send to a friend | print | comment

Petition challenges, the GOP & the decline of Philadelphia

I’ve commented previously on the use of petition challenges to knock would-be contenders off the ballot in Pennsylvania. I think it’s obnoxious in all cases, a textbook example of form over substance that rewards insiders and leaves the public without real competition in many instances.

But the Philadelphia Republican Party has taken things to a degree I never imagined.

A little background here: the Philly GOP doesn’t win many elections and (in my experience) doesn’t try very hard to do so, either. An outsider faction partly led by former city controller candidate Al Schmidt, and backed by the state party, has been trying to change that by electing insurgent committee people to positions (many of them vacant) in the city party. The insiders, led by perennial party “counsel” Mike Meehan, fought back with dubious petition challenges—at least one of them supposedly filed by someone who died prior to the challenge period (The Inquirer, ever alert to a good story, ran a picture of the individual’s tombstone in a recent edition). Meehan has argued that the dubious petitions resulted from mistakes by local leaders, but it’s not clear how many people are buying that.

One might ask, who cares about control of a party that doesn’t win any elections, anyway? The answer is that an effective minority party is a vital part of any political system. One reason that the city is so ineffectively run—and receives such mediocre representation in Washington—is that it’s effectively a one-party regime, whose political leaders have little if any incentive to make things any better. A potential oppinent to Congressman Bob Brady (D-1) was recently knocked off the ballot in a challenge that, some have suggested, was abetted by Republican collaborators. Beyond the petty corruption represented by, for example, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, the last source of Republican patronage, this ultimately means less efficient government and a weaker, less productive economy for all in the region.

This group of insurgents, also led by Matt Wolfe of the University City area, has mounted a challenge to the petition challenges (got that?) in Republican wards.

Here’s hoping they succeed, and the city begins to move back toward a competitive, two-party system. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

April 22, 2010 at 1:51 pm

--Michael Livingston

Tags: Philadelphia, Republican Party

comments

comments [4] | post a comment