Kid candidate
Gardiner Bacon, 17, defies odds, and his parents, in mayoral bid
NEWBURYPORT -- Gardiner Bacon is not your typical teenager. He is passionate about politics. He is the lead singer in a barbershop quartet -- Three Guys and a Gardiner -- and he is an avid collector of shoes. His favorite wingtips are turquoise - colored boots, of the cowboy variety.
His favorite topic: The city's mayoral election.
Bacon, 17, won't graduate from Newburyport High School until June, but he already has announced his candidacy and has some bumper stickers ready -- at least the 150 he's been able to fund so far from his part-time cashier job at
Never mind that his parents have taken a dim view of their only child putting his scholarship and acceptance to Antioch College on hold. Or that he is 0 for 1 in his only other bid for elective office -- senior class president. Or that he would face a well-known incumbent.
Sporting a "Dennis Kucinich for President" button during an interview, Bacon noted that his first car -- a 1998 cobalt-blue Saturn purchased two months ago with $2,684 from his CVS earnings -- is proof that he has experience balancing a tight budget.
"I can manage my own finances and that's a challenge," he said, "because I make minimum wage."
His campaign biography sketches out like this: Bacon was born at home in Newburyport and raised by, in his words, "intellectual" parents. He loves eating out and he drinks diet Pepsi with lime. He said he would keep an "open mind" when negotiating with municipal unions. In fact, he said, he would try to unionize his fellow workers at CVS, if he worked there full time ( not that he would like the boss to know that ).
Bacon said he believes his city needs a new direction, especially its public schools, and who better to know the successes and failures of the school system than someone who recently has been through it? In Newburyport (population about 17,000), the mayor also serves as chair of the School Committee.
"Schools are supposed to create well-rounded individuals, and if you are only being trained for the MCAS [ achievement tests], that's not well-rounded," said Bacon, who attended a Newburyport Montessori- style charter school from grades 5 through 8.
"That school really taught me how to think," he said, "not just to regurgitate the facts."
But some worry that Bacon's candidacy may be too fresh, that a teenager barely old enough to shave might not have the seasoning to manage a $52 million budget.
The potholes on his mayoral path started right out of the gate, when Bacon sought nomination papers and discovered the forms require a candidate to be a registered voter and to return the forms with the signatures of 50 other certified voters by July 31 -- two weeks before Bacon's 18th birthday. The primary is in September and the election in November.
After seeking a legal opinion, City Clerk Richard Jones was advised that he would be allowed to register Bacon to vote in late May, after the city's Special Election on a tax hike to fund the schools, clearing him to start seeking signatures.
That path was cleared, but there are problems at home: Mom and Dad are not happy.
"Our city faces complex growth issues that in my view demand more experience than Gardiner can bring to the office at this point in his life," Gardiner's father, Reginald Bacon, recently wrote in letters to the editors of two local papers.
Instead of voting for his son, Reginald Bacon is urging Newburyporters to encourage Gardiner to go to college.
"Ultimately, you support, as a parent, your child," Reginald Bacon said in a phone interview. "If that means supporting them standing off to the side, when they make mistakes as part of the growing progress, that's supporting them as well."
But that support, Reginald Bacon quickly added, will not include campaign financing -- nor, perhaps, his vote.
"It would depend," he said, "on the other candidate."
For now, the current occupant of the corner office -- the only other announced candidate -- is choosing his words about his opponent carefully.
"It's really idealistic for him to want to become involved, and that's positive that a youth wants to be civically engaged," said Mayor John Moak, 59, who owned his own business for eight years and served as the city clerk for 12 years before taking office last year.
So what do voters think of Bacon's chances of winning?
"He has an understanding of things in his community, as well as global, that a lot of students his age don't even care about," said Donna Holaday, 51, director of grants at Middlesex Community College and an unsuccessful candidate for Newburyport mayor in 2005.
Bacon showed up one day to hold signs for Holaday's campaign and never left, working the phones, going door-to-door with her to meet voters, even writing letters to the editors of the local papers.
While Holaday admires Bacon's tenacity and intelligence, she isn't about to vote for him. "He's too inexperienced," she said. "I will certainly give him as much help and support as I can."
Holaday said she told Bacon she admires what he is doing, but that she hopes he changes his mind and goes to college in the fall.
Yet, Angela Glukhov, the associate director for admissions at Antioch College, said she is impressed by Bacon's ambition. The college has agreed to defer Bacon's acceptance and $10,000 scholarship for his two-year mayoral term, should he be elected.
"When I first spoke to him [ on the phone], I thought I was speaking to his father, he was so poised and articulate, asking questions about education and the process," Glukhov said.
She said she usually asks students who seek a deferred admission what they plan to do in the interim.
"He said, 'I am running for mayor,' " Glukhov said. "At Antioch, you hear all kinds of things. Usually they're going off to Laos or something. But mayor? No, I have not heard mayor."
Bitten by the political bug during the 2004 presidential campaign, Bacon said he knocked on doors for Democratic contender John Kerry, worked in the local field office during Deval Patrick's gubernatorial race last year, and has served for the past 18 months on Newburyport's Youth Commission, which advises the city's Youth Services Department on policies and programs.
He is still organizing a campaign team and is looking for a manager who is "at least 30" to ease public jitters about his own age.
Bacon also is looking for a new place to live because things at home, he said, have gotten a tad tense since his mayoral announcement. He plans to find his own apartment after classes end next month. Longer term, Bacon said he eventually would like to go to college, to teach, and to run for president -- in 2024, when he's old enough.
Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com. 