Michael Nutter For Mayor

Here are the Philadelphia candidates for mayor: Michael Nutter, Tom Knox, Chaka Fattah, Bob Brady, and Dwight Evans. You can check out their websites and see where they stand on the issues.

Here’s the latest poll (.pdf).

I’ve met all of them except Bob Brady.
Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah are Philadelphia’s main politicians in the House of Representatives. Brady recently became chairman of the House Administration committee when Juanita Millender-McDonald passed away. This is ironic because the House Administration committee is in charge of overseeing all federal elections. And Bob Brady is an old-school Philly machine boss. I’m not accusing him of stuffing any ballot boxes, but you know what I’m saying…its gotta make the Republicans nervous. Brady is a member of the progressive caucus, but is the antithesis of the progressive movement in this city. I do not know a single politically active person (other than ward heelers) that is going to vote for Brady.

Chaka Fattah is another matter. Fattah sits on the powerful House Appropriations committee. He’s in a position to bring home some badly needed bacon to the city. I’m generally pleased with his work as my congressman. And, having met him, I think he is better suited for the job that he has than he is for any kind of executive position. No details here…just my gut feeling. As a result, I haven’t really cared what his proposals are. I think he is the wrong personality type for the job. You can read an impassioned endorsement of Fattah here. For the record, though, I don’t like Fattah’s position on gambling and I think his ideas on housing are from bizarro world.

Dwight Evans is a very attractive candidate. In many ways I think he might have the best combination of policies and skills. Evans is the chairman of the House Appropriations committee in Harrisburg and he has an excellent relationship with Governor Ed Rendell. Unfortunately, he has languished in the polls and seems unlikely to pull off a miracle.

That leaves me with a choice between Tom Knox and Michael Nutter. Both Knox and Nutter have been solicitous of the progressive community. They are both running as ‘reform candidates’. Tom Knox, however, is financing his own campaign. Michael Nutter, on the other hand, enacted the first real campaign finance reform when he was on the city council. I have real differences with Michael Nutter (over the smoking ban, for example), but I just have a better feeling about him than I do about Knox. It makes me uncomfortable that Knox is attempting to buy the mayor’s seat by saturating the air-waves with advertising rather than doing the hard work of building a coalition.

I admit that my judgment on this is not based very heavily on policy. The reason is that I don’t really believe most of the campaign promises and I have had the good fortune to actually meet and talk to the candidates. This allows me to base my endorsement on a more personal sense of the individual men. I think Knox, Nutter, and Evans all have personalities that will allow them to be effective leaders and good ambassadors for the city. I don’t think Evans has a real chance to win. And I have more trust and confidence that Nutter will do what he says he wants to do. I think he is a more authentic reform candidate.

So, I plan on voting for Nutter. And I think he will be an excellent mayor. Moreover, his election will a huge vindication for the progressive movement. No one in this city thought that we would be talking about Knox and Nutter, rather than Brady and Fattah. But things have changed. Even the racial divide has changed. Nutter, who is black, is getting much of his support from the white community, while Knox, who is white, is getting a lot of support from the black community. Perhaps the best part is that no one is really running a racially divisive campaign. All the candidates have been running pretty positive campaigns. Knox and Nutter seem to have a mutual admiration for each other and a mutual loathing of Brady and the traditional machine politics of the city.