While an unusually low turnout is expected in Philadelphia’s low-key mayoral primary on Tuesday, the only real suspense — at least on the Democratic side — is precisely how many Democrats will reluctantly cast a protest vote for former state Sen. T. Milton Street, Sr., Mayor Michael Nutter’s only rival on the primary ballot.
The flamboyant Street, after all, is the only alternative for Democrats looking to express their disappointment and frustration with the Nutter administration at the ballot box.
This year’s Democratic mayoral primary is dramatically different from the one in 2007, when Nutter surged in the campaign’s final weeks to register a double-digit win in a contentious five-way battle for the Democratic nomination. Then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois endorsed Rep. Chaka Fattah, one of Nutter’s primary opponents that spring, and wealthy businessman Tom Knox, yet another one of Nutter’s Democratic rivals, reportedly spent $12 million in that hotly-contested race.
This year things couldn’t be any more dissimilar. Nutter, the city’s third African-American mayor, faces only token opposition in the primary and he couldn’t have asked for a more controversial or arguably unpopular opponent in Milton Street, brother of former Mayor John F. Street.
A former hot dog vendor who once served in the Pennsylvania legislature, Street was released from federal prison last year after serving 26 months for tax evasion.
He’s also Philadelphia’s most colorful political gadfly.
Forced to share cramped quarters with two other young lawmakers shortly after being elected to the Pennsylvania House in 1978, Street protested by pitching a tent on the Capitol lawn until he received better office space.
His antics have grown more outrageous over the years.
Despite waging what can only be described as an unorthodox campaign, the 72-year-old Street insists that his penniless mayoral candidacy isn’t some sort of publicity stunt. “The people in the community don’t see it as a joke,” said Street. “The people in the community are commending me for trying to represent them. They believe that they should have a choice.”
Hampered by a profound lack of resources, Street, who is something of a perennial candidate in Philadelphia, hasn’t been able to afford any television or radio spots — or much of anything else in the way of traditional campaign advertising — but steadfastly maintains that his message of curbing violent crime and speaking for those who’ve been neglected by the Nutter administration is beginning to resonate in Philadelphia’s poorer African-American neighborhoods.
He also has the endorsement of the city’s firefighters’ union and AFSCME’s District Council 33, representing 9,900 blue-collar workers who’ve been working without a contract since July 2009.
Street believes he has an outside chance of pulling the mother of all upsets on Tuesday.
But Mayor Nutter isn’t worried about Milton Street. He’s worried about another Street — his brother, and for good reason.
As it turns out, one of the more interesting developments in this otherwise somnolent race occurred last month when former Mayor John Street, Milton’s younger brother and a longtime nemesis of the incumbent mayor, switched his voter registration from Democrat to independent, prompting all kinds of wild speculation that the former two-term mayor, who was barred from seeking a third consecutive term four years ago, might consider challenging Nutter as an independent candidate in November.
Though unlikely, it’s not an impossibility. Stranger things have happened and now that there’s been a four-year interval, there’s nothing preventing the former mayor from running again, a la the late Frank L. Rizzo in 1983, 1987 and 1991 — his last two attempts as a Republican.
Moreover, two of the strongest third-party mayoral campaigns in the city’s history were waged by African-American politicians: attorney Charles W. Bowser, running on the short-lived Philadelphia Party in 1975; and city councilman Lucien Blackwell, who ran on the now-defunct Consumer Party ticket in 1979.
Most pundits, however, believe that such a scenario isn’t likely to happen unless Milton Street, who’s lost multiple races for Congress, the Pennsylvania legislature and city council — occasionally running on his own T. Milton Street Party — makes a surprisingly strong showing of, say, 35 or 40 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary.
Most seasoned political observers don’t expect that to happen.
“My guess is that Milton gets about twenty percent of the vote,” state Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia told Uncovered Politics on Sunday. Cohen, the longest-serving member of the Pennsylvania legislature, believes that most of Nutter’s Democratic critics — and there are quite a few — will likely abstain from the mayor‘s race rather than cast a protest vote for the wily and unpredictable Street.
Coupled with his recent imprisonment for income tax evasion, Cohen said that Street’s appeal is obviously very limited. According to Cohen, many Democrats have never forgiven Street for his party-switching shenanigans in 1981, which resulted in giving the GOP control of the Pennsylvania Senate.
Activist Sherrie Cohen is one of fourteen Democratic candidates for City Council At-Large in Tuesday's primary.
A much closer contest for mayor has developed on the Republican side, where party-endorsed candidate Karen Brown — a lifelong Democrat until entering the mayoral race two months ago — faces a spirited challenge from nationally-renowned privacy expert John Featherman, a former Libertarian who had briefly challenged then-Sen. Rick Santorum for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in 2006.
While most insiders give Brown a slight edge in the race, Featherman shouldn’t be counted out. The 46-year-old Center City realtor has been endorsed by the widely-read Philadelphia Inquirier — the city’s largest newspaper — and his long-shot candidacy has even generated some national attention, largely the result of one of the more imaginative and zany political ads of the 2011 election cycle.
Featherman, who was recently endorsed by the Independence Hall Tea Party, says that he’s the only real Republican in the race — and the only true fiscal conservative, to boot.
Republicans haven’t elected a mayor in Philadelphia since 1947, and are vastly outnumbered in the heavily Democratic City of Brotherly Love by a margin of 6 ½ to 1.
One of Philadelphia’s most closely watched races on Tuesday will be the crowded Democratic race for five City Council At-Large seats, a lively contest featuring no fewer than fourteen candidates, including all five incumbents.
While three of the incumbents appear relatively safe, the real battle is for the fourth and fifth spots on the Democratic ticket where challengers Andy Toy, an Asian-American economic development specialist who’s making his second bid for city council, and social activist Sherrie Cohen, an attorney who has worked closely with the homeless and whose father, David Cohen — long regarded as the “Conscience of the City” — served as Philadelphia’s most progressive and independent voice on city council for 29 years until his death at the age of ninety in 2005, are believed to have a realistic chance of unseating two of the incumbents.
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