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Rage Against the Machine: Political bosses Johnny Doc and Mike Meehan faced rebellion in last night's election.
Last night's election amounted to a rebellion against Philadelphia's political machines.
Rage Against the Machine: Political bosses Johnny Doc and Mike Meehan faced rebellion in last night's election.
Sure, the mayor's race was a given: but at stake on Tuesday was more than a mere mayor. For one thing, there's the looming internal vote for presidency of City Council — which will determine, among other things, the success Mayor Nutter can expect during his next four years.
Then there's the future of the ailing Philadelphia Republican machine, whose boss, Mike Meehan, saw his power challenged on multiple fronts on Tuesday. And if you believe those who argue that the Republican and Democratic machines are really one and the same, you might say the whole dang decades-long structure of Philadelphia political power was under siege.
First, there was the the victory of Al Schmidt over longtime incumbent Joe Duda for a seat with the City Commissioners. Schmidt is one of a band of Philadelphia Republicans staging an insurgency against party boss Mike Meehan. In May, Republican insurgent John Featherman broke ranks and ran against Karen Brown, the machine's choice, for mayor. Featherman lost, but not by much, while Schmidt advanced to the general election.
The City Commissioners office, which oversees elections, is both a source of life-giving patronage for the Republican party and a potentially influential force in city elections. It may not sound as glamorous as mayor, but Al Schmidt's attempt to seize the seat from Duda amounted to a serious challenge to the city's political machine.
Then there was the bare-knuckled battle by union boss John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty to defeat outsider candidate David Oh in his bid for City Council At-Large. (Oh came out ahead of his leading opponent, party pick Al Taubenberger, but by less than two hundred votes with more to count on Tuesday night.)
Oh, as you may recall, came under fire — just a few months, it might be observed, after winning a punishing victory over his opponents in the city's Republican Primary in may — when the Daily News published a series of articles suggesting Oh might have mis-characterized his military career. Not long after, various news outlets reported that a group of veterans had staged a public shaming of Oh. Around the same time, anonymous (and illegal) campaign fliers calling Oh a “faker” began to appear.
The fliers, as this author observed in last week's print edition (and in an epic, 3,000-word on-line version, which you can read at our blog, the Naked City), proved beyond a doubt that someone was funding a smear campaign against Oh. Digging deeper, CP found that one Joe Eastman, who had brought together eight veterans to criticize Oh, has a longstanding personal grudge against Oh. Several established local veterans groups, in fact, supported Oh wholeheartedly.
Meanwhile, party bosses have plenty of reasons to keep Oh down. A candidate independent of the Republican machine, Oh poses a clear and present danger to a plan by Dougherty, long in the works, to prevent the election of Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco as Council President and potentially stymie Mayor Nutter and the alliances backing him (Tasco is favored by Mayor Nutter; her presumed opponent, Councilman Darrell Clarke, is not.)
A few days after the publican of that article, new fliers appeared, this time bearing a signature: Philly Phuture — a PAC controlled by John Dougherty.
The Oh vote is too close to call — but when CP ran into a clearly excited John Featherman last night, he had this to say about Tuesday night's election: “[Republican party boss] Meehan just lost control of the Commissioners seat — if he loses to David Oh now, that means that people who run for office will no longer have to go get his help,” Featherman said breathlessly. “This is huge.”
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