National
Journal Group
Learn more about our publications and sign up for a free trial.
E-Mail Alerts
Get notified the moment your favorite features are updated.
Need A Reprint?
Click here for details on reprints, permissions and back issues.
Advertise With Us
Details on advertising with National Journal Group -- both online and in print -- can be found in our online media kit.
Go Wireless
Get daily political updates on your handheld computer.
|
Last Updated June 22, 2005
In Center City Philadelphia, the 1680s look out on the 1780s, 1880s, 1980s and beyond. The statue of William Penn, who founded the city in 1682, stands 37 feet high atop the 548-foot tower of the 1880s Second Empire-style City Hall at Market and Broad. To the east is Independence Hall, where Americans in the 1780s drew up the nation's Constitution; to the west is the tower of One Liberty Place, with its "romantic modernist" spire, the 1980s building that broke tradition to rise above City Hall. Philadelphia is built on a certain order. Other American colonies were settled by practical men, out to make money or replicate a farm settlement back home. But Penn was a Quaker, a member of one of those rationalizing sects of the 17th century, who intended to impose order on his new environment, and did: no cowpath street patterns here, like those in Boston or Charleston, but a grid of numbered and named streets, with precisely spaced open squares. Penn's city of brotherly love has turned out to be a commercial and industrial metropolis that grew steadily over the years, spreading out over the countryside. Yet there are still places in which you can see the distant past: in the restored townhouses of Society Hill and the tree-shaded public buildings around Independence Hall and, on the way to the ornate City Hall, the Federal and Greek Revival buildings and the temples of commerce, built when Philadelphia was the nation's largest city. Interspersed are I.M. Pei's modernist Society Hill Towers (though the rich in Philadelphia, unlike New York or Chicago, don't much like apartments) and the 1920s masonry-faced skyscrapers and 1990s glass-and-steel towers built around City Hall and in Center City farther west. For all the grandeur of City Hall, Philadelphia has seldom had a city government of which to be proud. "Corrupt beyond redemption" is how Lincoln Steffens described the city more than a century ago. Corruption and incompetence have reigned here off and on since then. While the city's private economy grew robustly in the 1980s, the city government lurched unknowingly toward bankruptcy under Mayor Wilson Goode. Then in 1991 Democrat Ed Rendell was elected mayor--and did well enough to become in 2002 the first former Philadelphia mayor to be elected governor since 1906. Unfortunately, Rendell's push for reform stalled in the mid-1990s. Philadelphia still has an inordinately expensive city government and neighborhoods ravaged by crime that have emptied out over the years. But there are signs of hope. Philadelphia has some of the nation's most vibrant and charitably active churches; its economy attracts some Latino and Asian immigrants, though many fewer than New York or Chicago; and its Center City is still attractive. The Philadelphia metropolitan area is still the sixth largest in the country, but most people there live outside the city. The 1st Congressional District of Pennsylvania contains much of Philadelphia east of Broad Street; City Hall is on the district line. The 1st includes all of 18th century Philadelphia--Independence Hall, the U.S. Mint, and Elfreth's Alley (the oldest continually occupied residential block in the country)--as well as Chinatown, Society Hill, Overbrook, Northern Liberties and Penn's Landing. It includes Philadelphia's four-square-block, 1.3 million-square-foot convention center, opened in 1993. North of Center City, the 1st takes in much of heavily black North Philadelphia, a couple of wards of Northeast Philadelphia (connected to the rest by irregular boundaries), Kensington and its closely packed 19th century homes, where descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants lived for years in tiny frame houses; now the neighborhood (as well as nearby Fairhill) is increasingly Hispanic. South of Center City, the 1st includes heavily Italian South Philadelphia, where Italian families and their grocery stores and restaurants have been pressed tightly into narrow streets under a tangle of overhead wires; this is the neighborhood where the various Rockys were filmed and the original Philadelphia cheesesteaks are sold. Near there, the district takes in the city's stadium and arena complex, where the 2000 Republican convention was held, as well as the adjoining Navy Yard, established in 1762 and closed in 1996. From there, the 1st includes the Delaware River shore southwest into Delaware County to impoverished Chester. The district also includes three wards in heavily black West Philadelphia and a few small adjacent suburbs. The population of the district in 2000 was 45% black, less than the 61% black 2d District, and 15% Hispanic (mainly Puerto Rican), the highest of any Pennsylvania district. This is a heavily Democratic district. The congressman from the 1st District is Bob Brady, a Democrat elected first in May 1998, who is the personification of Philadelphia's old-fashioned urban politics. He grew up in Overbrook Park in West Philadelphia, with an Irish father who was a policeman and an Italian mother; he depicts himself as a roll-up-your-sleeves guy who represents working class voters. After high school he went to work as a carpenter and quickly rose up the ranks of the carpenters' union leadership. He entered politics in 1967, at 22, when the local ward leader wouldn't replace a burnt-out streetlight. Brady was elected to the 34th Ward Democratic Executive Committee, and in 1980 he was elected ward leader. In 1975 he became assistant sergeant-at-arms of the city council; he was a consultant to the state Senate and member of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and on the board of the city's Redevelopment Authority. In 1986 he became chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, where he has been a close ally of local powerbrokers like the late state Senator Buddy Cianfrani and state Senator Vincent Fumo. Brady is proud to be the boss of what he calls the nation's largest big city machine--or, as he defines it, an "organization" that mostly operates below the public's radar screen, and dispenses "street money" to workers on Election Day to make sure that its candidates win. Brady is known for making "arrangements" with others--"they're always arrangements, never deals," he insists--and that has enabled him to remain chairman for the better part of two decades. In November 1997, Thomas Foglietta, a veteran of South Philly politics, resigned after being confirmed as ambassador to Italy, and Brady ran for the seat. In other cities, this might have led to a primary fight with black politicians; in Philadelphia, ward leaders in the district determined the Democratic nomination for the special election. That gave Brady a great advantage; former 2d District Congressman Lucien Blackwell, probably his strongest opponent, dropped out of the race even before Brady officially declared. With the endorsement of many black leaders and a strong Election Day organization, he won the special election with 74% of the vote. He is among the last of a dying breed--the white ethnic politician who represents an urban, primarily minority district. Even after he was elected to the House, Brady's attention focused back home. He mediated the local teachers' strike in 2000, and he sought common ground between the mayor and city council on a deal for two new stadiums. His ties to City Hall and to local unions gave him credibility with both sides. As Mayor John Street won reelection in 2003, even as the feds were investigating city contracts, Brady worked to resolve local intra-party conflicts. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, he chewed out feuding city council Democrats at one memorable private meeting. "You are a [friggin'] embarrassment. You're embarrassing me, embarrassing yourselves. You're like a bunch of 10-year-old children. If you're not careful, you're not going to be here next year," he said, banging the table. "I've got 30 ward leaders who don't want to support you and 30 more who want to run against you." In the House, where he has a liberal voting record, his positions on national issues are not always set in stone; he decided that he was in favor of abortion rights after asking his mother. For "the most powerful man in Philadelphia," Philadelphia magazine wrote, "Washington gas-bagging is not his thing." His initiatives reflect his local orientation. His loyalty to unions led him to buck environmentalists and most Democrats, and vote to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But these national issues and the aura of the Capitol are not what motivate Brady; his most important job remains running the party's city committee. "Ninety-five percent of my day is not Congress, " he said in 2002. He did get three bills passed that year: each named a local post office. That was three more bills than he passed during the next two years. Even with his patented disdain for Washington, Brady has shown his impact on national politics in one very important way: He delivers votes in a battleground presidential state. The fact that Philadelphia gave John Kerry a 412,000-vote margin in the 2004 presidential election was a big factor in keeping Pennsylvania in the Democratic column. And the fact that Brady keeps the party organization in line back home was a major reason why that happened.
Committees
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NEW FEATURE
[ Site Index | Staff | Privacy Policy | E-Mail Alerts ]
[ Reprints And Back Issues | Content Licensing ]
[ Make NationalJournal.com Your Homepage ]
[ About National Journal Group Inc. ]
[ Employment Opportunities ]
Copyright 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
