Highlighting Portsmouth’s positives has worked for a leader who once was recalled

PORTSMOUTH

Just upstairs from the Holley Ballroom, the man himself stood center stage.

Mayor James W. Holley III bragged that Portsmouth was the only city in Hampton Roads to turn its annual State of the City update into a party, with balloons and prizes. He mentioned the new Starbucks store under construction downtown. He reminded hundreds of attendees that he would be running for his fifth term as mayor in May.

Then the time came for the official State of the City address.

Holley sat down.

Where other Hampton Roads cities have their mayors speak, Portsmouth showed a video touting its redevelopment and educational advances to the crowd assembled at the Renaissance Hotel.

City administrators switched to the video format after the mayor in 2005 gave a rambling speech that left many of Portsmouth’s biggest accomplishments unmentioned.

For years, Holley’s strength has been his service as an optimist bent on selling the positives of Portsmouth to the world, state, region – and to its residents. With his boundless charm and his history as a civil rights activist, he has garnered the support of blacks and whites across the community.

But the change in the State of the City program was a subtle acknowledgment of his age – 81 – and at times diminished abilities. It hasn’t been the only sign: Earlier this month, the council voted to take away the mayor’s city car after his third accident in as many years.

None of that seems to affect Holley’s stature as a politician. No experienced competitor has challenged him in recent elections, and council members with interest in his seat have deferred to his rule.

This year, his only rival is Martha Ann Creecy, a previously unsuccessful candidate for council and School Board, who believes no one should run unopposed.

“Politics is somewhat of a personality contest, and he’s made a lot of friends,” said Councilwoman Elizabeth Psimas, who had been named as a possible mayoral candidate but declined to run.

“He’s mayor as long as he wants to be.”

Road to success

Jim Holley left his home in Portsmouth to attend college and then dental school, but after graduating from Howard University in 1955, he and his wife, Mary, returned and quickly fell in with a connected group of black professionals.

Holley’s role model was Dr. Hugo Owens, a pioneering dentist.

The two men and a handful of others were at the forefront of the local civil rights movement. In 1956, Holley filed the second of two lawsuits that opened the city’s golf course to blacks. In 1959, Owens and Holley were plaintiffs in a lawsuit to desegregate the city’s libraries.

Holley said they were able to act because they were self-employed, their incomes not tied to the city’s white population.

“We weren’t going to start a riot. We were going to take an intelligent route,” he said at an African American Historical Society of Portsmouth forum last month. “We did it for everyone. We owed that much back to the community.”

Following Owens’ political lead – the dentist had run for office and eventually was a councilman in Chesapeake – Holley ran for Portsmouth council in 1966 and lost the election by 32 votes. He tried again two years later and won in a landslide, becoming one of the first two black City Council members in Portsmouth.

“He was one who didn’t mind opening his mouth,” Vice Mayor Marlene Randall said. “He was very ambitious.”

Holley was elected the region’s first black mayor in 1984. His term was defined by his flamboyance and outsize personality. He drove a Corvette with the license plate “Hizonor” and used city money to pay for phone calls, magazines and travel.

It was his refusal to publicly take sides on the closing of I.C. Norcom High School – and a subsequent anonymous hate-mail campaign aimed at black community leaders who were opposed to its being shut down – that led to his downfall. Holley denied writing the racist letters, but his fingerprints were found on the envelopes, and he was the only suspect. No one was ever charged.

Outraged residents called for his removal. Holley became the first mayor in Virginia to be recalled.

He was 61 years old then. People wrote his political obituary, the story of a fast-rising star burning out at the height of his power.

And then he came back.

After eight years of repairing relationships with neighborhoods and civic leaders, Holley beat incumbent Gloria Webb in 1996 to regain the mayor’s seat. Residents, tired of the city’s economic downturn – businesses closing, schools struggling to perform – were ready for a return of the jovial Holley boom years of the ’80s.

The new Mayor Holley also had learned that the most important thing was to listen.

“It was just enough of a burn to say think before you act,” Randall said of the recall. “It was a lesson for him. You don’t get so big that you forget the people who put you there.”

The Portsmouth family

Inside Jim Holley’s corner office on the top floor of City Hall, at least three clocks keep time. Plaques line every inch of the walls, all awards or recognitions from schools, businesses and community organizations.

Holley has rarely belonged to a group that he didn’t lead, and the city of Portsmouth is the biggest example of that.

If he had his way, City Council meetings would take days because citizens would have all the time they wanted to talk. Council members would listen more, speak less.

“I take a minute,” he said. “If you think that we’re not really listening to what you’re concerned about, I’ll carry the ball for you. If you have to pay all the levies and taxes, you ought to be able to say something.”

Holley thinks nothing of breaking formalities by dancing with renowned R&B singer Ruth Brown at a street naming, or parading through council chambers with this year’s Little Miss Portsmouth on his arm.

He attends hundreds of events on behalf of the city each year, and at each, he tells a joke, shares a bromide, shakes hands, flashes his 100-watt smile. He says that after a ribbon-cutting, he often stops back at small businesses to follow up weeks or months later.

“You can open up a lemonade stand, and you’d think we were opening up IBM,” Psimas said. “He gives it just as much personal attention. And doesn’t that make the business owner feel good?”

In response, the business community has provided him much support.

With the mayor, the “glass is always three-quarters full,” TowneBank chairman Bob Aston, one of Holley’s closest friends, said.

For a city that has struggled with crime, redevelopment, its schools and finances over the last two decades, that positive message hits the right note, Aston said. “Sometimes we don’t collectively as a community see ourselves that way,” he said.

When Esquire magazine featured Holley in a photo spread last year, he was quoted as saying that the best thing to do in his city was hang out with the mayor.

Elizabeth Psimas first saw the mayor’s work in action in 1997, when the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance staged a big party in New York City to coincide with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s debut at Carnegie Hall. Inside the hall, Hampton Roads’ business and civic leaders waited to meet people who could bring new companies and industry to the region.

Holley stood alone in the foyer, stopping people as they got off the elevators.

“He made friends with every single person before he ever got in the party,” Psimas said. “He is truly the face of Portsmouth.”

But despite his connections and friends, Holley is a lone wolf.

He has never voted in favor of a city budget – he always believes the city manager should provide more details – and is often in the minority on council decisions. He reminds constituents that while he is mayor, he is only one of four votes needed for a majority.

When there’s an issue he believes in strongly, he’ll try to sway politicians to his side in private conversations, many said.

He often begins council meetings, leaning forward in his seat, with a lecture about the origins of democracy and a reminder that Portsmouth’s citizens are all members of the citywide family.

And while some may dismiss Holley’s talk as dreaming, others say his long-standing vision for an economically successful Portsmouth – a city that can now boast new shopping centers, a community college and international industry during his political tenure – is coming true.

“Jim is a lot more effective than people recognize,” Aston said. “He marches to the tune of his own drummer. But he’s willing to take a long-term item, and stay with it."

Putting things in perspective

The mayor will turn 82 this year. If he wins re-election as anticipated, he will be 85 before his next term ends.

Holley, who retired from dentistry about a decade ago, said his doctor gave him the OK to run. He insists he still has the stamina to keep up his intense schedule that often stretches into 12- to 16-hour days.

Yet many of his colleagues and friends say that in recent years, they’ve seen his indefatigable nature flag on some days. During some meetings, Holley will get a distant look on his face or will lose his place, but then will perk up and make a relevant comment.

Because of the mayor’s recent car accidents, the council voted earlier this month to revoke his privilege of driving a city car, a move council members described as awkward. Holley, who voted in favor of the resolution, privately objected to their interference.

“Take it from me, he’s not going to quit,” Vernon Crump, a longtime friend and neighborhood leader, said. “If he showed weakness, people would tend to think he didn’t need to be in the job.

“But age has its way of catching up with you, I don’t care how tenacious you are.”

The mayor’s testy side also has appeared occasionally at council meetings, in stern rebukes of colleagues, employees and residents who have crossed him.

It’s that anger that keeps many from running against Holley for mayor, Randall said.

“If he’s for you, he’ll do anything he can for you,” Randall said. “But he has a sharp tongue. And the average person would not endure the sting.”

Headed into the election, Holley is focused, as always, on economic development, driving what he calls the “Portsmouth Renaissance” forward by luring new businesses and redeveloping downtown.

“Why don’t I just say I’ve done all I can?” he asked rhetorically a few weeks ago. “Being competitive like I am, there’s more that can be done.”

Meghan Hoyer, (757) 446-2293, meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com