With 74% of the vote counted, Michael Nutter leads 35% to Knox’s 28%. It looks like Nutter will be the Democratic nominee for mayor in the fall. I’ll update other numbers as they come in.
Update [2007-5-15 22:26:5 by BooMan]: The Associated Press has called the race for Nutter.
Update [2007-5-16 0:39:34 by BooMan]: You can read the results here. We came up just short in a few places but we won the big enchilada with the Mayor’s race, plus we gained a seat on city council with Maria Quinones Sanchez’s win in the 7th district. So, I got my two big wishes, but I didn’t get any bonus prizes.
Sadly, not much change in the Council races — Dan Savage and Carol Campbell, two of the three ward-chosen incumbents, may fall, but that’s it.
Glad to hear it.
For reasons both ethical and paternal I haven’t been able to touch this race until now. This is a huge holy shit for Philadelphia. Never in a million fucking years could I have seen this coming. I’m not saying the machine is anything like broken, but it’s cracked. I sort of missed it in the DA’s race, because the good guy lost and I was emotionally invested, but even then it was way closer than it should have been. Various groups can look at themselves and wonder if they had a bit of it, but really the answer is no. All on their own, a lot of people decided to tell the machine to go fuck itself and they did it all at once. Weird, but it does happen from time to time.
This is a national blog, so nearly nobody here knows Nutter from the average walnut, or how serially twisted, corrupt, sick and fucked Philadelphia politics is. Sorry to get so parochial. For the sake of familiarity with the guy Booman keeps talking about, here is an advertisement of Nutter’s from the campaign.
it’s crazy. I can’t believe this happened.
Yet, it wasn’t as sweeping as I had hoped. We did get Quinones Sanchez elected and that is huge. But I was hoping for at least one at large seat, and I thought Acklesburg had a good chance, and he lost by just a few votes.
I’m not complaining, this was earth shattering. But I can be a little greedy at times.
The long shot I was really routing for was Mark Stier. He would have been an amazing advocate for public transit and transit riders on City Council. That he, as founder of Neighborhood Networks, couldn’t get over the hump as an at large Councilperson is a real testament to how extraordinarily far the extraordinarily disjunct Philadelphia reform movement has to go before it can be an actual political force in the city. These are still very shallow waters.
Public angst focuses more easily on the executive than on the multitude of cretins and degenerates who toil in relative anonymity to undermine the public good. I’m not going to live long enough to see the end of the fight that needs to be fought and won in this sick old town,
True.
That Andrew Toy didn’t make it despite major media endorsements means a lot. We failed to create a city wide narrative that could make deep changes. But this is still a huge win and major progress.
BUT, Andy was in the top half in the end head and shoulders above the rest of the other progressives. I heard that Stier was actively campaigning against Ruben which diluted the progressive-white vote in the city. I don’t think Andy’s going to be running for anything anytime soon, but I expect big things from him elsewhere in the city.
I was up at what was to be a victory party, but hey, shit happens here in Philly. Below is a shot of Andy and his tirelessly working wife Pat after finding out, with 84% of the polls reporting, that he was out of the top 5.
I’m thrilled that Nutter won, he was the only choice. But wholeheartedly saddened that Andy fell short by 125%. Philly ward politics is fucking ugly and this is the second year in a row I’ve spent 13+ hours at the polls here in Philly in various spots.
Basically, my understanding is that there were too many people unwilling to form a reform “slate” because there were certain incumbents that some challengers didn’t want to be on the wrong side of (for fear of bad relations upon being elected).
Still, they should have banded five At-Large guys together, or four + (Kenney or Goode), and really pushed that as a ticket.
Very glad that Maria won.
It’s so corrupt that I ran across this item in an interview with a noted lepidopterist (butterfly expert) in the British magazine New Scientist last month (unfortunately, most of the interview is behind a subscription wall):
What were all the City Charter change items on the ballot (saw them at the KYW link)? Any thoughts on those? What was Question 1 and why was it removed by court order (it passed 69% to 30%)?
The text of them is here. The one that was removed by court order was regarding the placement – “Should the City of Philadelphia keep casino slots parlors 1,500 feet away from schools, residential neighborhoods, playgrounds, and places of worship?” Nimby BS if you ask me, but very popular with almost everybody but me.
ballot questions over at my blog here
the first one was on allowing casinos within 1500′ of places of worship, schools and homes. the fuckers in the superior [or supreme] court of PA had it removed 2 weeks ago. BUT, 1200 people [like me] pushed the fucking button anyways and 70% said they were against it. there was a shadow election on this issue at many polling places and via phone and internet vote – the results will be online here soon.