Clout: Are Johnny Doc's political signs illegal?

WALK DOWN Spring Garden Street near 18th and you can't help but notice that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 union hall is basically a giant advertisement for state Supreme Court candidate Kevin Dougherty and Democratic mayoral nominee Jim Kenney.

The sign for Dougherty - a Common Pleas judge and brother of electricians union boss Johnny Doc - is gargantuan, spanning most of the building like a highway billboard. The Kenney window signs are smaller but cover most of the ground floor.

A source claims that these signs are a blatant violation of city code. But, the source says, city officials are afraid to stand up to Doc and other union officials with significant political juice.

Personally, Clout is not particularly concerned about this issue. It's a free country, we say. Hang signs on your building. Paint it pink. Yell at the clouds. Whatever.

But we said we'd check it out. Beth Grossman, chief of staff to Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams, tells us the signs "could be" in violation of the Philadelphia Code because the Dougherty sign is more than 12 square feet and because the Kenney signs appear to exceed 20 percent of the window space of the first floor.

After that, we became slightly more interested and wondered if the city was turning a blind eye to the IBEW signs like it did a couple of years ago when Vine Street was lined with bandit signs blasting the Post Brothers, who were embroiled in a union dispute at their Goldtex Apartments. City officials seemed reluctant to step in, even though the signs were clearly illegal.

Grossman says that no exception has been made for IBEW.

"I have already forwarded this to the appropriate unit for enforcement," Grossman emailed yesterday.

We checked in with IBEW spokesman Frank Keel.

"I think somebody's playing games with you here. I will look into it," he said, adding that the Carpenters union used to display a massive sign for state Sen. Anthony Williams, who got rolled by Kenney in last month's mayoral primary. "I think they took it down out of embarrassment at the 30-point loss of their candidate," Keel said.

We called over to the Carpenters' union hall and the woman who answered the phone said, yes, the Williams sign is down. A new sign (also gigantic) welcoming Pope Francis went up yesterday. "You should see it," she said. "It's bee-you-tee-full."

(Keel got back to us later about the IBEW signs: "It's nonsense. The signs are legal.")

To be continued?

Clout did a double-take while gazing up at the blue skies in Ocean City, N.J., last week. A banner plane seemed to be toting a message about ending the ongoing lockout of the Carpenters union from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The plane zipped out of sight before we could snap a picture.

Maybe we were mistaken?

Nope. Carpenters union spokesman Marty O'Rourke said the union is indeed flying banners over beaches up and down the Jersey Shore coast. Makes sense, since a large number of city residents - and elected officials - head downashore every summer.

"It's part of the whole effort to end this lockout, especially in light of the Convention Center's decision to allow the Teamsters back in," he said.

Both unions were given the boot last year after Convention Center officials said they missed a deadline to sign agreements that called for vendor-friendly work rule changes. But some Teamsters recently began working in the center again.

O'Rourke said the carpenters will continue to hold protests and contact legislators in a bid to get its workers back in the center. When you least expect it, their sign might show up in your beach selfie.

Former Republican committeeman and U.S. Navy veteran Joe Eastman was on the warpath last week, sending out a blast email about how Kenney didn't attend any veterans events on Memorial Day.

Outrageous. We knew Kenney hated veterans! Even though his dad did serve in the Korean War. Hmmm.

We asked Kenney spokesman Lauren Hitt how this could be. She said since Memorial Day fell six days after the primary, Kenney "generously released the staff to spend some time with our families" on the holiday. She said he spoke at a veterans fair on May 13 and also released a policy paper on veterans issues in the first week of May.

"So, you're saying Jim doesn't hate veterans, right?" we asked Hitt.

"Correct," she replied to our email. "He also doesn't kick puppies."

Glad we cleared that up.

Yesterday, we received an internal email from the city District Attorney's Office. It was most likely due to a mix-up between Assistant District Attorney Brad Bender and Daily News reporter William Bender.

Yesss. We love mix-ups!

Even better: Former Chief Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina was a recipient. Fina now works in the D.A.'s office and is involved in a no-holds-barred deathmatch with state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who seems to spend most of her time these days firing people and turning her office into a paranoid hellscape.

This should be good, we thought.

But alas, this particular email was about . . . soft pretzels.

"James brought back fresh pretzels from Frankfort [sic] last night, so pop on over to our kitchen and grab one," a staffer in the D.A.'s office wrote.

Dammit. That figures. The one time Clout winds up on an email chain with Frank Fina and it's about . . . pretzels.

- Daily News staff writers William Bender and David Gambacorta,

and columnist John Baer

contributed to this report.