Next year's City Commission election already a mess

Former Deputy Chief City Commissioner Renee Tartaglione Matos is disputing a claim by City Commissioner Stephanie Singer that the two women will face-off in the May 19 Democratic primary election.

Singer, in a campaign fundraising email today, announced: "I have news. Marge Tartaglione's daughter, Renee Tartaglione, has informed us she is going to challenge all the hard work I've done to clean up the City Commissioner's office by running against me in next year's primary."

Singer defeated Marge Tartaglione's bid for a 10th term in the 2011 Democratic primary.

Tartaglione Matos flatly denies that she is running for her mom's former post or that she told Singer that she is running.

"People are trying to encourage me to run," Tartaglione Matos said. "I'm not running. Period."

Singer's campaign manager, Sharon Marietta, said Singer was unavailable to comment. Marietta claims to have witnessed Tartaglione Matos tell Singer she was running during a conversation at an AFL-CIO event at Penn's Landing on Labor Day.

"Renee is representing the worst in politics," Marietta said in an email. "She is either saying things she doesn't mean to mislead people or she is denying her claims now because this is not how she wanted to announce her plan to bring the City Commissioner's office back to the corrupt ways they were before."

Tartaglione Matos resigned in November 2010 from the City Commission, where she was her mother's top aide, after admitting to nine violations of the City Charter ban on political activity.  The Philadelphia Board of Ethics fined her $2,700 for that activity, including running the 19th Democratic Ward while her husband, Ward Leader Carlos Matos, was in federal prison.

Singer ran as a reform candidate in 2011 and was elected by her fellow commissioners, Democrat Anthony Clark and Republican Al Schmidt, as chairwoman in January 2012.  She clashed with both and they ousted her from the chairwoman post one day after the 2012 general election.

The City Commission oversees elections in the city.