PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia Democrats vote Monday night for party leadership. Nearly 3,000 committeepeople elected in the May 17 primary will choose 66 ward leaders.
Ward leader is an unpaid but sought-after position. They generally control candidate endorsements — the source of party power and funding, as endorsed candidates are expected to provide get-out-the-vote money.
City Committee chair Bob Brady expects some lively contests in a few wards.
“The party is alive and well and because of that,” he said. “There are people that want to get involved in it, and I’m glad that they do.”
Over the past several party elections, a younger, more independent contingent has sought to open the process to more discussion and debate. Pat Christmas, policy director of the Committee of 70, describes most wards as “closed” — ruled by the ward leader and hand-picked committeepeople with no meetings, no bylaws and shrouded in secrecy.
“Historically in Philly, political power has been concentrated in a really small number of people,” he said. “It’s the ward leader and City Committee who have held on to decision-making power, so one way to look at this is how much of the political power in Philly is going to be distributed more broadly across more people starting on Monday.”
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Brady, who is elected by ward leaders and has held the chairmanship for 36 years, denies that there are such things as “closed” wards.
“Anybody who’s elected a committeeperson will go to a meeting Monday night at 8 p.m. and has the right to elect a ward leader. It’s totally transparent,” he assured.
However, a Common Pleas Court ruling on Friday found that 22nd Ward leader and City Councilmember Cindy Bass had disenfranchised duly elected committeepeople by unilaterally excluding them from ward meetings since 2020.
Judge Anne Marie Coyle issued an emergency order requiring Bass to cease and desist from excluding the committeepeople and mandating that Brady and Bass promote full participation by all committeepeople, including voting on Monday night.
The suit was brought by Carla Cain and other committeepeople who formed the 22nd Ward Open Caucus when Bass excluded them.
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Christmas said there are only a handful of “open” wards, but there is a movement to open up more among some committeepeople and ward leaders. They created Open Wards Philly to advocate for more democracy among Democrats.
The group also includes Republicans. Republican ward elections are also Monday night, but the party is so small in Philadelphia that its impact is minute.
The push for more openness comes as the influence of ward leader endorsements appears to be on the wane. The party endorsed Conor Lamb in the U.S. Senate primary, for example, and he got just 25% of the city vote — 12 points behind the winner, John Fetterman, and 8 points behind Philadelphia-based state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.
The endorsements remain most important for low information races, such as judgeships and row offices. Some of the Open Wards committeepeople, though, would like to see the party work harder on statewide races, where the consequences are even steeper.
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The party has been content to deliver 500,000 to 600,000 votes from Philadelphia, but in close elections, that can fall short. Hillary Clinton won 584,000 votes in Philadelphia in 2016 but lost the state by 46,000.
Open ward advocates argue that more energetic and involved committeepeople could strengthen turnout and deliver the votes that could send close elections the Democrats’ way.