KAREN HELLER: In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1, and two-thirds of all GOP committee seats are currently vacant, the city and state Republican organizations are hell-bent on total annihilation. And they’re rocking it Philly old-style, using the dead and – perhaps a first in recent memory for the Republicans – the homeless. City GOPers challenged state-backed committee candidates using the names of one dead woman and a guy who doesn’t live in the district (picky, picky). Two homeless men were put up as candidates, though so far no one can find them, which works against success in politics. Just ask Gov. Mark Sanford. The challenges, more than 30 and signed by GOP city committee boss for life Michael Meehan, crumbled in court. None of which is surprising, except for the Republican part. No, the real shocker is that Meehan criticized ward leaders. “It’s just unbelievable that they did this. I am disappointed, because I put my faith in some people and I was let down,” which you would never hear from a real boss of a vital organization, like Democrat big Bob Brady. Meehan got his job the old-fashioned way; that is, he inherited it from his father who inherited it from his father, and may be Exhibit A in the argument against inherited wealth, political or otherwise. The Republican City Committee is a trust fund packed with Parking Authority patronage jobs and political juice, which translates into legal contracts and other benes but not much actual campaigning. MORE
Credit: Philadelphia Tribune
ExplorePAHistory: In the 1920s, the Republican party still enjoyed an iron lock on the black voters of Philadelphia. This 1926 editorial cartoon published in the Philadelphia Trinbune, the city’s oldest black owned newspaper, reflects black reformers fury at the party’s manipulation of the black vote. Set during the “Season of False Faces and False Promises,” the cartoonist presented the Republican political boss as clown holding black puppets in one hand, while he reaches with his other hand into a barrel of jobs. MORE