Primary election picks and Williams’ big mistake
Sunday, May 15th, 2005Another Philadelphia primary election is at our throats. This is another joyless series of contests in which judges will be selected based upon their ethnicities and head shots, and machine candidates will be crapped out in May non-contests so that they can go on to win November non-contests by supermajorities. Come January 2006 the real work of driving the city into the ground through self-enrichment, and on the backs of the proles, will begin anew. The entire primary structure continues to function as a public expense to support the organization of private political parties; more taxation of the voiceless in service to the powerful. God Bless America.
An estimated 12-16% of eligible voters are expected to vote, a surprisingly high number given the amount of unopposed contests and the fact that the only real contest involving issues of substance - the DA’s race - is already effectively over. This rate of turnout in what Chomsky and Herman appropriately labelled "demonstration elections" puts us rather behind the likes of Haiti and Belarus, a couple of other backward non-democratic retard polities run by machines.
The Committee of 70 has published the ballot for May 17 here. Read it and weep.
There will be two ballot initiatives for which we are all eligible to vote regardless of party affiliation. Few independent or third party registered voters will be aware of that fact, but if this is you I urge you to vote. It’s worth it just to see the confused look on the faces of the election officials as they try and figure out in which voting booth to install you. You can similarly blow their little minds by requesting clarity on how to cast a write-in vote if for some reason you persist in being a registered Democrat.
The only supposed contest of any sort within the parties is for Traffic Court Judge on the Democrats’ side. I wish that last sentence were a joke, but it’s not. I am disinclined toward Michael J. Sullivan on this one, partially because he appears to be the machine candidate of choice. Mostly, however, I am struck by the inappropriate capitalization ("…the proud father of two Children."), misuse of vocabulary ("Thank You for your continuous support." All of the time? 24/7?), inability to modify nouns into adjectives ("Mike has served the Democrat Party…") and awkward sentence structure (we don’t have space here for examples) of his full-page print ad in this week’s Public Record. Any native speaker of English who would approve that ad must be an idiot.
The Public Record, Philadelphia’s major political party masturbation rag put out by the (completely unbiased, you understand) Tayoun family, has already declared the DA’s race over. What needs to be understood in context is that the Record functions as a sort of poorly written local Pravda; ‘predictions’ it makes on these issues reflect the will of the Democratic Party higher-ups in the city, and are therefore fait accompli. The progressive, thoughtful candidate Seth Williams will, as scripted, fall to the reactionary, death penalty-loving, rights-trampling, smug and overprosecuting incumbent DA, Lynne Abraham. (The same paper reports - on its front page as a serious news item - that cartoonishly bizarre City Commissioners Chairwoman Marge Tartaglione is a psychic seer. What can one expect from a newspaper which uses the masthead tagline "The good things we do must be made a part of the public record" although the editor went to federal prison on corruption charges?)
Vote for Williams. Abraham has the backing of the unholy trinity of Vince Fumo, Bob Brady and John Street. She also has the backing of the self-defeating Black Clergy, the reactionary homophobic group that tells most of the city’s African-Americans for whom to vote, having received marching orders from the Baptist God via Bob Brady’s office (himself a Catholic, but no matter). Apparently the whole Civil Rights thing was about the right to vote in one fashion, under the direction of betters who happen to share your ethnicity. None of this self-determination nonsense for the black churches of the North in the 21st century; we won’t have it. Best to follow marching orders and vote for the woman who works overtime sending African-Americans to prison and death row.
This hasn’t stopped Liberty City Democrats, the city’s self-defeating gay Democratic organization, from also endorsing Abraham, no doubt being enamoured of her stance to charge lawful Christian protestors on public streets with hate crimes and other trumped up charges - all eventually dropped - for exercising their right to (locally) unpopular public speech. One would think that gays would be somewhat civil rights-positive, what with the violations of their own and so forth. Liberty City’s leadership, if we can call it that, is comprised of craven morons.
Thus the clueless gays link arms with the homophobes, the black churches with the white racists, in both cases the weaker serving the wishes of the stronger. This is what the Big Tent of the Democratic Party means in 2005. Abraham will send young urban black men to the lethal injection table and Ed Rendell has signed death warrants early on and probably will again. The local ‘liberal’ press, which howled the howl of the righteous when George W. did the same in Texas, remains curiously silent on the combo. Hypocrites.
This Seth Williams is not running for DA (still a better option than Abraham), but this one is. Williams was previously the Green Party’s candidate for DA, in the last election cycle. He didn’t do so well in numbers, but the boost for the party was nice and the boost to his profile in the press was effective. Williams is making a huge error in running as a progressive for an office in a party that wants to put its inside-track reactionary candidate in the position. He will not be allowed to win, and the Democratic machine, in a low-turnout rubber stamping primary, will guarantee that. Williams would have been much better off running in the November general election, which would’ve allowed Republicans (don’t laugh; the Fraternal Order of Police has had it with Abraham and endorsed Williams), independents, Libertarians and Greens to vote for him. Instead he is limiting himself to trying to get the minority of machine-connected Democrats who bother to vote every time they are told to vote against the candidate for whom they are being instructed to vote. That’s a tall order.
Running as an independent or Green, Williams would not only bring in more potential votes from many party registrations, but would give Abraham that many more months to stick her foot in her mouth in her smug way, screwing up her job in new ways as she goes. More time is the challenger’s friend. The most tragic aspect of this miscalculation is that we’re missing out on 6 more months of a progressive voice talking about law enforcement in the popular press. The Abraham-Republican ‘contest’ (owing to party registration in the city Abraham can’t lose that) will be nothing but two right-wing law-and-order freaks trying to out-fascist each other. That we don’t need. Candidates aren’t allowed to gain ballot access in a primary and the general election under a different party affiliation in the same year, thus I advocate writing Williams in for the DA spot in the November non-race for the office.
There was a potentially interesting race for City Controller until the progressive candidate, John Braxton, got bumped from the ballot for failing to disclose certain financial particulars. Braxton claims he misunderstood filing requirements, and I can believe that. He was the non-machine progressive option for the office and still deserves write-in votes, now and in November. Please don’t certify - how can we call it ‘elect?’ - machine candidate Alan Butkovitz, now sold as the only game in town. Oddly the Inquirer article was written by someone named Dave Davies, same name as a founding member of The Kinks.
It’s difficult to tell which judges for whom to vote, but this would be my method: work from the bottom of the list up. Machine candidates get the plum ballot positions, and that (as well as ethnic sounding names) decide these elections. You can just try and buck the trend.
The two ballot initiatives?
"Do you favor AUTHORIZING the Commonwealth TO BORROW UP TO $625,000,000, for the maintenance and protection of the environment, open space and farmland preservation, watershed protection, abandoned mine reclamation, acid mine drainage remediation and other environmental initiatives?"
This looks like good environmental legislation and I say vote for it. "Yes."
"Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule charter be amended to call upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the Governor to pass legislation that would permit Philadelphia to enact constitutionally lawful legislation to prevent and reduce gun violence?"
There are multiple reasons to vote ‘no’ on this one. The question is worded with half-truth weasel words. This is a door opener to city-only law to limit gun sales… but of course only to people trying to obtain guns legally, as is their right under the current US Constitution. That’s problematic right there. On top of that, it is impossible and dishonest to say that any legislation passed once this door is opened would be "constitutionally lawful." That’s for the federal courts to decide, and thankfully not up to the mayor and city council. But on top of that there are sticky issues here regarding screwing with the City Charter in order for the convenience of passing certain legislation limiting our citizens’ rights within Philadelphia in a way they are not limited in the rest of the commonwealth. That’s a bad way to pass law in any given instance and a very bad precedent for the future. "No."
So one yes and one no are my preferences, but I expect both to pass by wide margins.
