Incumbents , as usual, have upper hand

By MARK McDONALD
mcdonam@phillynews.com 215-854-2646

AS AN INSTITUTION, City Council is a slow-moving beast, ever watchful of public opinion, ever suspicious of change.

Philadelphia voters seem to react the same way. Wholesale removal of incumbents is uncommon.

In fact, except for the arrival of seven newcomers at the start of the Rendell years in the election of 1991, the 17-member Council has changed very slowly, with four newcomers in 1995, three in 1999, and only one in 2003.

In recent years, Philadelphians have weathered an FBI bug in the mayor's office, a councilman being sent to federal prison on a corruption conviction, and a heightened level of acrimony between Council and the mayor.

So it's no surprise that the battle cry for many Council challengers is for reform and change, for fresh faces and new beginnings.

But the possibility of widespread defeat for incumbents is rather small, partly because voter interest is absorbed by the Democratic mayoral primary and also because the incumbents have defensible records.

They can argue with reason that they, too, are reformers, having voted to limit "pay-to-play" in no-bid contracting, to impose campaign-finance limits and for a beefed-up Ethics Board.

In 2003, only one incumbent, Angel Ortiz, went down to defeat, not for his political positions but because he'd been driving for years without a valid driver's license.

With a month until the primary, only at-large member Bill Greenlee and district members Carol Ann Campbell and Daniel Savage face credible threats of losing, and that's largely due to their recent arrival on Council.

All three are ward leaders who were nominated by ward leaders and then elected in a special election last November. None has ever faced a primary election opponent before.

But the trio is politically savvy and can expect substantial help from fellow ward leaders. What's unclear is how important the party organization will be in a large-turnout mayoral primary.

The at-large race
With 14 challengers to the five Democratic incumbents, the at-large race looks like a battle royal, but the field is actually small compared with the last two change-of-mayor elections in 1991 and 1999, when 25 and 29 candidates ran.

Unseating an incumbent requires money, name recognition and deals with ward leaders, and often a helping hand from mayoral candidates.

By that standard, two sons of mayors, lawyers Bill Green, 43, and Sharif Street, 33, are putting together campaigns that have a chance of pushing past one of the incumbents.

Both men are garnering labor support and both hope to be on more than one mayoral ballot on Election Day. And both men say they have ward-leader friends who will push them and cut one of the incumbents from the sample ballots that are handed out on Election Day.

But both men are running with political baggage. In his first election, Green, son of former Mayor Bill Green, comes from a three-generation political family, but he's lived away from the city for substantial periods.

He lived with his family in Georgia for about seven years, returning here in 2005. Political enemies have noted that he only recently got around to changing his Georgia license plate on one of his cars, a complaint that he says shows the "pettiness and smallness of Philadelphia politics."

Street has to contend with the zany presence of his uncle, T. Milton Street, on the at-large ballot. Though Mayor Street has suffered a precipitous decline in popularity, his name remains strong in many African-American neighborhoods.

Whether Philadelphia voters are weary of the Street name remains to be seen, but Sharif Street says he plans to finish in the top three, in part because he's "campaigned more vigorously than any other person running for Council and perhaps any other person running for any other office."

It also doesn't hurt that Sharif Street's ballot position is next to incumbent Wilson Goode Jr. and far from his uncle's name near the end of the list.

A third candidate with a real chance for a political breakthrough is Marc Stier, 51, a former Temple professor and the most prominent candidate coming out of the "reform movement."

A founder of the progressive Neighborhood Networks, he's been endorsed by a variety of labor unions and has a respectable level of ward-leader support. He's also been running television ads on cable.

Stier has gotten a lot of mileage as an opponent of casinos in Philadelphia, spreading his support beyond his base in the Northwest. A Harvard-educated political scientist, Stier says the city's political system is broken, from a fractured mass transit system to failures in crime-fighting to a need for more housing for working families.

While incumbents Goode, James Kenney and Blondell Reynolds Brown have strong legislative records and numerous political alliances, the path to victory will be tougher for Greenlee, 54, and Juan Ramos, 55.

Greenlee, like the other incumbents, expects the party's city committee endorsement, plus he has alliances with ward leaders around the city. He also has numerous union endorsements and he's now advertising on cable television and SEPTA buses.

As the longtime aide to City Councilman David Cohen, who died in 2005, Greenlee says he's worked with people all over the city. And it doesn't hurt that his ballot position is No. 2 right below Kenney.

But some ward leaders say that Greenlee's name comes up as a likely victim of ballot cutting.

Also facing potential retaliation from some ward leaders is Ramos, who challenged and lost a ward-leader race in the 18th ward along the Delaware River.

Ramos gained major support from Mayor Street in 2003 and was able to target Ortiz and narrowly beat him for a fifth-place finish. This year, he's being targeted by Ben Ramos, 50, the former state representative, who also has a better ballot position.

Juan Ramos will counter with broad union support and a constituent-service record that he hopes will translate into votes. He also was author of a law banning trans fats.

District races
In the 4th Council district, stretching from West Philadelphia to East Falls and northwest through Manayunk and Roxborough, Councilwoman Carol Ann Campbell will rely on her close connections to congressman and party chairman Bob Brady and the ward leaders in her district to deliver victory. It may not be enough.

Of the three newcomers to Council, Campbell, who refuses to disclose her age, has been the least active, missing many candidate forums.

By contrast, attorney Matthew McClure, 35, says he's knocked on more than 6,000 doors in the district, raised $150,000 for the campaign, sent multiple direct mailings to voters, and garnered some union support.

Equally busy is Curtis Jones Jr., 49, the former president of the Philadelphia Commercial Development Corp. and an ally of mayoral candidate Chaka Fattah. And like Fattah, Jones has been engaged in door-to-door, grassroots politicking.

In the 7th District — where a majority of residents is Hispanic or African-American and which stretches from North Philadelphia to the far Northeast — newly minted incumbent Daniel Savage, 35, is fending off two politically seasoned opponents – Maria Quinones Sanchez, 38, who lost to Rick Mariano in 1999, and Marnie Aument-Loughrey, 41, ward leader Donna Aument's daughter and a Board of Revision of Taxes employee.

Savage, the son of Tim Savage, the former veteran ward leader who is now a federal judge, can expect strong party and union support and the presence on at least one mayoral ballot in a district that has become increasingly Latino in recent years.

Both challengers say they have decades of community service compared with the brief record Savage has compiled since succeeding his father as ward leader.

Quinones Sanchez, former regional director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, has numerous endorsements from reform groups, has raised more than $100,000, plans a series of direct mail pieces, and is campaigning well beyond her Latino base in the southern end of the district.

Aument-Loughrey almost beat state Rep. John Taylor in 2000 and has done community work through a Kensington civic association.

In the city's Northwest and in a category all her own is Councilwoman Donna Miller, 60, who has had multiple opponents each time she's run for office and each time has won with fewer than half the votes cast.

This time, Miller faces two hard-driving opponents — Cindy Bass, 39, who previously ran for state Senate and is an aide to Congressman Chaka Fattah, and Irv Ackelsberg, 56, a former Community Legal Services attorney with a reform agenda, including his opposition to a proposed casino in Nicetown.

Miller has been endorsed by her district's ward leaders.

While other district incumbents face opposition, some of it spirited, there's little evidence they're in any trouble.

For example, in the 2nd District running along the Delaware River from South Philadelphia to the lower Northeast, former Redevelopment Authority attorney Vern Anastasio, 37, styles himself a "reform" candidate, but on the hot issue of opposition to the two proposed casinos, he can't get past incumbent Frank DiCicco's own anti-casino leadership.

Indeed, in the last decade, DiCicco, 60, has had a hand in most reform issues, from tax cuts and ethics to campaign finance and proposals to rewrite the antiquated zoning code.

City Council President Anna Verna, 75, faces a challenge from former Philadelphia Housing Authority attorney Damon K. Roberts, 36, who has attacked her as a "Fumocrat," a reference to state Sen. Vince Fumo, who is under federal indictment.

And Councilwoman Marian Tasco, 69, has three opponents. The most energetic is Raymond Jones, 43, a co-founder of the anti-violence group, Men United for a Better Philadelphia, but he's a newcomer to the district. *