David Eichenthal knows a thing or two about trying to improve cities. Mr. Eichenthal has made a career out of revitalizing towns, and is now the managing director of PFM (Personal Finance Management). As he told the JFK Club members during their monthly meeting, he was part of National Research Network, a program commissioned during the Obama administration with the task of revitalizing and strengthening “forgotten” cities in America.
The network went to mid-sized towns that had been devastated by the great recession of 2008. As Mr. Eichenthal said, “They were places that had been struggling for decades, but the great recession just made things worse.”
One of those places was Waco, Tex., which has been going through tough times for years. The speaker said that on election day, 2016, he was not paying all that much attention to who was going to be elected president.
“So I spent election day in 2016 in Waco, and I spent the entire morning in a meeting with the mayor of Waco, the board of this organization called Prosper Waco, and the five city council members,” said Mr. Eichenthal, “The focus of that meeting was the things the organization could work with the different groups to grapple with endemic poverty in Waco.”
It’s places like Waco and Wilkes Barre, Pa., where the elections are won and lost. This is something often forgotten by the public and media, as these places are rarely discussed, the speaker said.
“Think about it; when is the last time you heard anyone talking about Dayton, Ohio before the last few weeks?,” asked a curious Mr. Eichenthal, “And yet millions of people live there, in places like Dayton or Waco or even Chattanooga. These places and the people who live there really matter. And yet you wouldn’t know that from pundits, policy analysts, or hearing the debates.”
He said in the 1980s, 12 cities lost at least 10 percent of their population. And only one reversed course in the 1990s. That city was Chattanooga.
The turnaround by Chattanooga was the strategy of focusing on downtown as an economic engine.
Mr. Eichenthal said, "Chattanooga has made tremendous progress over the last three decades. Under Mayor Berke, local government has really worked to address those concerns.
"I think the challenge of 2021 is to find a mayor who can build on that and bring prosperity for all neighborhoods. This is work that will take more than one president, we saw that with Obama. And it will take the work of more than one mayor."
He added, "I’ve had a small role in bringing bright young people into the government. I don’t think there’s a lack of supply of people who want to serve. "
The 2020 election won’t be won or lost in New York City or Los Angeles or Atlanta, posits Mr. Eichenthal. It will be won where the majority of Americans live, which are smaller cities. And he also said that just promising higher wages or cheaper education will not be enough to win votes from these towns.
He emphasized the need for unique, tailor-made plans which are created solely to fit the city it is being implemented in. This would be a stark contrast to how domestic policy is currently approached, where the United States has a single, “One size fits all” way of operating, he said.
“Imagine if we approached foreign policy in the same way we treated domestic policy,” said the speaker, “We would treat a foe the same way as an ally. We’d treat the Middle East the same way we treat Asia. This is crazy, but this is how we’ve treated our own policies.”
He then mentioned the patron saint of the JFK Club, who was a president who campaigned on the issue of poverty within individual cities. He said, “JFK (John F. Kennedy) ran on 'forgotten places.' The problem is, these efforts weren’t sustained over time. And now the problems we had six decades ago have only gotten worse.”
Ending his presentation on a bit of a down note, Mr. Eichenthal gave the members of the JFK a stern reality check as it pertained to Democrats winning the 2020 election.
“Sadly, these presidential campaigns don’t lend themselves to slogans,” he said, speaking on the complexity of the issues in the country, “There is no easy 10-word answer for these problems.”