PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Candidates in the crowded race to replace retiring Rep. Dwight Evans met in a forum Thursday to present early arguments for next year’s primary election.
Five of the 12 declared candidates appeared at the forum for Philadelphia’s third congressional district, one of the most reliably Democratic seats in the country.
Candidates used their time in front of a packed house at Mount Airy’s Lutheran Seminary to try to differentiate themselves from one another, though many echoed one another’s claims as political outsiders.
“I actually had to go against the Democratic Party here in the city of Philadelphia in order to earn my seat,” said state Rep. Morgan Cephas, chair of the city’s delegation to Harrisburg, alluding to her successful campaign to unseat an incumbent and win her first seat in the state House in 2016.
State Rep. Chris Rabb made his argument as the most progressive candidate, arguing repeatedly to “tax the rich.”
“We have to end corporate giveaways, we have to end genocide in Palestine, we have to destroy the tools of fascism that are dividing us in our country,” he said.
The two state representatives were joined by state Sen. Sharif Street of the well-connected Street political family as well as two doctors seeking their first elected office, Ala Stanford and David Oxman.
Oxman focused on health care as his core issue, while Stanford, founder of the Black Doctors’ Consortium, cited her experience during the COVID pandemic.
“When government systems failed, I did not wait,” she said. “As a private citizen, I stepped up because people were dying. It wasn’t my job, but I could not stand by while people were being turned away from care.”
Street, the most politically connected of the candidates appearing, is the son of former Mayor John Street and the nephew of state Sen. Milton Street. Still, he burnished his progressive credentials at times and appealed to his sense of community.
At one point, he criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for hiring people who he called neo-Nazis. In another exchange, he ran through a list of homicide victims he had been close to.
While the election is not for nearly a year, the primary is less than six months away in May. The winner is all but sure to win the general election, as no other candidate has won more than 10% of the vote since the state election map was redrawn in 2018. Republicans did not even run a candidate under the current map in 2022 or 2024.