than any other chief executive in the city's 232-year history.
He could have walked away much earlier.
Abramson twice considered a run for the U.S. Senate and passed on three potential gubernatorial bids - two in the 1990s and one in 2006 - after current Gov. Steve Beshear privately encouraged him to run for the office.
And Abramson's friendship with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s led to frequent speculation that he would be named to a White House Cabinet position, an offer that never came.
Abramson, 64, said he thinks it was fate that kept him in Louisville for most of the past quarter-century.
"I was the first mayor in 100 years allowed to have successive terms," he said. "It's what I wanted to do. And I wanted to have the continuity of leadership because I thought the lack of continuity had held this community back."
Abramson's long tenure in the public eye allowed Louisville residents to watch him mature professionally from a 29-year-old alderman in the 1970s, to a 39-year-old bachelor mayor in the 1980s, to a powerful political figure that the community overwhelmingly chose to lead the newly merged city and county governments as the first metro mayor in 2003.
Local historian Tom Owen watched it all from a front-row seat on the Board of Aldermen and the Metro Council.
"All I can say is that Jerry Abramson, with his energy and enthusiasm, and his glass always half full seemed to me to be a dose of freshness and hope for a city that had been ridiculed in the nation's press and had seen its industrial base head south," said Owen, council president, of Abramson's early rise to power.
Even Abramson's critics acknowledge that he has been a progressive force for the city and has been wildly popular with voters, achieving approval ratings of 70 percent or higher for most of his tenure.
But they also say he has acted arrogantly at times, entangling the city in unnecessary lawsuits, contentious labor negotiations and bad personnel decisions.
"The 'mayor for life' stuff may have gone to his head somewhat," said John David Dyche, a lawyer, author and conservative columnist.
Abramson has served two terms as mayor of Louisville metro government, but decided against running a third time to join Beshear's re-election ticket as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
He will turn over the mayor's office to Greg Fischer on Jan. 3.
Jerry Edwin Abramson was born into the grocery business.
His father, Roy, owned a Louisville store with three aisles for 30 years. It was a business Roy Abramson inherited from his parents, who ran it for 55 years before him.
Abramson graduated in 1964 from Seneca High School, where he was a champion debater.
He held odd jobs, from swimming instructor to ice cream scooper at Dairy Queen, and sang in a five-piece rock band called Apollo and the Sunsetters.
Abramson graduated from Indiana University with a degree in business economics and public policy. While at IU, Abramson said he volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign and, as president of Students For Kennedy in the state of Indiana, got to travel with the candidate and introduce him at universities.
The Kennedy experience molded Abramson's political views and solidified his desire for public service.
"It was the most important interaction I've had in my life, other than with my wife and my son," Abramson said.
He studied at Georgetown Law School and worked as a volunteer in U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh's office during his re-election bid of 1968. Then the Army came calling.
Drafted in 1969, Abramson said he sat around for weeks waiting for combat orders that never came. He was discharged as a sergeant in 1971 and returned to Georgetown, graduating from law school two years later.
Abramson said he declined offers from law firms in Washington and New York, choosing instead to return to Louisville and work at Greenebaum Doll & McDonald. He was elected to the city's Board of Aldermen, but in 1980 took a job as general counsel in Gov. John Y. Brown's administration and stayed there for two years.
He announced his candidacy for the mayoral office on Jan. 14, 1985. He won with 73 percent of the vote over Republican Robert Heleringer.
In his first two years, Abramson played a major role in attracting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) headquarters, getting Ford to expand its Assembly Plant and sprucing up the city with a new initiative he called Operation Brightside.
Then, with former Mayor Harvey Sloane as Jefferson County's judge-executive, the two negotiated a city-county compact to share tax revenue, freeze annexations and divide responsibility for agencies that served both.
It was a first step toward the governments' working together, rather than competing against one another.
It was during Abramson's first term that a 1986 amendment to the state constitution allowed big-city mayors to serve three consecutive four-year terms, lifting the rule that mayors had to sit out at least one term before they could seek the office again. Since 1893, no Louisville mayor had served consecutive terms.
The amendment gave Abramson's political career new shape. He announced his intention to run for a second term in January 1988, promising that if elected, he would seek a third: "It's my life. I married the city. I'm literally with it all day and all night."
He easily defeated independent Erin Lee Stewart for his second term, then beat Republican Tommy Klein for a third term, which was extended by one year as the state government aligned its local elections with federal mid-terms.
Over that nine years, Abramson accomplished a series of projects with wide-ranging impact: shepherding renewal projects in western Louisville, closing down the city's incinerator two years before a federal mandate, starting a curbside recycling program and enticing the company that makes Louisville Slugger baseball bats to move downtown from southern Indiana.
But Abramson's marriage to the city hit some rough spots.
Abramson was deeply criticized for the expansion of the Louisville airport. Abramson says the expansion, which started in 1988, was one of his greatest accomplishments because it helped the city grow and led directly to about 23,000 jobs at UPS.
But it also required razing three neighborhoods and relocating residents in seven others, resulting in lawsuits and public protests. Residents won a $6.2 million judgment against the city.
"It was a tough decision and an incredible risky decision as a public official to say, 'Trust me. Ten years from now, 15 years from now, you'll have more jobs, better air service, more businesses,'" Abramson said in a recent interview.
State Rep. Reggie Meeks, a former alderman and longtime Abramson critic, said in an interview that the mayor owed his popularity to a "cult of personality" and a "non-critical media."
By the end of his third term in 1998, Abramson announced that he would join the firm of Frost Brown Todd and set up his own consulting firm. Although he didn't rule out another run at public office, he said he never thought it would be for mayor. All that changed with the merger of the city and county governments. Abramson surprised no one by announcing his candidacy to become Louisville's first metro mayor.
His wife, Madeline Abramson, said it was a family decision.
"At the time Jerry was a very committed dad," she said. "But we were also very committed to the idea that he could make the tough decisions when putting the two governments together, as opposed to someone early in their public service career who might be afraid to ruffle feathers."
Easily winning re-election in 2006, Abramson spent much of his second term trying to keep the merged government running after the economy tanked, "managing it so we didn't go broke," he said.
The recession hit the city hard, and Abramson responded to repeated budget shortfalls by closing library branches and community centers one day a week, permanently closing public swimming pools, charging youth sports leagues for electricity at parks, laying off and furloughing city employees, and reducing funding for nonprofit groups.
Abramson said the last four years have been among the most difficult of his career.
"When you have plenty of funds ... it's always a lot more fun than when you are laying people off and cutting back on valuable causes," he said. "Having said that, I think I had the best management experience to get us through those difficult times with a balanced budget and without a significant decrease in services."
There were bright spots, too. Abramson was in office to witness the opening of the KFC Yum Center, the new downtown arena that is home to the University of Louisville men's and women's basketball programs.
He watched as UPS opened a $1 billion expansion of its Worldport hub at the airport, and he was on hand for the announcement that Ford would invest $600 million in its assembly plant and create 1,800 jobs a deal that he and Beshear had worked on for years.
Mark Field, Ford's president of North American operations, credited Abramson with selling company executives on the deal for the plant's future.
Owen said Abramson has always been a tireless booster for Louisville. But he said he will remember Abramson as a working-man's mayor making mental notes on potholes, burned-out streetlights and cracked sidewalks as he jogged or bicycled around the city.
"Over the years, I never saw Jerry Abramson ... consistently off his game," Owen said. "He was committed, faithful and responsible. It was duty for him. No, I can't think of anyone who could have done it better."
