Recently, certain important Presidential candidates from the Democratic Party made their way to neighboring Drexel University to participate in one of many debates leading up to the “red and blue-palooza” of Election 2008. Perhaps pushed back behind queries of Iraq War Policy and credos towards unidentified flying objects was another, equally important election, at least for the local area: the Philadelphia Mayoral race. As a resident of Philadelphia for all of my relatively short life, I have witnessed the seat of Mayor filled by such notable personalities as “Fast Eddie” Rendell and John “corruption to almost make Boss Tweed blush” Street. In both these cases the Democratic candidates perpetuated the political machine that has run this city since 1952, the last year a Republican, Bernard Samuel, held the position. As Election Day approaches (and will have passed by the time this article is published,) the trend of Democratic dominance in the City That Loves You Back (I opt here to omit the standard “brotherly love” designation oft-repeated by over-zealous sportscasters and out-of-town news anchors,) seems to be without any opposition or threat of upheaval from the Grand Ole Party. Currently, the Democratic candidate and heavy favorite, Former City Council Member Michael Nutter, has a tremendous lead over the Republican challenger, President of the Greater Northeast Chamber of Commerce Al Taubenberger, by a margin estimated to be in excess of seventy-five percentage points by some preliminary polls. Whether or not this trend is beneficial for the city is certainly up for debate; even the question of why the town paints its ballots blue is a nebulous one.
If there is one issue that sheds a dismal light on the current Democratic administration of Mayor John Street, in office since 1999, it is the exponential escalation of crime throughout the city. This past week Officer Chuck Cassidy of the Philadelphia Police Department was fatally shot during a robbery on 66th and Broad Street. The married father of three was of the same parish where I attended grade school and am still a parishioner; I even graduated with one of his daughters. Yet, while this atrocity hits close to home, there have been countless other homicides of both civilians and law enforcement over the past few years, shattering records and leaving the city in crisis. Numerically, per one-hundred thousand citizens in American cities with populations in excess of one million, Philadelphia has led the nation since 2006 with 1562 homicides. While Street has tried to combat this epidemic with certain initiatives such as “Operation Safe Streets” and community-based programs that span socio-religious divides, the growth in murder rate has persisted, perhaps fueling the steady decline in population within Philadelphia.
Eliminating the corruption that has plagued city government has been one of the election’s hot topics since the Democratic mayoral primary, and while John Street was often subject to federal wiretappings and related probes concerning alleged insider deals, the current Democratic Mayoral candidate Michael Nutter should be lauded for spearheading anti-corruption legislation within city council. Although the aforementioned issues have both been blemishes in the Democratically-led city for decades, there have been tremendous advances within Philadelphia, leading some publications—National Geographic Explorer of note—to consider it the “next great city.” New residencies and neighborhood rehabilitations have been conducted from Center City and throughout other troubled neighborhoods; prospects remain for revitalizing Penn’s Landing and the surrounding Delaware Riverfront, and the city has remained a hub for some of the finest universities and cultural experiences of the country. But does all of this permit, even rationalize, the one-party system of Philadelphia politics? Why is it that Democrats in the city outnumber Republicans five to one? The answer is not clear-cut nor can it be allotted to generic socioeconomic trends.
One of the major answers given to the current political climate is the contention that minorities are more prone to the join the Democratic Party, since historically the Republican party has been cast as unsympathetic, even ignorant, to social welfare programs and even basic multi-racial representation. This response, in itself rather pejorative and generalizing, is an unsatisfactory explanation for why over seventy-five percent of the voting public in Philadelphia supports the Democratic Party. Historically, a surge in Democratic registrations emerged immediately after the Great Depression in the 1930s. For years, Labor Unions have all but unanimously backed the Democratic ticket within the city as the party has consistently held a more-pro-union stance than their Republican counterparts, who often in a flurry of post-Reaganomics hangover are seen as pro-big-business and corporations. In my own family, my father, a member of a union, has often been “directed” to pull the Democratic lever (or push the Democratic button; ah how far we have come from hanging chads) in mayoral, gubernatorial, and national elections. In a city often portrayed both in Hollywood and among lazy national correspondents as being a “blue collar” town, it would make sense that the heavily unionized workers would back the Democratic Party. For this reason, it can best be determined that Philadelphia’s Democratic juggernaut is based on economic rather than social divisions. With the only sizable Republican contingent located in the Northeast section of the city, an area that generally has a higher per capita income than the rest of the city, this proposition seems to find credence.
When I make my brief trip home this Election Day, I will cast my vote for the Republican candidate Al Taubenberger since he is more likely to address some of the concerns of the long-ignored Northeast than Michael Nutter. In many respects, I bear the futile knowledge that I am probably backing a losing horse. My family, all Republicans, is among the “last of the Mohicans” of registered Republicans in a region that all but blotted out the red from the city of Philadelphia. It almost seems a waste to return home, if only to exercise my duty as an American citizen. When I enter the public school gymnasium converted to an impromptu voting station that Tuesday night, I will cast that vote, greatly disappointed that the party closest to my personal ideologies is all but near extinction in my hometown, yet generally relieved that I, the only one in my family, registered as a Democrat. The old saying goes that if you can’t beat them you might as well join them; I suppose if outright opposition won’t work, some subterfuge might just do the trick. Call it an elephant in a jackass’ body.
