Was Tom Loftis a Good Mayor?

The Institutions of Widow's Bay

Very minor spoilers for Widow’s Bay

I just finished watching Widow’s Bay, and all I can think about is how Mayor Tom Loftis, played by our favorite Welshman Matthew Rhys, was bad at economic development. Between the boogeymen and the creepy dungeons and the inexplicable Chris Fleming tornado was the real horror: poor institutional design.

If you haven’t seen the show, it’s basically if Lost were set in Massachusetts. Already a strong candidate for horror. Tom Loftis is the mayor of the island town Widow’s Bay, who begins the show desperate to turn his home into the next Martha’s Vineyard. Trouble ensues, with the island revealing more of a curse that is seemingly impossible to escape from. The actual mystery is fairly narrow; given how real the town experiences the various tragedies and fantastical elements, it’s hard to explain the curse as being a figment of their imagination. From its inhabitants’ perspective, the island’s curse is very much real and holds actual, tangible power over them. The story unfolds as a centuries-long curse, dating back to the first mayor’s bad shrooms trip in 1702. Their plight is endemic and unrelenting, with Tom Loftis unable to change the trajectory of his little island hamlet.

So, was Tom Loftis a good mayor? What should we expect from our leaders, and should those expectations be different for leaders in places as genuinely cursed and small as Widow’s Bay?

He wasn’t that bad

While Loftis was elected unopposed, we should still treat his election as a binding mandate— he was empowered with responsibility to manage and lead his town. His constituents, at least the ones who still valued the authority, entrusted him with the outcomes of their community. So, it is understandable that he would aspire to Martha’s Vineyard heights; he clearly wants the town to succeed.¹ Becoming a popular summertime tourist destination is not an unreasonable goal for a New England town, notwithstanding the monsters.

Were these ambitions right? In the first few episodes, he succeeds in bringing more foot traffic to the island. Widow’s Bay receives a quite positive review in the New York Times that seemingly changes their fortunes, which Loftis can somewhat take credit for.² He managed to stimulate demand in a previously unheard-of town that lacked a road connection, a historical or natural landmark, or seemingly any nice amenities. From what we can tell, the only inn sucks so much that the innkeeper won’t stay there. So clearly, they are enjoying some extra economic success.

Are communities scary?

Pretty soon after the tourists arrive, things go awry. There’s a hag, a domineering fog, an evil punch bowl, an actual boogeyman, and teens that sneak out of the house and smoke weed sometimes. All of these begin to overwhelm Loftis, taking over his time, energy, and sanity. He loses track of his actual festivities and programming, leaving it in the hands of his somewhat inept staff. He tries to confront increasingly dangerous aspects of the island’s curse, alongside Patricia, his assistant³ and Wyck, the local grumpy fisherman. His son constantly leaves the house at night to smoke with his genuinely annoying friends, which further stretches his attention. The local sheriff, who seems like the only competent one, throws in the towel by the end. All of these characters, and the curse that seemingly controls them, represent the community and the institutions that make it up: ill-equipped bureaucracy, dying industry, the restless youth, even Loftis as the ambitious yet ignorant elite. They all eventually fall prey to the curse, which, while it looks very real, is really held together by the community’s fear and eventual anger.

Over the centuries, they have assuaged their fears around the curse with sacrifices. They rationalized, not necessarily unjustifiably, that the tragedies that befall them can only be corrected with terrible deeds, usually through murdering one of their neighbors. Their groupthink around the curse is extremely hard to shift; it not only stands up in the face of real success, but it also finds genuine reasons to support itself. Not until the end does Loftis realize that fighting this curse of groupthink is ultimately impossible to do alone. As his predecessor, the first mayor said, “fearful men do desperate things.”

The macroeconomics of curses

When the group is unable to correct maladjusted tendencies, institutions matter a lot.⁴ But to be useful (or even possible), institutions must actually work in context. As Loftis recognizes by the end, he should have just listened to the history of the island and taken the curse seriously. In institutional terms, there was no mechanism by which the constituents could reveal their real preferences. It took real badgering by Wyck, basically just a random angry guy, to get him to appreciate the forces that influence the economic success of the island. Whether these forces were real or just the interplay of community dynamics kind of doesn’t matter; they must be resolved before he can reach his goals of a more prosperous community. That is where the creativity of institutional design comes in.

Loftis had a singular goal of replicating the success of a completely different place; for one thing, Martha’s Vineyard reportedly has had zero curses. Every path towards success ultimately must be tailored towards the community and environment it travels through. Consider a key part of the curse: native born Widow’s Bay residents cannot physically leave the island without some insane fate befalling them. This is an actual throttling of brain drain. Loftis would do well to harness that, perhaps through the local boating apprenticeships to keep institutional knowledge of a core island industry alive. It’s futile to force a new arrangement on a place instead of responding to what’s actually going on. Unfortunately, it must be relearned time and time again. While we know a lot of things may work (like internet access or good utilities), since it’s still just people living in a place, communities ultimately prosper when their specific needs are met and they have space to grow into.

1. Also, his name sounds a lot like lofty.

2. This is a real ad for the Times, which, with a single column, managed to get many real people to make actual multiday travel plans within days of reading it. Suspicious.

3. It’s unclear what her title actually is.

4. We can use Douglass North’s definition of institutions, which loosely means the formal or informal rules that guide our decisions.