A dismal end to the primaries
It was a dismal primary day in Philadelphia. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12% of registered voters bothered, a new local record in voter apathy. The shocking part is that that many of us did bother to cast ballots. As arranged, DA Lynne Abraham cruised to a victory over Seth Williams. Machine candidate Alan Butkovitz won 95% of the vote in the City Controller’s race, with more progressive opponent John Braxton managing to get around 5% of the vote through the write-ins he asked voters to try following getting bumped from the ballot on filing technicalities flagged by the Butkovitz campaign.
I encourage everyone to write-in Braxton and Williams in November. With a 4.5:1 city registration ratio between Dems and Reps, you risk nothing in terms of electing Republicans by casting a thoughtful, gutsy vote for either fellow. The completely craven manner in which most of the city’s ‘liberal’ endorsing organizations hold on to machine candidates which don’t hold their avowed views in the face of this "risk-free" factor is positively infuriating.
As usual, judges are bribing their way to the bench (this from the Philadelphia Daily News):
"The endorsed candidates shelled out $35,000 to the [city Democratic] party and much more than that to "consultants" and individual ward leaders as "insurance." "
These powerful positions pay in the range of $180,000 annually for a 10 year term; a good investment in one’s financial picture, no? From the same article:
"Democratic City Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Bob Brady attributed the results to the good fortune of lucky ballot positions for the challengers.
"In a low turnout election like this, it was just ballot position," Brady said. "A bunch of people came in and voted for the top four or five. There’s nothing you can do."
All four of the unendorsed candidates who won were among the top eight ballot positions."
This is hypocrisy in the extreme. Brady himself is the automatic recipient of the # 1 position in balloting for his Congressional position. You may recall that my position running against him was # 7, even though only 3 candidates were in the race, and although we had to gather 3x the number of signatures for ballot access that the Brady campaign needed. No bitching about your bribers not winning a rigged game now, Bob.
The party is now whining that we need to switch to "merit" selection of judges, seeing as 4 of the 8 judge hopefuls who ponied up a minimum of $140,000 in protection money to the Democrats’ coffers were tripped up by a semblence of democracy, however anemic and random. Precisely how would "merit" be measured and who would do the measuring? Given that the aim appears to be to give party bosses even more control over the judge selection process, having 1 in 10 Philadelphians hit buttons based upon names and randomized ballot locations suddenly begins to look good in comparison.
Fewer than 1 in 10 registered Philadelphians (meaning something like 1 in 15 adult city residents) voted to petition the Commonwealth to let us pass more restrcitive gun laws, seeing as the poor and non-white presumably need to have their access to firearms restricted in ways that richer and whiter suburbanites do not. In the twisted logic of primary day this constitutes a "landslide" in reportage.
Even that initiative may come to little; the very commission Ed Rendell put together to study gun violence came out against the notion of seperate laws for city residents:
"In a report issued yesterday, the divided commission recommended the legislature commit more funding for gun violence prevention programs, enact tougher penalties for those who violate state gun laws, and create better tools for prosecutors to pursue gun traffickers.
But the commission failed to endorse the most controversial proposals: limiting an individual’s gun purchases to one a month, and allowing Philadelphia and other municipalities the right to approve local gun laws."
The commission seems to have done a pretty good job of suggesting voluntary measures that government could support without trampling individual rights. You can read their report here.
Unfortunately no one is interested in addressing the real roots of violence in our society, whether a gun is involved or not. Poverty and inequal opportunities result in street crime (which has, incidentally, been dropping in the U.S. for deacdes; the poor have actually become less strident as the prison population soars, presumably from longer sentences tacked on to fewer crimes.)
If nothing else, these results should encourage progressives interested in maintaining democracy to push for an end to the practice of placing general ballot initiatives in primary elections. That’s at the very least; there’s no reason at all to hold the internal power struggle functions of private parties at the public expense.
So… is everyone looking forward to a half year of two right-wing DA candidates trying to outflank each other?
