http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/2/153813/3454

Philadelphia Machine Circles The Wagons Around The Drain
by Chris Bowers, Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 03:38:13 PM EST

Back on Wednesday, a poll came out on the Philadelphia mayoral election (PDF) showing multi-millionaire Tom Knox surging into a clear second place behind Representative Chaka Fattah, and even within the margin of error. Knox's rise has been fueled almost entirely though a series of expensive, self-financed television ad buys over the last two months. This development is a huge shock to pretty much everyone involved in Philadelphia politics. As pretty much a complete outsider to the political scene here, no one had expected Knox to be a significant factor in this election. Six months ago, he was registering only 1% support, and was in a distant seventh place. Considering his current rate of increase and his seemingly unlimited ability to self-finance, it may not be long before he becomes the frontrunner in the campaign.

Also on Wednesday, almost immediately after the poll showing Knox's rise was released, the Philadelphia City Council decided to respond to Knox's surge by introducing a bill repealing their recently installed campaign finance law that limited campaign contributions. Seriously--the plan to repeal their own recently imposed campaign donation limits was hatched the same day the poll came out. At 4 p.m. on Wednesday, about six hours after the poll was released, Young Philly Politics reported the following:
In response to the success that Tom Knox is having with spending his bags of money, I heard through the grape-vine that certain City Council members are going to introduce a bill to suspend or repeal the current contribution limits.

Now, Young Philly Politics is reporting that by mid-afternoon today, the bill to repeal the new campaign finance law had enough co-sponsors to reach a majority. So, in the span of less than two days, after the release of a single poll showing a rich outsider becoming a serious contender, the city went from challenging a court's ruling that the campaign finance law was unconstitutional, to creating legislation that would allow them to repeal the law themselves. Nice.


The lesson here is that the Philadelphia machine has absolutely no principles except the desire to stay in power. Quite literally, the exact moment when they realized that the campaign finance law could prevent their ability to control who won the Democratic nomination for mayor (and thus became the next mayor), they decided to repeal the law. Doing this is such an obviously naked power play against Knox that is actually kind of funny. I mean, moving to repeal a campaign finance law in only a matter of hours after a poll came out showing Know a threat? Could they have chosen a less subtle means of demonstrating their motives behind this move?

I guess the machine's plan in response to Knox is to have their favored candidate or candidates reap unlimited donations from individuals and corporations to whom they will promise a series of favors (cough, Comcast, cough). With unlimited donations available to all candidates, I guess they imagine they will be able to compete with Knox over the airwaves, and hopefully maintain power. It will also benefit the virtually unprecedented number of incumbent city council members who are receiving primary challengers this year (by my last count, only two were going unchallenged, and most of the challengers are coming from the various neighborhood reform movements). Basically, it is an incumbent protection racket.

Of course, it is going to fail. Even if they pass the bill, quite a few incumbents in city council are going down this year. I have heard of non-public polling that shows all of their re-elect numbers, every single one of them, to be hovering around the Mendoza line. Being anyone but the incumbent is going to help here, and raking in huge, reunregulated donations to raise your name ID is just going to result in falling further behind in the polls. Further, one of the main reasons their re-elects are so low is because people think that the machine is only responsive to itself, rather than to city residents. Before now, there certainly was never a time when city council immediately moved to create a new law within six hours of releasing a problem existed. The difference is that this problem directly impacts their own ability to stay in power. And so, not surprisingly, they jumped into action. By contrast, where is the action on crime? On education? On transportation? On housing? They don't act quickly to fix problems that impact residents--only the problems that impact themselves. Members of the city council don't think they answer to their constituents--they think they answer to Bob Brady. You can bet they will pick up a call from Bob Brady no matter where they are and what they are doing, but good luck getting a meeting with your councilman no matter how many times you ask for one.

When the biggest mark against you is that you don't care more about staying in power than about solving the problems affecting the city, it doesn't help that the only decisive action you take in over a decade is to pass a law that will help you stay in power, rather than solve the problems affecting the city. I mean, in 2005, the city passed an ethics reform question with 87% support in the city. This was not the campaign finance reform law, but it certainly showed an overwhelming hunger in the city for ethics reform. Repealing the campaign finance law, and the way it was repealed, is only going strengthen the anti-incumbent, anti-machine sentiment in the minds of voters in the city--not to mention that it is extremely unpopular move. I could hardly think of a better way for members of the city council to substantiate the major marks against them, and seal their own fates this coming May.

The Philadelphia machine may have dealt itself a crippling blow with this move today. If they want to finish themselves off, go for it. The new city council will reinstate the law when they take office next year.

i'll be interested to see what happens with this. of course, it seems very "slimebally" in this article, but of i would like to read a response from the powers-that-be (a.k.a. city council).

this also highlights the issue of campaign financing in general. excluding this example, is it really fair that a multi-millionaire can basically buy support through advertising while a very similar candidate without the financial backing would get left in the dust? my own answer to this question leads to me thinking that some sort of cap on campaign financing might level the playing field. i don't know anything about the specifics of what something like this would involve, so if it is unconstitutional, infeasible, etc. then i guess i would drop my support of it.

My take on it is like this.

A candidate who spends his own money to campaign is better than a candidate who receives unlimted campaign contributions from rich individuals or corporations or other groups because he is not beholden to his contributors for his success.

Also, if limits were placed on how much an individual were allowed to contribute to his own campaign, then it would level the playing field for less wealthy candidates, but the problems you would see are exactly what we are seeing in this Philly example. The entrenched political power brokers would have inordinate power against anyone who was an outsider.

I thik the way campaigns are financed now is the best compromise of the two scenarios above, except that I think more can still be done to prevent groups from holding too much influence over candidates.