Many Black Voters in Philly Not Really "Feeling" the Mayor's Race

Despite the lateness of the hour--with the city of Philadelphia's
mayor's race just 44 days away--it just doesn't feel like the voters are really engaged in the 2007 Primary Election. When you're out on the street, there's none of the usual excitement, no real sense of urgency and, clearly, an absolute lack of anything resembling the "crusade" atmospheres that carried other Democrats and, certainly, the City's only two black mayors, to victory in elections past.Despite the never-ending series of forums that have played primarily to small,special interest groups,there's really precious little evidence that the voters are ready to select the person who will spend about $10 billion on municipal goods and services,over a four-year term, and who wil be ultimately responsible for their public safety and for their children's education, beginning in January 2008.


This is supposed to be a pretty big deal.After all, it always has been, in previous Philadelphia mayoral primary races.In Philadelphia, for the past 55 years,our "Primary" has really been our "General," and the person we've selected as the Democratic nominee has unfailingly gone on to absolutely obliterate his Republican opponent. O.K., there was that one time in 1999, when Democrat John Street squeezed by Republican Sam Katz by only 9081 votes, but that was the result of white Democrats "crossing over" to vote Republican,rather than staying home in their own party to vote for the black Democratic nominee, Street. But, if you read all the local newspapers and the recent, Pew-funded report, "Philadelphia 2007:Prospects and Challenges,"you know that they're all saying that race will no longer be an issue in the upcoming elections, so nothing such as that could EVER happen again.

Remember, this is the city where the last official count showed 735,722 registered Democrats and only 186,087
registered Republicans.This is the city where we haven't had a Republican mayor in office since 1952.And, perhaps, most importantly for Election Day handicappers, this is the city where black voters represent 45 percent of the population and 61 percent of the Democratic electorate.

According to the recent poll of 400 registered Democratic voters,sponsored by the Philadelphia Tribune, a substantial percentage of African-American voters(24%), are still undecided and waiting for the candidates to begin speaking directly about issues that will reflect favorably on black neighborhoods.

Black voters told the pollster that they were having a difficult time differentiating among the five candidates on issues such as crime and public safety, education and job creation/economic development.

And, sadly, for the two, leading African-American candidates(Fattah and Evans), it seems that, even though black voters think they're "nice guys," with Fattah holding 7-to-1 and Evans holding 7.2-to-1 "favorable-to-unfavorable" ratios, they both seem to be having trouble translating those "good feelings" into the kind of upward momentum that white businessman Tom Knox has recently demonstrated.With his own "favorables-to-unfavorables" well below Fattah and Evans, at 3.6, it's clear that Knox isn't better loved in the all-important black electorate, but he does seem to be running a better campaign.The one, remaining issue for Knox,now that he's being seen as a citywide frontrunner, is whether he can "take a punch." As the great Mike Tyson once said, "Anybody can have a great plan, until they get hit." It remains to be seen whether any of the other candidates can hit Knox with anything that will "stick."

Bringing up the rear, in the minds of likely black voters are Michael Nutter and Bob Brady, with 1.4 and 1.1 "favorable-to-unfavorables," respectively.

The issue, now, is whether the much-needed excitement we've been waiting for will come from the two guys at the top of the poll or from the two guys at the bottom. Someone has to do SOMETHING to wake up black voters and have them finally make up their minds, or many of them just might sit this one out.


###