High court keeps Brady on ballot
U.S. Rep. Bob Brady has won his fight to keep his spot in the Democratic race for mayor. The state Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear an appeal of a Commonwealth Court ruling that kept Brady on the ballot in spite of omissions on his financial-disclosure form.
U.S. Rep. Bob Brady has won his fight to keep his spot in the Democratic race for mayor.
The state Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear an appeal of a Commonwealth Court ruling that kept Brady on the ballot in spite of omissions on his financial-disclosure form.
The decision leaves Brady with the top ballot position among the seven Democratic candidates for mayor - but still trailing millionaire businessman Tom Knox in recent public-opinion polls.
Brady's lawyer, Stephen A. Cozen, said the court had decided unanimously not to hear the appeal.
"We hope that now the voters will be able to decide based upon what the candidates have to say and how the public really perceives them," Cozen said.
It was Knox who paid for a legal challenge to Brady's candidacy, after the Democratic Party chairman filed a financial-disclosure statement that failed to list income from his city pension and payments that the carpenters' union has been making toward an eventual union pension.
Because of Brady's strong influence in the election of Philadelphia judges, a jurist from Luzerne County, Patrick J. Toole Jr., was initially assigned to the case and ruled in Brady's favor.
Toole held that the carpenters' union payments should have been disclosed, but that the omission was not a "fatal defect" serious enough to kill Brady's candidacy.
- Daily News staff
Paulmier back on ballot
Thanks to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday, Germantown ward leader Greg Paulmier is back on the ballot as one of three challengers to City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller in the May 15 Democratic primary.
"I never stopped campaigning. I've been putting up signs, going to candidate forums and meeting with neighbors," said Paulmier, who renovates, sells and rents residential properties. Candidate Cindy Bass, a policy adviser to U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, challenged Paulmier's financial-disclosure statement, saying he'd failed to list the addresses of his 18 rental properties. She won her suit before the Common Pleas Court and on appeal to Commonwealth Court before yesterday's ruling.
The district stretches from Nicetown through Germantown and to Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill.
Also running is lawyer Irv Ackelsberg, ex-managing attorney at Community Legal Services. *
- Mark McDonald