The End of the Jerry Era

Readers, today is the day: January 3rd marks the very first day of the new mayoral administration and the end of The Jerry Years here in Louisville, KY. You may or may not realize how important this man is/was to the identity of this city, so just take my word for it: Love him or hate him, Jerry was Louisville. He was the embodiment of the city (or the way we wish the city was) in a way that I can't imagine anyone else becoming.

I've personally never heard of a mayor that was so unselfconsciously gaga for his own jurisdiction. Jerry had crazy ideas that he would fight tooth-and-nail for--a new minor league baseball park that's much nicer (in my opinion) than many big league ones, a crazy skate park right next to the expressway that attracted the X Games to town one year, a massive bike trail that encircles the city--and he would make them happen while maintaining a maddeningly optimistic aint-we-the-greatest attitude that makes him seem like a boundless glass-half-full mental case sometimes. You see, Louisville is a weird breed of place: natives have a notoriously cynical streak because, deep down, we know we aren't a big city like Jerry keeps insisting we are. We are not like Chicago or even Cincinnati, but Jerry--god bless him--was always making that case anyway. We weren't large enough to compete with those other places, so Jerry merged the city and county together and created "America's newest top 20 city." His brand of constant upbeat insistence won over quite a few of us, convinced people to take serious pride in our hometown, somehow managing to inspire the type of fierce loyalty that can support entire businesses whose sole purpose is to sell Louisville-related clothing and merchandise. This, of course, is a good thing I think.

And even if Jerry tended to shoot himself in the foot sometimes (he totally fumbled an opportunity to convince the city to pass a tax referendum that would've supported the local public library system a few years back, all because he got a little overzealous in a campaign commercial, for instance. Long story.), he was the type of guy you knew would try to make good things happen for us. Enthusiastic to the point of lunacy about anything local, he was supportive of the arts and pretty much any other aspect of life in Louisville, he was OUR mayor and he showed up to EVERYTHING (one of my fondest memories of running the Derby Festival Mini-Marathon last year was when I was about to cross the start line to begin the race and looked over to see Jerry--wearing his goofy windbreaker, yelling encouragement and clapping for me/us like a madman. I was probably the 10,000th person to run by him, but he looked thrilled anyway--I think we made eye contact).

Now that he's out of office he'll be teaching some business class at my old college, and he's campaigning for next year's gubernatorial election--he'll be on the ticket with the current governor, running as his lieutenant (projections here at MM don't look good, though). So good luck, Jerry, it's already feeling very weird around here without you.