PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A third-party candidate for Philadelphia city commissioner has dropped out of the race after a challenge to his financial disclosure statement.
Jarrett Smith was running with the Working Families Party on a platform of eliminating all Republicans from Philadelphia city government. But a bi-partisan voter challenge charged that he did not file his financial disclosure form to the right office.
Smith said he filed his financial disclosure report to the U.S. Department of State instead of the City Office of Records and was dropping out of the race because he could not survive a challenge to his candidacy on that basis.
He added that the episode showed that running for office in Philadelphia is “difficult by design.”
“This system is set up to confuse and intimidate people outside the political class,” he added.
Smith was attempting to unseat Republican Seth Bluestein, who holds the commission seat guaranteed to a minority party. Smith had no experience running in elections. Bluestein has worked in the commissioners' office for 10 years, including in 2020 when he received death threats for defending the city’s ballots against baseless fraud claims from his own party.
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Bluestein was endorsed this week by the Forward Party, a centrist group co-chaired by former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman. She credited Bluestein with helping save democracy during former President Donald Trump’s effort to undermine Philadelphia’s election in 2020.
The Working Families Party City Council candidates, meanwhile, survived a challenge to their paperwork and will remain on the ballot, hoping to claim both minority party seats in that body.
The seats were held by Republicans for decades until Kendra Brooks took one of them in 2019. Her running mate, Nicolas O’Rourke, hopes to take the other seat in November.
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