Philadelphia Is Going Nuts for Mayor Michael Nutter

Feb. 13, 2008— -- The line of people waiting to meet Philadelphia's 83rd mayor stretched around City Hall. What was supposed to take just a few hours took seven for some. It was day one on the job for Michael Nutter.

"I don't know if it was just to meet me, but many people walk by this majestic building, never ventured inside, and I wanted to open the doors of City Hall and return this building to the public," Mayor Michael Nutter, Philadelphia's newest politician with rockstar status, told ABC's Charles Gibson.

Mayor Nutter, like some other politicians we know, ran his campaign around the promise of "change."

In his inaugural address, Nutter said, "I'm offering the greatest American city turn-around this country has seen in the last fifty years."

Philadelphia is one-sixth the size of New York but has more murders.

Nutter has a plan.

"By May 1, we're going to have 200 more officers on the streets of Philadelphia. By the end of this fiscal year next June, we'll have 400 more officers on the streets," he said. "We have people running the streets with illegal weapons, we're going to aggressively go after those individuals with constitutional and legal tactics, known as Stop, Question and Frisk."

Nutter has talked a lot about Stop, Question and Frisk, which was one of the hallmarks of his campaign. He said the campaign should not be misconstrued as racial profiling.

"It's a tragedy in this city that the overwhelming majority of victims and perpetrators happen to be African-American, but it would not matter to me what their color is or where people came from, they could be polka-dot with purple stripes for all I care," he said. "If you have an illegal weapon, I'm coming after it and we're going to take it away from you … The first right we're going to protect is the right not to be shot."

The mayor's typical day is filled with phone calls, motorcades, photo ops and nearly constant physical outreach.

"I like taking walks throughout the city — drives security crazy a little bit, but I like being out there with people. And that's how I think you stay connected," he said.