Can Phila. mayor, likely Council president bury the hatchet?

On Jan. 2, when Mayor Nutter begins his second term with Darrell L. Clarke likely presiding over Council, the entire city will have a stake in whether the two can build a relationship - or at least work together without antagonizing each other.

If the past is any indication, they have a long road to transform their arranged marriage into a happy union.

This spring, when Nutter and Clarke were backing competing ideas to fill a huge shortfall in the school district's budget, their interactions were "at best, awkward," said Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.

"They had to build trust with each other," she said. "Because of that lack of trust, it made it much more difficult for the mayor to see what was doable and what wasn't."

Nutter was never able to get enough support for his soda-tax proposal, and Council passed a real estate tax hike instead, with Clarke's backing.

This fall, as candidates were lining up votes to succeed retiring Council President Anna C. Verna, Nutter lobbied hard for an alternative to Clarke - first Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco and then Councilman James F. Kenney.

So far, Clarke and Nutter have declined to talk about how they plan to bridge their differences. Both sides demurred again last week, noting that Clarke's ascendancy is not yet official - he has pledges from more than a dozen of the 17 Council members, but they have yet to take a vote.

"They don't have a term Council president-elect," Clarke joked. "I checked."

The relationship between Council president and mayor is a crucial one. Each is dependent on the other for moving their agendas, and they can work in concert or frustrate each other's efforts.

The president controls the flow of legislation, while the mayor wields the veto pen.

Members who have spoken to both said they were optimistic. Councilman Curtis Jones, who is in line to become majority leader, said Nutter "had his big-boy pants on."

"The translation is he's a mature leader who understands you have wins and losses," said Jones, a frequent Nutter ally. "I can't speak to what issues they have between them, but I actually believe they're going to make a great pair."

Brown, another Nutter ally who is set to become majority whip, also was hopeful for a good relationship. But she cautioned that she had spoken to both about their agendas and "the honest answer is I don't see a connect yet."

The problem, she said, is they have almost no history of working together.