A reform coalition is targeting Philly committee seats — and drawing party pushback

Wards That Work, a relatively new coalition of groups whose politics span the left-of-center spectrum, wants to bring new life to Philadelphia’s Democratic Party, setting its sights on more than 350 of the city’s lowest elected positions in Tuesday’s primary election: committeepeople.

These positions in Philadelphia’s 66 wards are meant to help register voters and get out the vote.

But to the frustration of many of the coalition-backed candidates, these usually sleepy races that have struggled to garner interested candidates in the past are suddenly competitive. The coalition says efforts to fill vacant seats have been met with resistance from some longtime city Democratic leaders.

Other races have even seen the injection of political action committee dollars for flyers boosting ward incumbents, which challengers argue feels like overkill for positions whose purview spans a dozen or so blocks.

Those calling for a shake-up say many of these positions have been left vacant or in the hands of absent leaders, fueling declining turnout.

“The party establishment is so desperate to cling to power here, it seems like that they’re going to send out these deceptive mailers that are paid for by these mysterious groups,” said Omeed Firouzi, 33, who is running for one of two seats held by incumbents in the 31st Ward’s 13th division in East Kensington.

At least two divisions in the 31st Ward, including Firouzi’s, were peppered with mailers paid for by “Concerned Citizens of Pennsylvania.” A political action committee by that name is not registered with the Pennsylvania Department of State, but a “Concerned Citizens for PA” is, and Democratic City Committee chair Bob Brady is treasurer.

Brady confirmed the party sent out mailers across wards where incumbents were facing challengers.

“We protect our incumbent committeepeople. We don’t leave them out to dry,” he said, adding the party has done the same in the past.

Brady said the politics of individual committeeperson endorsements are handled by the respective ward leader, not him. Yet he noted the more than 3,300 committeeperson spots Democrats need to fill.

“I welcome them,” he said of the wave of candidates hoping to reinvigorate the party. “We can use all the help we can get.”

Brady shrugged off criticism that the ward system did not met the moment in recent elections, including in 2024, when a senior adviser on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign in Pennsylvania called his turnout operation “worthless.” Brady pointed to November’s turnout, which at 35% of registered voters was the largest in 36 years for an off-year election. Three Pennsylvania Supreme Court judges who had been elected as Democrats were up for retention in an unusually high-profile race. Democrats, Brady said, “won everything.”

Wards That Work, which launched in November with volunteers from Riverwards Area Democrats, Reclaim Philadelphia, Philadelphia Socialists of America, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Communist Party USA, argues the party’s recent success was largely thanks to the groups’ canvassing efforts.

The group, which has no funding, is a bit of an informal endeavor with its more than 350 candidates and volunteers. Still, coalition members feel they are seeing outsized pushback.

Party insiders say what is playing out is not a Democratic machine conspiracy, just politics. Some candidates failed to get the support of incumbent committeepeople and ward leaders.

That sort of thinking, Wards That Work candidates argue, is part of the party’s problem.

While much of a committeeperson’s job is mobilizing the base and giving out sample ballots on election day, the job comes with other powers.

The committeepeople in each ward elect a ward leader, and the ward leaders elect a Democratic City Committee chair. In the city’s 11 so-called open wards, the committeepeople can vote on endorsements and how ward funds are spent. These wards can do this because, at some point, a majority of committeepeople voted to make these decisions as a group.

In the remaining 55 wards, the leaders make endorsement calls and dictate spending.

In the 31st, open-ward advocates note that their ward leader, Margaret “Peg” Rzepski, endorsed former Judge Pat Dugan for Philadelphia district attorney in the Democratic primary. Incumbent Larry Krasner went on to get nearly 65% of the vote in the 31st Ward with about 19% turnout in an election that drew 17% turnout citywide.

In between canvassing efforts, Rzepski, 85, said her opposition to opening the ward put the 31st in the crosshairs of Wards That Work. She maintains doing so would be chaotic, especially in primaries with an abundance of candidates. Even so, she held a vote among the committeepeople in her ward in the Krasner race. The bulk of the committeepeople endorsed Dugan of their own volition, she said. As for her track record, Rzepski argued she has been elected ward leader for 40 years because people know they can call her at all hours for help with securing hospital paperwork or getting heat for their house.

She was hurt by accusations that dark money was being poured into the race and that she and her committeepeople were “owned” by private interests.

“I think it’s great that [the party] is concerned and that they have so much respect for my committeepeople that they did that for us,” she said of the fliers.

The promise of change in the 31st Ward has lured Kate Rivera, 44, back onto the ballot, despite being expelled from her Division 3 committee seat in 2023 after she backed Working Families Party candidates for City Council, defying warnings from Brady not to do so. Rzepski said she was simply following party rules when kicking Rivera out.

Another motivating factor was seeing the ward did not recruit anyone to run for the two vacant seats in her division.

“If [my neighbor] and I had not decided to go out and get signatures to get on the ballot, there would be no one running for committeeperson in our division, because for whatever reason, the current kind of leadership has apparently not been able to find anyone,” Rivera said.

Efforts to shake up the ward system go back more than a decade, but the more ambitious coordinated efforts started to yield results in the 2018 election, when two wards were “opened” in South Philadelphia, according to Reclaim, one of the groups behind the effort. Reclaim said the 2022 primary also moved the needle, with more than 150 of its backed candidate winning seats.

The slate of hopeful change-makers is even bigger this time around, and the combined forces of groups that bear “socialist” and “communist” in their name have not gone unnoticed.

The flyers sent to some divisions in the 31st Ward read “REJECT Candidates who are focused on ideological fights” and “SUPPORT Common-sense candidates who are rooted in Philadelphia!”

Many people backing Wards That Work candidates see such language as a way to dismiss the concerns many Democrats have with the way the party is operating.

Shawn Landau, incumbent committeeperson in the open 18th Ward’s Division 12, is working with Wards That Work to support other candidates. She and others in the coalition feel the party’s fixation on labels, as opposed to values and goals for transparency and higher engagement, ignores the shared desire to ultimately beat Republicans.

“The people I saw doing voter turnout and get-out-the-vote ahead of the 2024 general [election] were Democratic committeepeople who are some of the most critical of the national Democratic Party that you could find, and they were still out there,” Landau said.

Sara Baier, 40, lives in the 25th Ward and is running for committeeperson in Port Richmond’s 5th Division.

In her five years living in the neighborhood, she has been active in park cleanups and helping older neighbors with technology, so being a committeeperson did not feel like much of a leap.

But Baier had grown frustrated with the low turnout and absentee leadership within the ward, which has resulted in a number of committeeperson spots remaining vacant, including two in her division.

Though three people are running for two seats in Baier’s division, a significant reconfiguration of the 25th is possible due to a major misstep by the longtime ward leader, Thomas Johnson. He alleged that a misunderstanding with the Philadelphia Board of Elections led him to bring his and 21 other nominating petitions for committeepeople to the wrong location and past the deadline. A Common Pleas Court judge allowed the group to refile, which Johnson did not do. He could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, some Wards That Work-backed candidates are getting last-minute pushback.

Point Breeze resident Josh Cuervo-Veller saw there were two vacant seats in his division and, despite being 25 years old and having lived in the neighborhood for a year, decided to run in the 36th Ward’s Division 16.

“I think the fact that there were no incumbents in my division gave me a little bit of confidence,” he said. “Then just having the conversations with my neighbors kind of changed the narrative a lot for me, because most of them were excited that someone was coming to their door.”

Yet, he is one of at least three committeeperson candidates in the ward facing write-in campaigns backed by the ward in letters to voters.

In at least one other division, the 36th Ward Democratic Committee paid for campaign literature listing a write-in candidate for committeeperson as the endorsed Democrat for the position. The Wards That Work-aligned candidate received no endorsement despite securing the signatures to get on the ballot.

Brady directed questions about committeeperson endorsements to the respective ward leaders. In the 36th, the ward leader is Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who was unavailable for comment.

But Dan Siegel, a Democratic political consultant working with the 36th Ward, said he has seen newcomers run successful and party-endorsed committeeperson campaigns. In those cases, however, candidates have met with committeepeople in other divisions and the ward leader.

“Not to kiss the ring, but to show that they want to be a collaborative process,” Siegel said. “We may find that the ones who are having pushback haven’t done the work to build the relationships that allow that kind of collaborative process to succeed.”