A fierce race for 170th District state House seat

The retirement of veteran State Rep. George Kenney has set off a brawl between two young candidates in the 170th House District in Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County.

The contest between Democrat Brendan Boyle, 31, and Republican Matt Taubenberger, 31, is one of a handful of races in the state that could change the Democrats' 102-101 advantage in the House.

Gov. Rendell, unions and trial lawyers have backed and bankrolled Boyle. Republican State Rep. John Perzel, the former House speaker, has funded an offensive of negative attack ads for Taubenberger against Boyle.

Taubenberger, son of last year's Republican mayoral candidate, Al Taubenberger, is director of constituent services for Kenney.

He is trying to win an increasingly Democratic district, now 57 percent Democrat and 34 percent Republican. But the 170th - which includes Somerton, Bustleton, Parkwood, Normandy, Burholme and Fox Chase in the city, and Rockledge and part of Abington in Montgomery County - kept Republican Kenney in office for two decades.

Taubenberger's foremost issue has been public safety. In fact, it's the one topic under the "Issues" heading on his Web site. A Burholme native who earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Widener University, Taubenberger worked as a city juvenile probation officer from 1999 through 2006.

"As a probation officer, you learn real quick there's a lot of bad people out there," Taubenberger said. "That first-hand knowledge of the criminal element gives me a distinct advantage."

He advocates hiring 10,000 more police across the commonwealth (1,345 in Philadelphia and 576 in Montgomery County) and abolishing parole for violent offenders.

Taubenberger also supports a requirement that all parolees sign a waiver allowing police to stop and frisk them at any time, increased penalties for sexual predators, and the turning over of all illegal immigrants arrested by local police to federal authorities. He supports Philadelphia's push to be permitted to require gun owners to report their lost or stolen firearms within 24 hours.

Boyle is a 1999 graduate of the University of Notre Dame who worked as a management consultant for American Management Systems before earning a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Now a business consultant, he said he wants to devote his life to public service. He has twice taken on Kenney and lost.

Boyle has also focused on public safety, and won the endorsement of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police lodge. In addition to calling for an end to parole for violent offenders, he wants to increase state witness-protection funds to combat the no-snitching culture in the city.

Boyle has also emphasized education, and supports State Rep. Tony Payton's REACH scholarship bill that would make full scholarships available to all students with at least a B average and 90 percent attendance. Boyle said he would support a law to prevent state lawmakers from increasing their own salaries, and would support a nonpartisan commission that included representatives from the private sector to set compensation.

Both candidates estimated that they have knocked on every door in the district at least once. Taubenberger was even treated for rabies after being bitten by a pit bull.

Taubenberger has maintained a concerted attack on Boyle's character. He first pointed out inconsistencies in Boyle's campaign-expense reports, and recently labeled him a "tax deadbeat" in full-page newspaper ads because of a $1,865 property-tax lien on a rental property owned by Boyle's wife.

The city's Revenue Commissioner issued a letter on Wednesday acknowledging that a mistake by the city was at least partly to blame. The city misapplied a tax payment made by the Boyles last year, and Boyle said he was never notified that the property taxes were unpaid. His wife only discovered an overpayment on the water and sewer account and received a refund.

"How in the world are we supposed to know this?" said Boyle. A management company oversees the property, he said.

So those taxes went unpaid until Boyle paid them on Oct. 13, in the midst of a media onslaught by Taubenberger, who printed out the lien from the Bureau of Revision of Taxes Web site and plastered the image across the city.

Taubenberger has also raised the issue of Section 8 housing, suggesting that Boyle's ownership of 12 "low-income" rental properties - none of them in the Northeast, none of them part of the Section 8 program - implicate him in the deterioration of neighborhoods.

"Brendan Boyle thinks we need more low-income rental housing," reads one of Taubenberger's mailers.

Boyle chided Taubenberger for "race-baiting" and suggested that Taubenberger, as a licensed agent for Weichert Realtors, should take responsibility for the same "low-income housing" Weichert helped buy and sell in the Northeast.

Boyle said the Taubenberger campaign "has been literally 100 percent negative."

"This is a campaign of new ideas vs. no ideas," Boyle said. "The sad part is that all the negative smears doesn't address what we're going to do about this awful economy."

Democrats believe the seat is one of several in Southeast Pennsylvania where they can gain, and are concentrating their resources on it.

Rendell's campaign committee has given his campaign $5,000, Rep. Keith McCall from Carbon County $10,000, and unions more than $40,000 since June. Boyle has collected more than $144,000 in that time, and still had $111,000 left for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Taubenberger has netted more than $40,000 from state Republicans, plus at least $22,700 from Perzel. He collected more than $215,000 since June and had about $21,000 on hand at the end of last week.