Blackwell's stamp act meets resistance

If the scene at the Salvation Army center in West Philadelphia on primary election day was representative of State Rep. Thomas W. Blackwell's write-in campaign for reelection, it's no wonder victorious Vanessa Brown out-polled him by more than 11 to 1.

Blackwell had hoped to repeat a nearly successful 2006 write-in effort by candidate Emilio Vazquez in the 179th District. Vazquez, like Blackwell, had gotten knocked off the ballot. Vazquez had left information off his financial disclosure forms; Blackwell failed to gather enough valid signatures.

In 2006, Vazquez lost to Tony J. Payton Jr. by 14 votes. His secret - pre-made rubber stamps and ink pads, handed out to people at the polls, that made it easy to stamp in Vazquez's name.

But when a Blackwell worker showed up at the Salvation Army at 55th and Market, "they got laughed right out of here," election judge Dorothy Stovall said. Her objection was that the Blackwell camp wanted poll workers to hand out the stamps, she said. That's against the law.

Blackwell questioned Stovall's account and said, "Believe me, we don't encourage anyone to do anything wrong."

Stovall chucked the stamps out, and there to collect them was Brown supporter and poll-watcher Gloria Thomas-Lewis, who said she snatched one as a souvenir and sent another back to Blackwell through an emissary.

As for the others? "If Tommy wants them back, he can come back and get them from me," Thomas-Lewis said.

Blackwell will not want the reminder. Unofficial election results in the Democratic primary show he received 1,012 votes. Brown's count: 11,539.

- Jeff Shields

A city official for nearly 30 years, John F. Street was fond of saying that he never lost an election.

Now he has.

On Tuesday's primary ballot, Philadelphia's former mayor was one of 12 candidates from the First Congressional District vying to be elected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Under Democratic Party rules, the district can send seven delegates to the convention in Denver in August.

Officially, those seven may not be confirmed for weeks.

But what's known is that at least five of them will be supporters of Barack Obama, based on somewhat complicated arithmetic related to the percentage of the district that voted for Obama.

What's not complicated is that there's no chance Street will be sent to the convention.

For one thing, Street ran as a Hillary Rodham Clinton delegate in a district heavily backing Obama. Of the 12 delegates on the ballot, only four were designated as backing Clinton.

For another, he received 18,980 votes - fewer than any of his 11 competitors. The top vote-getter received around 75,000 votes.

To be fair, Street was handicapped by his bad position on the ballot - his name appeared last. (Another Clinton delegate candidate, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, received just 24,735 votes.)

On the other hand, Street was never all that popular while in office. Perhaps nothing has changed now that he's out.

- Marcia Gelbart

Pennsylvania's primary election is over, but that doesn't mean folks have forgotten which candidate Mayor Nutter backed.

When introducing Nutter at a Pennsylvania Bar Association luncheon for minority lawyers on Friday, lawyer Jettie Newkirk called him "Philadelphia's Obama."

Nutter, of course, is among Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's biggest fans, but he took the joke well.

"I always thought that Senator Obama was the country's Mike Nutter," the mayor cracked, as he took the stage.

There were big laughs all around, and the episode seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom on Nutter's endorsement of Clinton: Plenty of Philadelphians didn't get why he backed her, but neither did they hold his choice against him.

- Patrick Kerkstra