I had the good fortune to meet New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell last summer, while the whaler Charles W. Morgan of Mystic was visiting its original homeport in southeastern Massachusetts.

I recalled that visit this week, as Mitchell was locked down in negotiations with the developer who wants to build a casino on the New Bedford waterfront, one that would be managed as a sort of Foxwoods East by the Mashantucket Pequots.

When I chatted with him on the deck of the Morgan last summer, it struck me that Mitchell seemed surprisingly conversant in New England casino gambling business trivia. He already knew the CEO of Foxwoods.

And yet I had the sense that a casino project, which seemed destined to come New Bedford's way, was not especially high on the mayor's wish list. He specifically said he would rather not see one on the waterfront, if it had to come.

Mitchell, on the other hand, was glad to talk about plans to make the New Bedford waterfront a manufacturing staging area for big offshore wind projects, with the little city that once lit the world with whale oil poised to take a leading role in 21st-century energy production.

The grandson of a New Bedford fisherman whose name is inscribed on a memorial wall of the city's famous Seamen's Bethel, a 19th-century chapel now in the heart of a national park dedicated to whaling, Mitchell is also a determined proponent of the city's fishing industry.

Indeed, from what little has seeped out of the negotiations between Mitchell and the casino developers, it seems clear Mitchell is trying to keep a casino development from muscling too much of the fishing fleet off the waterfront.

Renderings of the initial proposal show a casino built inside an old waterfront power plant, with some glass towers alongside, directly on the harbor. The developers are promising to pay for the substantial cleanup of the power plant site.

Both Mitchell and the developer, KG Urban Enterprises of New York, this week submitted a request for more time for the developer to complete its gambling license application, missing a 5 p.m. Monday deadline.

The commission is expected to decide at a meeting Thursday whether to grant the extension. The New Bedford site is one of three in the running for the southeastern Massachusetts casino license.

The negotiations between the mayor and developer have been tense, with the developer's team at one point saying the deal was all but dead. But they went back to the negotiating table last week and together agreed this week to ask the state for more time.

Mitchell is an impressive political force in a struggling city that was once one of the richest business capitals in the country.

He put himself through Harvard with a combination of financial aid and income from working summers at factories and warehouses back home. He got his law degree from George Washington University and eventually became a federal prosecutor in Boston before going into politics in his native city.

New Bedford voters should feel good about his representing them in negotiations with casino developers.

In November 2013, he became the first sitting mayor in New Bedford since 1866 - back when the Morgan was still a new ship - not to be opposed for re-election.

Curiously, he is the 38th mayor of the city, who led his city's official welcome of the Morgan last summer on the homeward leg of the ship's 38th voyage.

I like the idea of the Pequots following the Morgan to New Bedford.

Actually, the tribe has its own strong ties to New Bedford, given the large number of American Indians who traveled the world on whaling ships out of New Bedford and New London.

That association of Indians with the whaling industry is being jointly studied now by Mystic Seaport and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

A lot of things would have to happen between now and then. But it's possible that some day the Morgan could be asked to return to New Bedford and tie up alongside a casino managed by the Pequots.

First, the developer would have to accede to Mayor Mitchell's dogged defense of the fishing industry, which he seems determined will remain the principal focus of the New Bedford waterfront.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct