Tag: Topic

How the Republican Party chooses a candidate to support in Philadelphia

Michael Meehan is a powerful guy in the city’s Republican Party – for whatever that means. But it occurred to me that that isn’t always explained why.

One doesn’t need Meehan’s permission to run, of course. But this state’s elections, like those in much of the country, expect it. The blessing of the Republican committee comes with the promise of making the ballot and much less competition than in the Democratic Party. In the small pond of the Republican Party, Meehan holds influence to divvy available jobs, which keeps some Philadelphians registered with the party. Thus, in deciding that the party will support a particular candidate, ward leaders and committeemen rarely deviate from Meehan’s choices.

One can briefly encapsulate the selection process thusly: the Republican Party selection committee – which Michael Meehan leads – chooses a candidate and the party’s 67 ward leaders ratify that decision. Meehan’s control over the committee and effective sway over most ward leaders makes him as powerful as an unelected Republican can be in this city.

Photo courtesy of History Cooperative.org.

Pennsylvania: a review of racial politics displayed in Rendell and Swann battle of 2006

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

For those most interested in the seeming hesitance for black voters, particularly, to resist voting for the Republican Party, one of the most interesting thoughts is if a black candidate outside the Democratic Party ran. I was asked one question after my TURF presentation and defense of this thesis project and that was just it.

Do you think a black Republican candidate could sway black voters towards the GOP?

“No,” I said.

I have written on the dilemma of black hesitance to go Republican here before. It is a lot trickier than we often think.

Philadelphia has never seen a black candidate run for a citywide office without the “D” after his name, so I answered the question using the most recent, most local example.

Continue reading Pennsylvania: a review of racial politics displayed in Rendell and Swann battle of 2006

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.

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

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.

Continue reading Post-racial urban politics: hardly

The effects of national politics in the local scene

Photo courtesy of JFK Library.

Eight years next month, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton was stumping for then-outgoing City Council President John F. Street in his bid to become Philadelphia’s next mayor, as election day was nearing and Street was facing hot competition from Republican challenger Sam Katz.

Rallying at LaSalle University, Street at his side, Clinton campaigned vigorously.

I want you to know I came here not as President to tell you how to vote. But I hope you will listen to me as someone who has tried to be a good friend to Philadelphia.”

Clinton was known to have a good relationship with Ed Rendell, who had left just before his mayoral term expired to serve as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

But, in an article by the New York Times, Clinton noted his uncertainty on the power national political leaders can exert on local elections.

Continue reading The effects of national politics in the local scene

Philadelphia magazine: Can Michael Nutter be a reformer?

Can an established Democrat in a city that has seen nothing but Democratic rule for more than 50 years really be a reformer?

Back in January, Philadelphia magazine had a great profile of Philadelphia’s likely next Mayor, who is charged to answer that question. The story, written by Jason Fagone, and appropriately called “Michael Nutter’s Dilemma” ran with the tagline: Is this man too much of a reformer to be mayor? Or so hungry to be mayor that he can’t be a real reformer?

There is Nutter the media marvel, who was lauded as the smart, savvy, outside candidate:

The moral narrative fills the gap in Nutter’s bio by suggesting a set of character traits and instincts that would serve him well as CEO of the city. Even the way he’s running his campaign — declaring his candidacy four months before his nearest competitor, thereby subjecting himself to the city’s new limits on fund-raising — boosts his executive cred. “There was never any mystery or cloud,” Nutter told a group of his donors at the Ritz-Carlton, contrasting himself with Fattah, Brady, Evans and Knox, who hadn’t declared yet. “Is he going to run? Is he not going to run? It’s called decision-making… all of you are business people. … That’s what being a chief executive is all about.”

Continue reading Philadelphia magazine: Can Michael Nutter be a reformer?

Atlanta: give me your Republican mayors

I may be finding a trend.

At some point, two party systems went missing in our country’s great cities, and no one seems to care.

Scant a city is without some complaints of at least a lackluster Republican Party, yet I am finding a dearth of even academics or journalists who know where – or even when – they went in most cities.

Atlanta is a perfect example.

I had trouble finding book sources in Temple’s library and even Internet sources noting historical political party information of Atlanta mayors. Indeed, I couldn’t figure out when the last Republican was.

I first reached out to Dr. Gregory Hall, a professor of political science at the respected and historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta. He kindly passed my query out to his colleagues. The result was a whole lot of apologies, but no real answers.

Because of that common reaction that seems to nestle somewhere around ‘no one asked, so no one cared, so no one remembered,’ another common reaction I have gotten is those most knowledgeable working to find where a Republican may have been.

I got just such a reaction today, after moving away from academics.

Upon a recommendation from Dr. Hall and following my own path, I moved on to the newspapermen of Atlanta, a city of 486,000. I sent out emails to a handful of reporters from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the big paper in town.

Today, I received this from David Pendered, who was described as having “the longest institutional memory” by Jim Tharpe, Pendered’s fellow political writer at the Journal-Constitution, in an email from May 30.

Date: Wed 20 Jun 18:59:12 EDT 2007
here’s a thought, but it would be a stretch for your theory: atlanta had a wealthy mayor in the 1960s named ivan allen. he basically ensured the city stepped up to appropriately handle martin luther king jr’s funeral. and he had a habit of just writing personal checks to pay a bill for a city service he thought shouid be provided to residents, but the city didn’t have the money. that could be viewed as a patrician republican. but there’s no doubt he was, at the time, a democrat.

It seems that the top academics and journalists in one of the largest cities in the country have no idea when City Hall was last run by anyone other than a Democrat. Strange.

It may be that a two-party system in the urban America is more complex than I am thinking of it. What makes a Republican in a city when he has to cater to demographics unlike those of his national party. Business ties and a fiscal focus may seem a traditional conservative, but if a city’s population won’t elect Republicans, they naturally tend to viability, in this case becoming Dems, a natural case of survival.

Mark that for important paper topic.

Phoenix: an active urban Republican Party

A few hours ago, I got an email from Ed Montini, a political writer for the Arizona Republic, a regional newspaper based in Phoenix.

It comes as no surprise that a city of 1.5 million, better than 75 percent of whom are white, can sustain some form of a Republican Party.

Date: Tue 12 Jun 17:02:51 EDT 2007
Mr. Wink,

Unlike the rest of the state, Phoenix elections are held on a “nonpartisan” basis, though everyone knows the party affiliations of everyone else. Kind of a don’t ask, don’t tell election.

Anyway, the last mayor who was Republican was Skip Rimsza, who served from ’94 until ’03, as I remember. The Republican mayor before that would have been Margaret Hance.

I’d guess you could Google Rimsza and get what you needed.

Best,

Ed Montini

It seems likely that the demographics of Philadelphia, 1.5 million and nearly 45 percent black, play into the struggles of the city’s Republican Party. For my paper, I will have to find academic evidence for it, but, of all racial or ethnic groups, it seems blacks are least likely to sway to the GOP, perhaps based on their long ancestral battle for political rights and finding it, most recently, with the Democrats.