When a group of technologists got together to talk about July 4, 2026

Last year, on November 29, 2011, I was able to host a group of civic-minded creative class technologists and entrepreneurs for one of a dozen parlor sessions that Philadelphia civic leader Sam Katz led to garner feedback for USA250, an effort to begin planning for July 4, 2026.

The initiative publicly launched this summer.

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Frank Rizzo 1987 mayoral campaign TV advertisements

With the power of Youtube, it’s interesting to look back at what political advertisements of the past looked like.

It should be no surprise that a stack of TV ads made it online from the failed 1987 Republican campaign of former Democratic Mayor and South Philly folk legend Frank Rizzo. Let’s give them a look.

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Nonpartisan elections: the take by Sam Katz, John Street, and others

Last week I got the opportunity to sit down with former Republican contender for mayor, Sam Katz.

We spoke on a number of subjects, more notably his view of nonpartisan elections in Philadelphia. He told me that he hadn’t given it much thought, not thinking it was worth pursuing.

Today, he followed up on our conversation with more thoughts on the subject.

As a practical matter, election law is controlled by the state—i.e. the legislature. Those laws are made by incumbents. The state has very few legislative and senate districts that are generally considered to be “in play”. So getting members of the House and Senate to vote for a system that would put their renomination at greater risk by enabling people outside of the party that nominated them to have a voice, isn’t something we’re likely to see anytime soon. Pursuing it as a political agenda item, would, in my view, be a waste of time and energy.

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Interview: Sam Katz, a three-time Republican mayoral candidate

This afternoon I was privileged enough to speak with Sam Katz, one of the most successful Republican politicians in Philadelphia in the last half century. Nothing speaks more to the party’s struggles here than the truth of that statement and the realization that Katz has never won a major public office.

It also is important to say that Katz spent much of his life as a registered Democrat and registered as an Independent in May 2007, to retain the possibility of running outside the two-party structure. In the end, he found Michael Nutter a palatable enough candidate to not run at all.

Still, in 1991, 1999 and 2003, he was considered a respectable Republican contender in a city that rarely considers the non-Democrat at all, set aside considering them somewhat palatable. But, Katz grabbed a handful of meaningful endorsements, including former Democratic mayoral candidates Happy Fernandez and John White Jr. in 1999 and former Street confidant Carl Singley in 2003.

There were two topics I wanted most to address with Katz, his general thoughts on the reality of a two-party system in Philadelphia and if nonpartisan elections could add a more competitive element to city-wide elections.

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Bob Barnett: former Sam Katz campaign director

During today’s interview with Ellen Kaplan, former issues director of Sam Katz’s 1999 Republican bid for mayor of Philadelphia and current staffer at the Committee of Seventy, she mentioned the success of Katz’s 1999 campaign director Robert S. Barnett.

I had heard the name, even having mentioned Barnett once before here, back in September when noting his take on the effect of President Bill Clinton on the 1999 mayoral battle between Katz and John Street.

Bob Barnett was one element of a bipartisan, but Democratic-leaning crew leading Katz’s 1999 campaign, which included veteran consultant Neil Oxman, policy director Linda Morrison, and issues director Ellen Kaplan, all Democrats, and Republican consultant Christopher Mottola, as reported by CityPaper.

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Post-racial urban politics: hardly

We have called for and expected the end of mainstream institutional racism in the United States since about the third day after it was exported to this country, maybe 400 years ago.

Back in 1999, when white Republican Sam Katz was challenging black Democrat John F. Street, Katz’s surging success in a city that had nearly as large a black population as white seemed to embolden that notion. Indeed, Katz seemed to make inroads in black communities that hadn’t voted more for a Republican than a Democratic mayoral candidate since 1972, when W. Thatcher Longstreth took on legendary Frank Rizzo, often derided as an outright bigot. Katz won the endorsement of John White Jr., a black former City Council member who lost to Street in the Democratic primary, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

When less than two months before the 1999 election, Martin O’Malley, a white Democrat, won over black voters in his party’s primary to beat out a field of mostly black candidates, the comparisons were sure to be made, as was done by the New York Times.

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Shame of a City: a Philadelphia mayoral election documentary

PlayPlay

In 2003, the Philadelphia mayoral contest was set to be of epic proportions.

It was a rematch of now-incumbent Mayor John F. Street and Republican Sam Katz. In 1999, Katz lost by less than 8,000 votes, the closest election in the history of mayoral popular votes in Philadelphia, particularly considering more than 425,000 votes were cast.

Filmmaker Tigre Hill followed the Katz campaign throughout the election right through Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2003, when it was announced that a recording device was found in Room 215 of City Hall, Street’s mayoral office, and that it was part of an FBI probe.

It became national, indeed, even international news, and Hill chronicled the entire thing. The film is captivating if only for the sheer drama that unfolds, heightened by the normal characters that only Philadelphia can create.

The film was released to DVD on April 10 and there have been a handful of showings. I got to see it myself, as a friend gave me an advanced copy before it was released in April. Last month, Hill was on MSNBC promoting the film, interviewed by Michael Smerconish.

I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in urban politics, documentary work or Philadelphia generally.

See the trailer here on the film’s Web site or as a Quicktime here.

Image is screen shot from documentary.