Bob Brady’s final warning to progressives backing Working Families Party candidates

Call it Bob Brady’s final admonishment in the struggle between Philadelphia’s Democratic Party and the progressive Working Families Party, ahead of Tuesday’s election for City Council at-large seats.

Brady, chair of the Democratic City Committee, emailed ward leaders last week, warning that the 100 committee members who had just signed on to a letter proclaiming support for City Councilmember Kendra Brooks and her WFP running mate, Nicolas O’Rourke, would be expelled from their positions unless they recanted before the election.

Clout gets the sense that the leaders of two Democratic wards in South Philly, Kathleen Melville in the First and Will Gross in the Second, are desperately trying to have it both ways in this party strife.

Melville and 26 of her First Ward committee people signed the WFP letter, the most for any ward in the city. Gross and 12 of his Second Ward committee people also signed.

Brady said Melville promised her ward would pass out only Democratic sample ballots on Tuesday and not WFP campaign literature.

“But I don’t believe them 100%,” he said. “So we’re going to check there.”

Melville used her day job — she’s on Brooks’ Council payroll — to deflect Clout’s questions, saying she could not speak during work hours and refusing to reply when she was not on the job.

Gross and his ward endorsed Brooks and O’Rourke last month, openly defying Brady’s repeated warnings about consequences for violating the party’s bylaws.

Gross ducked Clout and our detailed questions about his ward.

“The Second Ward is really jerking me around” said Brady, adding that Gross told him the ward would roll back the WFP endorsements but never did.

The WFP is seeking two of the seven Council at-large seats reserved for members not in the majority party. Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-1 in Philly.

Republicans held those two seats for seven decades until 2019, when Brooks won.

The WFP argues that it is only trying to win seats that might go to Republicans and that the five Democratic candidates for at-large seats are mathematically assured victory next week, even if voters drop two of them to back WFP candidates.

The WFP touted the signatures of 100 Democratic committee people from 17 wards as a sign of growing political strength. For context, there are about 3,400 Democratic committee people in the city’s 69 Wards.

Brady said nearly half of the signers for the WFP letter have since contacted the party to recant. Eric Rosso, a spokesperson for Brooks and O’Rourke, accused Brady of lying about that.

“To hell with him,” Brady responded.

The text messages to voters outraged progressive Democrats in Delaware County, who had just won a fight to have their party oppose the retention of three local judges listed in nonpartisan slots on Tuesday’s ballot after being elected originally as Republicans.

The texts touted a quote from Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, a Democrat seeking a second term Tuesday and widely expected to soon enter next year’s primary for state attorney general, saying he supports retaining those judges for new 10-year terms.

“Our commonwealth’s constitution requires judicial elections to be nonpartisan for a reason: to protect the principle of judicial integrity,” the texts said, citing comments from Stollsteimer published in the Delaware County Daily Times last week.

But Stollsteimer did not send those texts and told Clout he had never heard of the little-known political action committee, Pennsylvania for Well Qualified Judges, that used his words.

That PAC, launched in 2017 with $20,000 in seed money from the Delaware County Republican Party, sat dormant for years with only $200 in the bank. Then it raised more than $82,000 in September and October.

The biggest donor: $20,000 from Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a conservative PAC largely funded by Main Line billionaire Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man. And $15,000 more came from Pennsylvania Opportunity PAC, chaired by Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member from Delaware County.

Pennsylvanians for Well Qualified Judges disclosed all that in a campaign finance report filed last week, filled out by hand and submitted on paper to the Department of State, instead of uploading it electronically. That delays adding the information to the department’s searchable website.

Call that old trick a slow stroll toward transparency.

Republican political consultant Julia Vahey submitted that report and did not respond when Clout came calling. She is executive director of Montgomery County’s Republican Party, serves as treasurer for Reilly’s PAC, and consults for Carolyn Carluccio, a Republican seeking a state Supreme Court seat on Tuesday’s ballot.

It can be the small things in politics that matter, especially for candidates accused of inauthenticity in matters such as actually living in Pennsylvania (or Connecticut) while running for the U.S. Senate.

So Republican Dave McCormick’s pronunciation of Pennsylvania’s best-known beer, Yuengling, set Team Clout’s teeth on edge this week.

“Yengling,” McCormick said several times while delivering a six-pack of the Pottsville-brewed beer to the hosts of a conservative podcast.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party heard that as “Yangling.”

Tomato. Tomahto.

The correct pronunciation of Yuengling is “yingling,” according to extensive research available with a simple Google Search.

Don Russell, who produced the tremendous Philadelphia Daily News beer column Joe Sixpack, settled the issue 25 years ago.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.