- It has not been good news, right?

It isn't as though disaster has befallen New Bedford.

But we expected a sharper growth trajectory on account of offshore wind.

I mean, are you setting the next, the highest tax rate too high so much so that you're gonna cause people to leave?

Massachusetts has seen people leave.

- Welcome to "One on One."

I'm Ian Donnis.

New Bedford Mayor John Mitchell has maintained a strong hold on his office since first winning election in 2011.

But that hasn't always translated into smooth sailing.

The Trump administration is trying to squelch the wind power industry, an important sector in New Bedford.

And the city faces a budget crunch in part due to what Mitchell calls a long-running lack of state aid.

So amid these challenges, what is the way forward for New Bedford?

The mayor of New Bedford, John Mitchell, welcome to "One on One."

- Great to be here, Ian.

It's been a while.

Great to see you.

- Construction was completed in March for Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale offshore wind project in the US.

Clearly, the Trump administration has had a chilling effect on wind power in the US.

And some wind power companies are turning their attention overseas.

New Bedford has been at the forefront of the wind industry in the US.

What have these changes meant for New Bedford?

- Yeah, by and large, it has not been good news, right?

So it isn't as though disaster has befallen New Bedford.

I mean, we're still the number one commercial fishing port in the United States and a whole lot more.

The port in New Bedford's a very busy place.

But we expected a sharper growth trajectory on account of offshore wind.

The Vineyard Wind Project, they demonstrated that New Bedford could execute well on a major offshore wind project off our coast.

And we had a pipeline of projects behind that that are, you know, largely in jeopardy now.

So, you know, what that means in practice is that there just isn't as much activity, not as many people working at those facil- at those dedicated facilities on our waterfront, not as much investment, private sector investment, coming, at least not as much as we anticipated.

So, you know, our goal really is, so yeah, so it's not going as fast as we'd like.

We don't think that, I don't think that anything's gonna happen until, at the earliest, 2029 after President Trump leaves office.

- Well, let me ask you about that.

If Democrats succeed in retaking the White House in the next presidential election in two years, how big a change would that be in undoing some of the adverse circumstances you're talking about?

- Well I think that presidential election will have some significant consequences for New Bedford.

If a Democrat is elected, I think it's probably safe to say that offshore wind will go forward.

It'll go forward in New Bedford because, in part because Massachusetts is also very supportive of offshore wind as well.

The state plays a very significant role, if not the most important role in the advancement of the industry.

But of course, the federal government decides where these things go and whether they can be permitted.

So I say that it has, this next election will have consequences because I think it's hard to find a Democrat anywhere who's against offshore wind.

Some Republicans are reluctant to allow it to advance.

I think some, if some of the possible putative candidates out there are elected on the Republican side, I think we'd see some progress.

It's just that this particular president in office now is outright hostile to it for personal reasons that are well-established.

- What do you say to offshore, to wind power companies that feel they can't roll the dice on the vagaries of US politics?

- Well, so they're making those calculations right now, and I think they're waiting out the next presidential election.

So for instance, the New England Wind Project, which is backed by Avangrid, which is a multinational energy company, their project is almost entirely permitted at this point.

They're sort of, from a regulatory standpoint, on the goal line.

And so I think they're just going to wait and see what- how things shake out in 2028.

And if it turns out that there is a more favorable federal policy environment than our federal disposition to offshore wind in general, I think they'll go forward.

I think their financing will be in place.

But it's not gonna fall into place until they have, you know, some level of certainty about who the president is.

- Let's shift gears, Mayor Mitchell.

Your latest budget included a $32 million projected deficit.

You talked about the need to eliminate 100 city positions.

And residents are facing the largest property tax increase in recent memory.

There's a lot of concern about the economy, inflation, higher costs these days.

What do you say to cash-strapped New Bedford residents who are struggling to keep up?

- Yeah, I think it's a tough budget environment, and it happens amid all of the progress that New Bedford has made over the last decade or so.

It almost seems out of place.

But the reality is that policy decisions are in place that make it very difficult for us to balance our books.

The state constrains our ability to cut healthcare benefits and pension benefits, and that's what's been driving the budget.

While the state is, on the other hand, has not kept up with its obligation to pay cities and towns state aid.

We, in the last fiscal year that just closed, Ian, we received almost to the dollar the same amount of state aid that we got in 2009, 17 years ago, so- - Let me ask you about that.

Many people here in Rhode Island looked longingly at how Massachusetts is more prosperous than the Ocean State.

It really stuck out when I learned that New Bedford has, as you said, in fiscal '26, it was the first time since 2008 you got that level of state aid.

What explains why it's taken that long to restore that level of aid?

- Well, I think that's a question best posed to legislators and governors who, you know, in that time have made decisions about their commitment, the state's commitment to state aid.

In general, I would say the state has increased educational aid, right?

There are two big state aid buckets.

One is for education and the other is for general government purposes, unrestricted general government aid.

So on the one hand, they've increased educational aid over the years and have felt like, "Well, you know, we don't need to keep up with the other form of aid.

We're already doing well by cities and towns by keeping up with education aid."

The problem from our perspective is that we can't use the education aid for other purposes.

It's not entirely fungible.

So that's part of the problem.

I think some of it also is just in, among the many legislators, a lot of them haven't had experience at the local level and appreciate the cost pressures of running a municipal government, even a town government, nevermind a city government.

A city that, in our case, has a whole lot of legacy costs, fire and police and- - Pensions.

- Pensions and all that.

And the healthcare for all of those folks, retirees and current employees.

So some of this has been coming home to roost for a while.

I do think there is some ability, some authority for cities in Massachusetts to curb healthcare spending and pension spending.

I've been making this case to my city council for many years now, too many to count at this point.

And a lot of folks on our city council have just not seen the urgency.

And so, you know, I hope now at least now that people are getting some pink slips, which is an unfortunate consequence of all this, that they start to take some of it, those threats more seriously.

- While we're talking about economic issues, I've got to ask you about how Rhode Island is emulating Massachusetts in implementing what some people call a millionaire's taxes, a surtax, here on income over a million dollars.

Massachusetts has been doing this for a couple years.

It's brought in a lot of revenue.

Critics say it's anti-business and bad for the economy.

What's your experience of how that's affecting the greater New Bedford area and the South Coast?

- It's an interesting question.

So I believe in a progressive income tax, right?

I think there's, we have it at the federal level, obviously, where in which people of higher incomes are taxed at a higher rate over certain income thresholds.

I think that's- some states have progressive income tax systems.

So this millionaire's tax in effect was a way of introducing some progressive, progressivity into the system.

The downside when you do it at the state level, the big risk is that people will vote with their feet.

They'll leave.

If people with means, people who pay the bills at the municipal level, people who support the economy because they can because they have disposable income, those people will say, "You know what?

I don't want to remain in this state."

And so, you know, in some ways it's an empirical question.

Are you setting the next, the highest tax rate too high so much so that you're gonna cause people to leave?

Massachusetts has seen people leave.

I don't think it's happening so much in our part of the state, which is less affluent, say, than the Boston area.

But, you know, there's clearly, Massachusetts is losing some population.

And so I think it'll be a few years where, before we can say definitively whether that's the, you know, there's a causal connection between the millionaire's tax and the actual flight of folks with means.

- President Trump got a big increase in his support in Southeastern Massachusetts in 2024.

I think he was the first Republican to win Fall River in many, many years.

And the globe reported recently on how the region is a fertile area for Republicans.

What's your explanation for that?

- There's no doubt that people are trending Republican.

It's not even so much they're trending.

They're voting Republican but not necessarily registering Republican.

You're seeing some growth in registration as well.

But I mean, the overwhelming majority of folks in the region are unenrolled.

And they've become unenrolled because they don't want to be constrained by one party or the other.

They want choices.

It's not necessarily a news flash that even though it was sort of, it's been presented that way in certain media outlets recently that, like, that the area's become more Republican.

The reality is that across America, outside of the major metros, things are far more red than they used to be.

I mean, take a look at the electoral map county by county across the United States from the 2024 election.

It's a whole lot of blue dots around the country, but it's a sea of red otherwise.

And so for a place like Greater New Bedford, we're not part of a major metro.

We are still a manufacturing center, but not nearly as much as we used to be.

We're sort of fit into the category of many cities around the United States that have seen job loss as a result of either foreign competition or automation or both over 20 or 30 years.

And so people feel like they don't have as much agency as they once did over their economic fates or that of their children.

And so we have, the way I see it, is that they're looking for something different.

And so I think that's what explains the trend.

You're seeing some of the same phenomena in Rhode Island, maybe not to the same extent, but it's there.

And I don't think anybody should be surprised by it.

- You're a Democrat in what is often seen as a working class community.

How do you think your party needs to respond to the conditions that you described?

The sense that people might be slipping economically and they're looking for a different party to help them out?

- Well, I like, Ian, to think that I'm part, I'm- as much as I've been a lifelong Democrat, I'm also- I also like to hold myself out as a member of the mayor's party, right?

So mayor's job is really to execute, to get stuff done, to solve problems even when it may not be palatable to one side or the other.

I have to meet the problems where they are.

And as mayor, I'm hyper accountable to folks.

And so we try to govern, right?

It's not so much that we try to govern down the middle, but we inevitably do because of that approach.

And I think people respect it.

They respect the approach on both sides.

I've been reelected five times in a city that, you know, where Donald Trump got 46% of the vote, and I'm a Democrat.

People at least at the local level see me as trying to do right by them regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum.

I am concerned as a Democrat that there is, you know, this, at least in terms of the attention they're getting, that some of the folks on the far left are starting to define the party.

And the Republicans certainly want the Democratic Party to be defined by the likes of some of the Democratic socialists who are, you know, out there proposing things that are, to my mind, rather extreme and self-defeating.

And so I think there's a real danger there that the Democrats could blow it.

The Democrats, I would just say, you know, the Democrats are gonna take control of at least the House.

It's- the writing's on the wall for that.

But what I don't want to see is that the Democrats blow it again in the next presidential election because they allow some of the more extreme voices to drown out the sort of the reasonable folks in the middle.

I think that's a real vulnerability.

- Mayor Mitchell, you mentioned earlier how New Bedford has the most lucrative commercial fishing port in the US.

President Trump recently made some changes concerning how the catching of scallops is permitted.

What does that mean for New Bedford and the region?

- Well I think it's actually good news and something that I've been fighting for for a long time.

And I'll just take a moment to explain it, right?

And it sort of falls into the category.

And people ask me, "You're a Democrat.

You think that everything that Donald Trump does is wrong."

And I say, "No, there are exceptions."

This is one of those exceptions.

So it has to do with the so-called Northern.

Actually, there are two different things.

One has to do with, one of the moves they made recently had to do with something called the Northern Edge, which is, as the name implies, the Northern Edge of Georges Bank, one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, in a place that was closed off by the federal government to scalloping, right?

The scallop industry is the most lucrative fishing industry in the country.

But it closed off in the mid '90s because the stock had been depleted.

The government's own data show that, in the meantime, the scallops have recovered so much so that many of them are dying of old age, right?

So I said, "But still, fishermen haven't been allowed to go back in there."

So I've argued over the years repeatedly that Noah has to reverse that decision, allow the fishermen to get back in there.

And that Noah has refused nonetheless.

So the scallopers took their case to the White House ultimately, and the president said, "Well, let's open it up."

So it's heading in that direction.

The other thing has to do with the way that scallop boats are permitted.

And this is all sort of falls into the arcana of fisheries regulation.

I get it, but this is, we live in this arcana in New Bedford, but it's- - But it sounds like too, just explain to a layperson- - Yeah.

- It means increasing the scallop catch- - Yeah.

- And maybe even lowering the price with a greater supply.

Is that right?

- Yeah, in general, all else being equal.

It allows for more scallops to be caught by increasing the supply, all else being equal.

Downward pressure will be placed on prices and greater profits for folks who go out to sea and including the boat owners.

And, you know, we hope all that money continues to be reinvested in New Bedford.

- You mentioned earlier how you've been reelected five times.

How long would you like to remain as mayor of New Bedford if the voters will have you?

- Well, it's hard to say.

I haven't put a timeline on it, like a hard timeline on it in the most literal way.

But I've always felt.

And by the way, you know, after, I hadn't run for office before I ran for mayor.

You know, as you know, I was a federal prosecutor in Boston and Washington.

So I came to it new and I thought, "Well, I'll do this for four years."

The way, and so it's been longer than that.

I'm up to 14 years at this point.

I- it's a very gratifying job.

And it's gratifying because, for lots of reasons, because we've moved the city strategically in a lot of very positive directions and have also delivered on the things that people care about.

A 66% drop in violent crime in my time in office.

A four-year graduation rate that has gone from 58% to 88%, one of the highest jumps in the country.

The highest bond rating in the city's history.

So those are a lot of the highlights.

But I think people more generally have a lot more confidence in the city now, and the city's reputation is rebounded.

So I look at it as, "Well, I'm gonna do this for as long as I find it gratifying."

And I still do, but I also want to make sure that I'm not staying just for the sake of occupying the office.

You see that happen in, among lots of elected officials.

I'm not gonna allow that to happen to me.

If I feel like I'm getting stuff done that needs to get done, I'll remain.

If not, then I'll go do something else.

- When you think about the next chapter in your life, do you see yourself running for another office, private sector?

What do you think about it?

- You know, so it's hard to say definitively, but there's been talk about my running for other things.

And so I'm open to that if it's a good fit.

And more fundamentally, if it's something that I think I can devote my full energy to.

Again, I just, I don't want to run for something just to occupy the seat.

I think some people do that and, or at least they've become that.

Like, they've been in office for too long.

But if I think I can devote my full powers to being a good whatever, then I'll do that.

But there are options in the private sector as well that I wouldn't foreclose.

So it's a long way of dodging your question, Ian, but I would just say that, you know, I've got some time to decide.

- You talked about some of the good things happening in New Bedford and there are others.

You had the restoration of the Zeiterion Theater.

There are recreation areas that are very popular with residents.

You're gonna be unveiling a Herman Melville statue- - Yeah, Herman, yeah.

- Related conference soon.

- More than life size.

He's actually gonna be 6'6".

So a big- more along the size of Herman Munster.

- On the scale of a whale.

- Yeah, right.

- But it seems that New Bedford is often farther along than Fall River.

Why is that?

- Well, I, you know, I don't know.

I think there's an inclination among folks to compare Fall River and New Bedford because they're only, like, 15 miles apart.

You know, I shoo those comparisons just because I think we have to focus on our stuff.

You know, what we've tried to do in general is to make the city more economically competitive by focusing on the things that we do really well.

That is to say, to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

So that's why we drive the maritime sector, right?

Fishing, offshore wind, marine tech, all those things that we do well, recreational boating, the arts and cultural sector, which is very important to New Bedford.

It's one of the things that makes New Bedford novel.

It's story.

It's the density of artists that live in New Bedford, the arts institutions, the historic downtown, all these things that we emphasize.

So we drive this stuff and we promote those things.

And I think that's more or less worthwhile providing services that people can rely on.

We have a very different school system than we used to.

The city is a really safe city now.

And our neighborhoods are better kept.

We've opened five parks and waterfront walkways and done all these things to elevate people's quality of life.

I will say too, and that is a big part of competing these days, just being an area where there's more remote work, where people can choose where to live.

We want to make sure that, you know, New Bedford's in that conversation.

Choose to live in New Bedford if you're working remotely from wherever, California or somewhere closer, because New Bedford's just a great place to live.

So, and a great place to raise a kid.

- Speaking of mobility, have you been satisfied with the impact of South Coast Rail?

- It's met my expectations, which were, compared to a lot of other folks, far more modest.

So I think, you know, over the years before I was in office, it was touted as this economic umbilical cord of sorts that's running from Boston to New Bedford, right?

It would usher in prosperity all on its own.

And it, that never, that argument, those arguments never made a lot of sense to me because we're just far away from Boston.

We're farther away from Boston than Providence is or Manchester, New Hampshire for that matter.

And so the train ride itself is 100 minutes.

So that's not something that people are going to commute on in the ordinary sense of the word, 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year over the course of a career.

What it does do is it provides people another option to get from New Bedford to Boston, not in a commuter sense but in an inter-city rail sense, which is the way we frame it.

And so that means that if you have to go to see a medical specialist, you can do that.

If you need to go to, you want to go to an event like a Red Sox game, you can do that.

If you need to return to college, as my kid does from time to time, you can go back and forth on the train.

Or if you work remotely and you need to go to Boston, say, two days a week, that's a good option as well.

So it's- so for me, it is, that's kind of what I expected from a project.

It's one that I supported.

But I always put the brakes on sort of the exuberance around that project because I think people need to understand that the way that New Bedford will advance and the work that we have done has been about building up New Bedford and not necessarily emphasizing what we're connected to or not connected to.

- You've been on a bit of a media offensive recently.

You talked with Cape and Island's NPR station, WCAI.

- Yep.

- Channel 10 here in Providence.

- Yep.

- Now you're talking with me.

Why all these- - What's next?

- Why all these interviews?

- I, you know, I don't, I think it's sort of the season, right?

It's... You know, I've been on your show a number of times.

I don't think there's anything to it.

I do grab those opportunities in some- in part because, in all honesty, I am the cheerleader and chief of my city.

And so if I- so far as I have opportunities to evangelize the fact that New Bedford is doing very well, I seize them.

And it goes to, like, what I was saying before, Ian, which is, you know, the perception's a lagging indicator, as the saying goes.

And so one of the things that's animated me about- in my job over the years is that at some level I've had a chip on my shoulder.

I kind of resent, like, in certain corners of at least New England, not really beyond New England but in New England, that New Bedford is seen as this sort of gritty old place.

And it's not that.

And so, you know, what I try to point out to people is, you know, let the data tell the story.

You know, again, a 66% drop in violent crime.

That's a safe, it's a really safe city now.

Kids going off to the most competitive, from our school system, public system, going off to America's most competitive colleges, et cetera.

So, and a place that is vibrant, a place that is unique in America in many ways, and one that is poised to thrive more still in a place where you can... It has a real restaurant scene now that has great public spaces and is a really- offers a really high quality of life.

So for me, this is all, these are opportunities for sales pitches.

Not that I'm not happy to see you.

- In closing, speaking of your sales pitch, the Portuguese Fest is coming up this weekend.

It's often called the largest free event in New England.

What are your insider tips on the best ways to enjoy the feast and the best things to eat?

- Oh, yeah.

Well, so the feast is, we understand the feast to be one of the largest ethnic festivals in the United States.

And it draws so many people in part because it's remained authentic.

It's remained true to its roots.

It hasn't become honky tonk.

It hasn't tried to be everything to everybody.

So in many ways, it's kind of a cool.

You will be exposed to Madeiran culture and a whole lot of happy people when you're there.

So what I would say is go get, go to one of the baracas, which are the vendor stands, and go buy, for instance, a bifana sandwich, this marinated pork sandwich.

Or you could do well by going to the barbecue pit and cooking some Carne d'Espeto, which beef on a stick.

That's a fun take.

And of course, there's Madeira wine.

I would just caution everybody that Madeira wine has a higher alcohol content than ordinary wine, so.

- It's four to five.

- Take it easy.

- Right, it's four to five.

- Yeah, but it's a great time.

(Ian speaking Portuguese) - We've got to leave it- (John speaking Portuguese) We've got to leave it there.

The mayor of New Bedford, John Mitchell, thank you so much for sitting down with us.

- Thanks for having me, Ian.

- Thanks for watching "One on One" with me, Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the YouTube channel for Ocean State Media.

And if you love Rhode Island politics, check out my TGIF column posted by 4:00 PM every Friday at oceanstatemedia.org.

We'll see you next week.

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