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Democratic City Committee attempts to thwart lawsuit by electing Tracey Gordon to position she can't legally hold.
On March 18, Democratic members of South Philly's 40-B Ward met and elected Tracey Gordon, a neighborhood activist (and one-time Council candidate) to the post of committeeperson - a surprise, considering she's in the middle of a lawsuit against the Democratic City Committee over having been thrown out of exactly that position. Upon hearing of her recent election, Gordon responded by immediately resigning. Wha?
Democratic City Committee attempts to thwart lawsuit by electing Tracey Gordon to position she can't legally hold.
On March 18, Democratic members of South Philly's 40-B Ward met and elected Tracey Gordon, a neighborhood activist (and one-time Council candidate) to the post of committeeperson — a surprise, considering she's in the middle of a lawsuit against the Democratic City Committee over having been thrown out of exactly that position.
Upon hearing of her recent election, Gordon responded by immediately resigning.
Wha?
Here's the deal. In 2010, Gordon, along with five other political newcomers, decided to run for the position of committeeperson in different divisions, without the backing of party bosses. The Democratic City Committee (DCC) responded by filing challenges against their petitions. All but Gordon were knocked off the ballot.
Gordon, however, went on to win the position. Ward leadership, citing an obscure bylaw that says a ward committee can remove someone who has been “unfaithful” to the party, kicked Gordon out anyway, as Holly Otterbein reported at the time.
Gordon, with the backing of a group of insurgent Democrats known as the “Philadelphia Democratic Progressive Caucus,” sued the DCC. Her suit claims that the DCC has no right to throw people out of elected positions at will, and sought to have Gordon reinstated, as well as to obtain an injunction against the party's pulling similar moves in the future.
The rub: Since then, Gordon has been hired as a deputy commissioner under City Commissioner Stephanie Singer. As a deputy commissioner, she's forbidden by ethics laws to engage in political activity — and being a committeeperson would violate that rule.
Gordon has acknowledged the conundrum to CP before, saying that she was simply seeking to be given the choice that she says she earned: The position should be offered to her, and she'd either decline it or resign from the City Commissioners. The point was moot, in other words, until such an offer was made.
What she didn't expect was to be suddenly, and without her participation, reinstated in absentia, as it were. At the beginning of the month, Irv Acklesberg, who represents Gordon in her suit, says he received an invitation for Gordon to attend the ward committee meeting, where the committee would vote to reinstate Gordon. Acklesberg declined on behalf of his client, and suggests that the City Committee was, essentially, setting a trap.
“We think it was basically a set-up,” says Acklesberg. “They tried to put her in conflict [with the ethics rules].”
By simply showing up to the meeting, in other words, Gordon might have risked exposing herself to an ethics violation.(Indeed, City Paper later received a tip that Gordon was in fact occupying both positions).
Acklesberg said Gordon would not attend the meeting, and asked that he and his client be informed of the outcome.
“When I was notified that she had been restored [as committeeperson], she immediately resigned,” he says.
Dan McCaffery, an attorney for the DCC in this case, says the vote wasn't a trap, but a way to “force their hand,” when it came to the suit.
“The relief she was requesting was to be reinstated,” McCaffery says. “So we reinstated her.”
“This is about a group of individuals who identify themselves as the Philadelphia Democratic Progressive Caucus trying to oversee or take charge of the Democratic party of Philadelphia,” he says.
“The lawsuit itself was never really about reinstating Tracey Gordon.”
Both sides agree on that last point: Acklesberg says that the lawsuit will continue, though he's hoping to substitute PDPC in for Gordon as a plaintiff.
“The case was never just about [Gordon],” he says. “It was to prevent the party from doing this, and we're still trying to do that. … They want to retain the power to nullify elections, and the purpose of this lawsuit is to make sure that there is no such legal power so that courageous people like Tracey Gordon will come forward in the future and stand up for office and stand up to this dictatorial party.”
City Commissioner Stephanie Singer says she has no direct knowledge of the recent back-and-forth, but that she and Gordon have both been in close consultation with the city's Board of Ethics over how to properly handle the matter.
She achieved her goal of getting on the city payroll at least.
I love the notion that this deputy commissioner position is supposedly above politics, but then filled w democrat patronage hacks.— samac- EXTRA! EXTRA! Self-proclaimed 'progressive' rag rages against the philadelphia democratic machine.
In the latest attempt to disseminate the truth or something, the City Paper muddles the waters of politics, ethics, "and just what makes this City run" You heard it here first; or, who gives a rat's ass— evankerry - 1) committeeperson positions are not paid, so that was not a payroll bid.
2) the fact that the entire Democratic Party establishment has been fighting her makes it rather hard to imagine that she's a "patronage hack," no? sort of the definition of the opposite, although you could imagine that the new commissioners, on the record in favor of more transparency, might see her as actually a good fit for the job...
*somebody* has an agenda here, but I don't think it's this article, which is pretty balanced overall, facts-wise.— acm_redfox
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