Take a look at this?
Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up.
The dispute centers on the dispensing of “street money,” a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city’s Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.
Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot soldiers and loyalists who make up the party’s workforce.
It is all legal — but Obama’s people are telling the local bosses he won’t pay.
That sets up a culture clash, pitting a candidate who promises to transform American politics against the realities of a local political system important to his presidential hopes. Pennsylvania holds its primary April 22.
Obama’s posture confounds neighborhood political leaders sympathetic to his cause. They caution that if the senator from Illinois withholds money that gubernatorial, mayoral and presidential candidates have willingly paid out for decades, there could be defections to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And the Clinton campaign, in contrast, will oblige in forking over the money, these ward leaders predict.
[h/t to jpol]
In Philadelphia, we have perhaps the most active and successful progressive movement in the country and we have been working to reform Philly politics through organizations like the Committee of Seventy and Philly for Change, and by electing candidates like Mayor Michael Nutter, councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, state Senator Tony Payton, and (hopefully) state Senator Anne Dicker. It’s all about cleaning up after the old machine. And Obama’s decision to eschew machine pay-offs fits right in with our reforming spirit. It shows that he will not do anything to win. He knows he can win the right way.
