Candidates pick up petitions as first step toward city primary

IN ADDITION TO Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, alternative-energy hucksters and Verizon salesmen, you can add another character to the menagerie of strangers who may be knocking on your door in the coming weeks: your friendly neighborhood politician (or wannabe).

Yesterday marked the beginning of petition season in Philadelphia. Candidates from across the city's increasingly crowded primary must gather a certain number of signatures from ordinary residents in order to appear on May's ballot.

But what may seem like a bit of election-season mundanity also says a lot about what's going to happen over the next few months, because not just anyone pays the $100 filing fee to pick up the massive stack of petitions from the City Commissioners' Office.

However, everyone who walks away with a stack also must sign a log book saying who they are and what candidate they represent. Here's what the People Paper learned browsing that list:

* Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez drew headlines this week after her party endorsed challenger Manny Morales, an ally of state Rep. Angel Cruz. But Juan Rodriguez also picked up petitions to run for Sanchez's 7th District seat. He ran for the seat in 2011, but lost a ballot challenge and ran for mayor as a write-in candidate, saying he wanted to "earn his votes." Looks as if he's hedging his bets this time: He picked up separate petitions for council and mayor.

* Frank "Franny" Rizzo Jr. picked up petitions for his long-rumored at-large Council run, which, if successful, would put him back into office after a three-year involuntary retirement.

* Marian Tasco's surprise announcement in January that she would resign at the end of the current term was designed to leave her 9th District seat wide open for her chosen successor, state Rep. Cherelle Parker. It had been reported that S. Archye Leacock, who runs the Institute for the Development of African-American Youth, was interested in a run. But the sudden vacancy also has attracted the interest of Bobby Curry and Sabriya Bilal, who both challenged Tasco for the seat in the past and also picked up petitions this year.

* Incumbent Cindy Bass has known for a while that Greg Paulmier likely would be back for the 8th District seat he lost to her in 2011. He's failed four times in efforts to become a councilman and he's back for a fifth try, along with education activist Theodore Stones.

* For anyone anxiously waiting for T. Milton Street to officially declare his candidacy for mayor: good news! A few more fringe candidates are on the way: Adekunle Kayode Alliu (who runs a nonprofit called "United States-Africa Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture Inc.") and virtual unknowns Erik Solivan and Richard Lucas all picked up ballots for mayor.

* The list of dozens of candidates for at-large Council seats seems poised to grow even larger now that one of the five seats has been left vacant, following Jim Kenney's resignation to run for mayor. Local political history has shown that at-large seats tend to attract a lot of nobodies hoping to draw the top ballot position. This year is shaping up as no exception, even though no "fluke" candidate has ever won. In addition to the challengers who have announced their candidacies, local nobodies Thomas Donerson El, Joan F. Brooks, Bill Ivey, Norman Brown, Lillian Ford, Myles Gordon, Joe Guerra and Maury Aument all picked up ballots. As did Ed Nesmith, who ran in 2011 for an at-large seat.