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The first words out of City Commissioner Joe Duda's mouth last night were neither a greeting, question, nor the answer to a question posed to him.
Instead, Duda marched onstage at a Monday's City Commissioners candidates debate, sponsored by the the Committee of Seventy, League of Women Voters, and Philly.com, and made a demand to the crowd assembled:
"I was told there would be no cameras and no pictures taken," he said. "No recording of any kind allowed in the audience," he stated.
The sponsors have videotaped every one the dozen or so candidate forums they've held this year; the previous forum that night, for City Council At-Large candidates, had been videotaped; and a camera person was actively manning the camera for this one.
Nonetheless, they withdrew the camera. And with that, Philly lost one of the most interesting public debates we've had in a while.
Three candidates for City Commissioner were present - Democrat Stephanie Singer, who defeated 36-year-incumbent Marge Tartaglione; Al Schmidt, the republican insurgent; and longtime Republican incumbent Joe Duda. Schmidt and Duda are facing off in a tight race which carries tremendous importance to a group of Republicans trying to overthrow the Philly GOP's current establishment, led by its counsel, Mike Meehan.
And Schmidt had come to fight.
*
Politics in Election Oversight
Schmidt and Singer, both ward leaders, have pledged to resign that position if they become City Commissioners.
Schmidt called the fact that Duda and Tartaglione have remained ward leaders even as they hold positions managing elections a conflict of interest.
Schmidt: "Not only do you have City Commissioners advocating for certain candidates and running the election. but they're in their wards on election day, doing ward leader work on elections day, and they're paid $120,000 to run elections ... not to be ward leaders."
Duda's response: "I think the whole system, if you're going to change the whole system, fine — but right now, the rules are a certain way."
Schmidt rebutted.
"Everything the commissioner just said is exactly what's wrong with the office — "
When applause broke out, Duda said: "No applause. I can get my people to start applauding."
Schmidt continued, "— a feeling that every fault of the office is the result of someone else: the Committee of Seventy nagging for improvements, reporters, others, really treated poorly by elected servants."
Duda: "How much time do you have to respond?"
When Seventy's Ellen Kaplan answered "30 seconds," Duda said, in reference to Schmidt's rebuttal, "Ok, well I think we're all out of that."
*
Handling of Elections
Schmidt: "Complaints don't really matter unless they're acted upon. In 2008, the problems that came into the Commissioners office were handled by ... Commissioner Tartaglione's daughter, Rene Tartaglione who has since had to resign because of multiple ethics violations related to elections activities."
Duda: "Bob Lee handled all that, he was the chief administrator. We get all the information, compile it, and turn it all over to the District Attorney and Attorney General."
Schmidt: "It's a fundamental mistake to think you need law enforcement authority to fix some of the problems. ... It's about exposing these problems when they occur."
Duda: "Well we do expose them."
(Singer rebutted that Commissioners have a lot of control over the relationship they have with the agencies that do have police powers and the Commissioners have a lot of moral force to encourage enforcement or not to encourage enforcement and there is room for huge improvement there.")
*
Encouraging Voter Participation
Singer: The City Commissioners office should be the place that makes it easy for people to build engagement and to built excitement around elections. We are ready for this, and this is one of the things I am just so looking forward to doing."
Schmidt: "Fundamentally it's about a term that would never be used to describe the current City Commissioners and that's 'pro-active' — making sure people know how to register, know where the polling places are and it's not left up to other groups to have to tell them. ... THe city commissioners have an obligation to be out registering voters.
Duda: "I do a pretty good job. I got 10,000 republicans where I am."
Schmidt: "It's not about Republicans and Democrats, that' the fundamental problem."
Duda: "You're not letting me finish! I'm saying to you that we have more Democrats than Republicans here. When we go out, we generate the Democrats get excited and they go out. And we have a great turnout. I try to encourage that through all the ward leaders in the city. It hasn't been easy, but we've been trying and I've been encouraging everybody."
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