Clout: Mariano can write, says 'slovenly packrat'

JAILED former City Councilman

Rick Mariano

has finished the first chapter of his book.

It's pretty good. If Rick wrote it - rather than a ghostwriter - he can find work with the Daily News when he gets out.

The working title is "Philadelphia Politics: Show Business for Ugly People."

It opens with the drama of Oct. 20, 2005: Mariano atop the City Hall tower, gazing out over Philadelphia, collecting his thoughts.

Haunted by a federal corruption indictment, hounded by the press, yet another blow that day drove Mariano up the tower: his lawyer, Jim Becker, quit the case.

But that all melted away in the quiet of the tower.

"I look out, I smile," he writes. "I'm 500 feet in the air. I smile. My world is at peace."

He reviews his life, from his days as a kid playing half-ball in gritty neighborhoods to his rise in politics and finally to his fall.

" . . . it's really the end. I know it, my family knows it, and the city knows it.

"My doctor knows it. He gave me two drugs - Xanax and Wellbutrin XL. The latter is for the knees, and the former is for the stress. I took them both today, a few times."

Mariano doesn't much like the media. "They were slovenly - little packrats without a drop of sympathy," he writes.

"The biggest slob of them all," he says, was former Inquirer reporter Michael Currie Schaffer.

He doesn't hate all of them.

"Rarely do you find a heart in that pile of greed; when you do, it's comforting, and it opens you just a little to shine a smirk his way. Vernon Odom is that heart," he writes of the venerable Channel 6 reporter.

He calls Odom "a towering cushion of a man."

Yes, a bit of editing might help.

Rick's reverie in the sky comes to an abrupt end.

"It takes a lot of noise to catch the ears of a person standing on the City Hall tower observation deck," he writes, "and something out west does - maybe it's the free concert at Fairmount Park . . .

"But now a chopper, at least one. They're very close to me; in fact, it's as if they're breathing down my neck, and now they're circling the tower. It's the concert, right? Or is it something bigger, some breaking news? The calm of the city is now broken, the noise is too unbearable . . . That's when my phone rings - it's Frank's friend, a cop.

'Rick, you okay?'

'What? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm at the observation deck.'

'Yeah, I know, buddy.'

"My eyes pop open. 'What?'

'Yeah, there's a bunch of cops and cameras down there. The choppers, they're for you. They think you're gonna jump!'

"No longer am I at peace."

You can read the whole thing at www.myspace.com/freerick mariano.

The 70th ward

Mariano is in the federal penitentiary at Fort Dix.

His fellow inmates include 19th Ward Democratic leader Carlos Matos and former Mayor Street fundraiser Lenny Ross.

New faces of 2008

Philadelphia's legislative delegation may be facing an historic onslaught of challengers in this year's Democratic primary.

We'll be introducing a number of the promising challengers in coming weeks.

Today we have Lewis Thomas III, who is running against state Rep. W. Curtis Thomas in North Philadelphia's 181st district.

Challenger Thomas, 30, grew up in North Philly, graduated from Olney High in a cooperative program at Temple, got a degree at Lincoln University and worked for two members of Congress: Lucien Blackwell and Carrie Meek.

He taught school in Baltimore and Washington, where he was a vice principal.

His most recent job was as state director for Progressive Majority, which is devoted to making a Democratic majority in the state Legislature.

Why's he running?

"When I came back to Philadelphia a few years ago and drove through North Philly, it looked worse than it did when I went away to college," he said.

"Our district has the highest unemployment of any in the state," he said. "It has the most public housing and the second-highest poverty rate. I felt it was time to end 18 years of the same broken leadership."

Thomas, 59, who was first elected in 1988, did not return our call for comment.

Knox makes a move

Former mayoral candidate Tom Knox is trading in his Rittenhouse Square digs for a better view a few blocks away, we hear.

He has bought a condo at Liberty Place for $7 million.

Spokesman Josh Morrow confirmed the move but said that Knox didn't want to discuss details.

"The bigger story was the day he moved out of public housing into his first house," Morrow said.

Knox is still telling people that he's seriously considering a run for governor in 2010.

Vince cuts his price

Sure sign we're in a recession: Prudential Fox has dropped the price on state Sen. Vince Fumo's 27-room Victorian mansion from $6.9 million to $5.9 million.

Fumo put the house, at 22nd and Green, on the market in October to pay legal bills in his federal corruption case.

Besides six bedrooms and seven full baths, the mansion boasts a wine cellar, an indoor shooting range, a roof deck, a separate guest suite and separate servants' quarters.

No mention of the 19 Oreck vacuum cleaners the feds charged him with stealing from his nonprofit Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.

Fumo's trial on the vacuum-cleaner charge (and other stuff amounting to more than $2 million in goods and services) is scheduled to begin in September.

It's a family affair

Good thing City Council didn't pass an anti-nepotism bill!

New Council members Bill Green and Maria Quinones Sanchez are so close that Green has hired Sanchez's husband as a senior adviser.

Tomas Sanchez - who worked for former Councilmen Juan Ramos and Angel Ortiz - is a great addition to his staff, Green said.

"I didn't think it would be fair to discriminate against him because his wife was on City Council."

Sanchez also said she didn't think the appointment was a problem.

"I'm happy for him, he deserves it," she said.

Leach for Senate

Tomorrow, state Rep. Daylin Leach launches his campaign to help Democrats maintain control of a once-Republican Senate seat in the western suburbs.

The seat was wrested from the GOP by Connie Williams, who's retiring and serving as honorary co-chair of Leach's campaign.

Leach's campaign kickoff begins at 4 p.m. tomorrow at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in King Of Prussia. *

Staff writers Gar Joseph and Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.