New faces in Philly

National Review, May 27, 1991 by Jack Fowler

THIS BALMY Friday-evening rush hour finds something new in the City of Brotherly Love: Republicans campaigning outside the Bridge and Pratt Streets public-transit station in working-class Northeast Philly. Commuters in a hurry are nonetheless pausing to take the flyers handed out by volunteers for the "Family First Republican Team." This is a slate of five conservative political newcomers running in the May 21 City Council primary against a liberal Republican establishment that has never presented a worthwhile alternative to the Democratic machine.

Family First is part of a national trend that shows conservatives have a chance even in the Bush era. Similar groups have taken control of the local party in the San Diego and Cincinnati areas, and the success of term-limitation initiatives in Colorado, California, and Oklahoma shows strong discontent with the establishment in both parties. In Pennsylvania last summer an unknown conservative housewife, Peg Luksik, captured 43 per cent of the vote against abrasive feminist Barbara Hafer in the GOP gubernatorial primary despite a late entry and a shoestring budget. (Miss Hafer was then swamped in the general election by the pro-life Democratic incumbent, Robert Casey.)

Picking up where Mrs. Luksik left off, Family First has gathered over six hundred volunteer campaign workers in just six weeks. Typical of the Family First foot soldiers is sweatshirtclad Barry Howe, longshoreman, union man, and campaign novice, who became a Republican to work for the Team. "We're sick and tired of the city government," he told me on Pratt Street. "We want something for our money and we're not getting it."

An older man agrees: "I voted Democrat all my life. We've got a terrible Council. Not worth a thing. The Democrats are eating us up."

With the city's bankcruptcy making national headlines, the moment is obviously right to unseat the Democratic majority on the City Council. But the regular Republicans aren't the answer. They have traditionally written the city off, concentrating their energies on winning statewide elections for country-club Republicans like Senator Arlen Specter (1990 ACU rating: 48), a cultural liberal who helped torpedo Robert Bork, and the late John Heinz (1990 ACU rating: 48). These are not people who can convincingly talk about collecting garbage or fixing potholes, let alone the public schools.

Family First can, and does. Its five-point platform combines populism with the new paradigm: privatization of city services to boost efficiency and cut cronyism; tax cuts to stimulate growth and halt "the flight of families and business to the suburbs"; term limitation to take power back from the career politicians; more police and firemen to let citizens feel safe again; and a school-choice program to make the schools accountable.

There are seven at-large seats on the 17-member City Council, and, by law, two of the seven seats are reserved for the top vote-getters of the minority party. The GOP establishment had stopped seriously running for majority status and was content with its allotted two seats, until Family First dropped into the race in early March. A Republican pol was quoted anonymously the next day in the Philadelphia Daily News, and he was scared: Family First's issues would "really hit a pulse," he said. Neither the Daily News nor the Inquirer has covered the group since.

The candidates are a populist's dream: two union members; two children of cops, one of a fireman; two ex-Democrats. In addition, they are all Catholics active in their parishes, in a city where the GOP is increasingly Catholic (former Mayor Frank Rizzo switched five years ago, and many co-religionists have followed as Democratic Mayor Wilson Goode made himself a laughing stock and Ronald Reagan showed that the GOP is not just for the rich). Chuck Volz is a lawyer and a widower with a young daughter, Ed Moffit is a schoolteacher, Marie McGuirl a counselor for troubled teens, Terri Bold a businesswoman, Joe Pirolli a retired engineer. They're the same sort of folks as the voters who are reading their flyers: "TIRED OF . . . the bloated city payroll? . . . the scarcity of police and fire personnel? . . . the same old tired faces, the same crooked politics, the same unsolved problems, the same feeble answers, OVER AND OVER AGAIN?"

The old tired faces include the regular GOP. Volz pinpoints the problem: even as "our public-school system is turning out functional illiterates and we've just sold our public buildings," Joan Specter, Arlen's wife and a 16-year Council member, "has a candy walnut pie recipe in her campaign literature." The other incumbent is the equally liberal Thacker Longstreth, whose name pretty much says it all to ethnic voters.

The other members of the establishment slate are Dolores Weaver, a black businesswoman shellacked in a 1987 Council race by a 15 to 1 margin; Diana Roca, a Puerto Rican "interior design manager"; and Joe Egan, a longtime Democratic regular who, according to local gossip, switched parties hoping to be condused with popular former GOP mayoral nominee John Egan. Since the last three candidates weren't added until Family First stormed into the race, it's clear the regulars are more interested in keeping control of the party than in saving the city from the Democratic disaster. As ace GOP field worker and Family First advisor John McDermott puts it: "It's just another flim-flam both parties in Philadelphia are into. It's a better show than the Sting."