- Pennsylvania Among 'Terrible 10' Most Regressive Tax States
- February 4 Non-Partisan Training: HOW TO RUN FOR ELECTION BOARD IN 2013: HOW TO RUN FOR COMMITTEEPERSON IN 2014
- Republican Governors Opt-In to Medicaid Expansion
- The Reports of Unions' Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
- Ask Allyson Schwartz to run for Governor
- Mind the gap: Opting Out of Medicaid Expansion Leaves Low-income Families Behind
- Jan. 14 Workshop:HOW TO RUN FOR ELECTION BOARD IN 2013; HOW TO RUN FOR COMMITTEEPERSON IN 2014
- Seth Williams on Guns, Jasmine Rivera on School Closures @PFC Meetup Wednesday
- PA Revenue Strong Midway Through Year; Tax Cut Could Have Big Impact
- What to Make of the Fiscal Cliff Deal?
Thank You All from Marc Stier
Submitted by Marc Stier on Fri, 05/18/2007 - 11:34am.
Dear Friends,
I want to thank all of you who voted for me on Tuesday. And I want to thank even more all of you who worked for me in various ways—going door to door with my literature, working the polls, sending out emails to your friends, making phone calls, and raising or contributing money. I am honored and humbled to have had so many good people around the city believe in both me and the ideas I presented during this campaign.
I am, of course, disappointed by the result. I knew from the start that this was going to be a difficult race. But the response I was getting around the city was so positive and supportive that there were one or two moments when I thought I might even squeak by.
Optimism is certainly useful in a race as difficult as the one I ran. But, even after seeing the disappointing results, I’m not discouraged or disheartened.
For one thing, I think that my campaign, along with that of the other reform candidates—Andy Toy, Derek Green, Matt Ruben, Caryn Hunt, and Ben Ramos—raised some critical issues for the future of the city. While we all had our own take on the issues, we all agreed that politics in this city needs to be reformed. And we said that reform is necessary to bring the innovative public policies that will give us a chance not only to address the issues on the minds of everyone—jobs, education, and crime—but also those issues that should be on the minds of everyone—planning and zoning, transit, and sustainability and the environment. The effort we made to bring these ideas to people around the city will, in the long term, make Philadelphia a better place to live.
Second, I ran hoping to win but also hoping to build a progressive movement in the city. Early in the campaign I told people that, if nothing else, I will spend a lot of money finding progressives around the city and getting them involved in our organizations. I didn’t raise and spend nearly what I had hoped. But the hard work we progressive candidates did in reaching out to people around the city will certainly help us develop a constituency for change, one that we can bring to bear on our next Mayor and Council.
Third, I have to say that this has been one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences of my life. I personally loved campaigning and aside from one thing I’ll mention below, I really had an extraordinarily good time in the last five months. And I learned so much about our city and about how politics works in it. Much of what I learned confirmed for me that politics is indeed broken in Philadelphia. But, as I will explain in the articles and book I hope to write in the next year or so, it is broken in a way that offers hope for the future.
There are a lot of very good people in politics in this city, including some of the committee people and ward leaders. My ideas about politics may be different from that of many committee people and ward leaders. But more than half of them share with me a concern for the good of Philadelphia and a willingness to listen to one another. The notion that the folks in the machine are evil, self-interested and dishonest is simply not true. Some are. But others are good people caught up in a political system that is often dysfunctional. But many of them know it is dysfunctional and would support reforms of some kind, especially if those reforms were respectful of their concerns.
I’m also hopeful because this clearly was a moment in which people were voting for reform in electing Michael Nutter (and in supporting Tom Knox who called for political reform.) So there is no question that, as I saw on the campaign trail, people respond to a progressive reform message when they hear it. The problem in my race was getting the message heard. The Mayor’s race is totally different from that of other races in the city. It is the only race in which the ward structure is mostly irrelevant because candidates have the resources and attention from the press to get their own message out. We progressives are going to have to figure out how to do this with much less in the way of money or press attention.
So there is hope for the future. But to take advantage of it we progressives must learn to be as self-critical as we are critical of politics as usual. As I will explain on another occasion, the loose progressive movement in this city has its own dysfunctional elements, which we will need to work very hard to overcome.
There time to think about the future for progressives in the city, and to analyze the results of the camapaign in the future. Now, however, I need to rest some more and start reconnecting with the issue activism I left off when I started my run for office. And I have to thank all those folks who helped me so much during the campaign.
Because they are so many, I will thank the volunteers in private. And because they might not want other to know how much they helped me, my thanks to people inside the party will be private as well.
But I do want to publicly thank some people starting with my family—my wife Diane and daughter Katja—for all they endured in the last five months. And special thanks to my mother-in-law for all her contributions to the campaign and to my sister who was here on Election Day and my parents. The hardest thing about the campaign was that is was terribly disruptive to my family. I’m extraordinarily grateful for their sacrifice and the incredible support they gave me.
There is one person inside the party and the labor movement who I can acknowledge publicly, my good friend and ward leader Lou Agre. His help during the campaign was immense.
And I must thank Hannah Miller who helped formulate the message of my campaign.
And finally I should mention the amazing, overworked folks who worked for the campaign in various capacities, starting with Don Jones, Rob Stuart, Aaron Couch, and the other folks at Evolve, Josh Richard, James Stanley Smith, Daniel Hunter, Ben Waxman, Christina Michaels, and Bill Durham. Three people worked full time on my campaign. Lafia Anderson kept us organized with incredible skill and provided us all with a great deal of support. Andrew Gaffney was a great fundraiser and designer of our campaign materials and helped out in so many other ways. He even learned how to do some field working during the campaign and did it well.
And Crystal Martzall was simply an incredible campaign manager. She not only directed the work of everyone else—including me—and organized our outreach efforts into the community and wards but was also the key strategist of the campaign and helped keep me calm, focused, and energized. I’ve worked very closely with her in the last few months and I’m extraordinarily grateful for her dedication, friendship, and sense of humor.
And, once again, thanks to all of you who helped in one way or another.
Marc
A preliminary look at the returns
I have not had a chance to look at the detailed results so I can’t say why I did not do as well as I hoped. A look at the broad results suggests, however, is that a gamble I took did not pay off. I put more effort into securing support in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia and South Philadelphia rather than in ensuring that I maximized my vote in the core progressive areas of Center City and Northwest Philadelphia.
I concluded early on that there were just not enough votes in the core progressive areas to win city wide. This seemed to be the right conclusion as Andy Toy, who ran the campaign I originally planned to run, that is one focused on core progressive areas, pretty much got what can be gotten from those areas but still fell 10,000 votes short.
So the only way to achieve my dual goals of coming in the top five and bringing the progressive message to areas outside our base was to reach out to other areas of the city. Given how hard it is to reach tens of thousands of people without the resources of a Mayoral campaign, there was no way to do this without trying to gain support from within the ward system and to use cable TV. We had hoped that our cable TV advertising would create a sense of momentum in the campaign and mgiht eventually help bring some ward leaders around. That partly worked. But then we ran out of money and the TV advertising dropped out. So we had to start figuring out other ways to secure ward leader support while spending as much time as I could in the Northeast and North Philly.
My message did get out to these areas, and I did get some ward support in them, especially after we figured out how to use the Council Presidency race to our advantage. But we were not able to get as much support there as I had hoped for three reasons. Partly this was because we didn't get all the ward leader support we hoped for. Partly it was because I discovered that just being on a ward ballot didn't necessarily mean that we would do well in the ward. The 21st ward did well for me but some others did not. Ward leaders can push some candidates on the ballot and not others. And they weren’t really pushing me hard. And, partly it was that ward leaders who said they would put me on the ballot, did not.
So I did not do as well as I hoped outside the core progressive areas and, at the same time, did not put the effort I might have in doing well in the Northwest and Center City. I did well in those areas, but not as well as I might have. If we had the money to do the direct mail in those areas I had planned, we might have made up for my not spending as much time in them. But, as I pointed out above, money got very tight towards the end of the race.
Still, one outcome of running the race this way is I did connect with people in North Philly and the Northeast, people who might be willing to join a progressive organization in the future. And I learned a lot of lessons about how politics works outside the core progressive areas in the city. Those lessons will appear in future writing of mine. And I’ll be willing to share them with progressive candidates running city wide in the future.
Thanks for running
Thanks Marc for running. It was a risk well worth taking. I think we'll all be learning from results for a while and I hope it does push us to become more innovative in how we approach electoral politics. The traditional routes are always going to be harder for outsider to access and use. Anyways, thanks for stepping out and running (and to all those other great folks who ran, too).
I have looked at the At-Large returns.
I placed first in 28 wards.
Kenney placed first in 23 wards.
Andy Toy placed first in 5 wards.
Juan Ramos placed first in 5 wards.
Ben Ramos placed first in 2 wards.
Bill Greenlee placed first in his ward.
Bill Green placed first in Sabatina's ward.
Sharif Street placed first in Darrell Clarke's old ward that Clarke still controls.
Blondell placed second in almost all of the wards where I placed first.
Greenlee or Green placed second in almost all of the wards where Kenney placed first.
Sharif Street was among the top three vote-getters in Black wards.
Bill Green was among the top three vote-getters in White wards.
Andy Toy took the liberal wards.
The order was:
1)Kenney
2)Goode
3)Greenlee
4)Bill Green
5)Reynolds Brown
6)Sharif Street
7)Ben Ramos
8)Juan Ramos
9)Andy Toy
There's no need to over-analyze the race - either you are competitive citywide - within a broad base of wards - a large enough niche of wards - or you don't break 40,000 votes.
I received over 42,000 votes in my first run in 1991 at age 25 (mostly name recognition citywide). I got 50,000 in 1999 - 66,000 in 2003 - and I expect to hit 80,000 when the 2007 total hits 100%.
It's a tough race - but it is what it is (Bill Green understood that, and Sharif just fell short).
WWGjr
Insightful campaign stategizing runs in your family
I had the very great honor of sitting down with your father during this past election season and having a long meeting on the subject of running grassroots insurgent candidates in the city, a subject on which he is a real expert (it's all about the coffee klatches!), and he noted your acumen and independence from him when you run. (As you note: his Goode name helped a lot in '99).
Your analysis of running At-Large, and your vote totals, certainly proves you know what you're talking about, in what I consider one of the city's hardest races to run. I love Marc, and voted for him of course, but I thought he was crazy for getting into it.
I just couldn't figure out how Marc--or anyone--could go from being unknown to winning enough votes in enough places, in a race that doesn't get much media or public attention. I guess Andy Toy came the closest this year, and would've had a shot if he'd placed second or third in the places where Green and Greenlee finished there.
I think your initial success and Bill Green's and Sharif's relative success shows that a brand-name name is almost required at this point, in order to run successfully in enough wards the first time.
I believe Blondell also got in 1999, her second run, and my old ward leader Lester Brown told me that her secret was that she had spent four years building relationships with ward leaders and the party infrastructure. That might be good advice to Andy and Marc, should they decide to give it another go. And still Blondell just got in by the skin of her teeth this year.
At-Large is one tough nut to crack.
Thanking all the valiant candidates endorsed by Philly For Change, and looking forward with GREAT expectations to the first four years of MAYOR MICHAEL A. NUTTER!
Generally speaking, voters
Generally speaking, voters selecting candidates who are there same color is still a strong preference in Philadelphia. (It is clearly not the only factor.) But the top candidates in white wards still tend to be white, and the top candidates in black wards still tend to be black.
(Andy Toy, and the Ramos would line up in that dichotomy, as white and black respectively.)
What's very interesting in this race is that there are three white men who are at large Councilman as Democrats, and the electorate is more folks of color than when that was true last time. (Gussie Clark and Angel held at large spots for a while, so its been at least twenty-five years since that was true.)
I suspect that it will be nearly impossible, save some very bad problem, for a challenger to knock off any of the at large incumbents next time.
What Councilman Goode is hinting at, that I'll put more strongly, is that there are some candidates who cannot win, and some incumbents who cannot lose, without a huge change in circumstances. I have seen a lot on this site about McClure winning (I thought he had a good chance), Damon Roberts winning (never thought he had any chance), Longacre and Johnston winning (a white candidate winning the 5th has not happened in over 50 years, and Johnston is from Councilman Clarke's old ward), and other candidates who would have a hard time winning giving demographics, support and money.
I have seen other conversations about beating Jannie as ward leader (not in this lifetime, in my estimation), and others.
Those are all good conversations and dialogue to have, but it is important not to lose sight in the fact that people get elected because somebody likes them. It's not just because the ward leader told them so, union support, etc. Sometimes, its just broad based support that can have as thresholds similar class, race or geography. Also, some candidates cannot overcome their own personal demographics to win. As an example, it would be impossible for me to imagine the 10th District as an African American or Latino. Not possible, no matter what the credentials of the challenger.
Just some food for thought.
Yes, generally speaking...
But come on, just a few weeks ago very few people knew who third place winner Bill Greenlee was, and fourth place winner Bill Green was never involved in politics before February. It was connections and money (and a famous name) that helped them, not any longterm relationship with voters, even as famously likable as is Greenlee.
Connections, money and a famous name can trump incumbency in At Large races.
Voters and demographics can change too. So can a candidate's ability to fundraise. So too a candidate's personal relationships with party leadership.
What you're describing, I think, is what USUALLY happens, merely because in down-ticket races the public has too much to worry about in their own lives to find out enough about the new guy or woman in the race. So, like your friend you described in another thread, they stick with the incumbent they know.
But insurgents can win the grassroots way too, especially in district races. It's just hard. Maria got 52% in a 3-way race, eight years after she lost 55-23 to Rick Mariano. Even if he had no legal problems (if we might imagine that fantastic scenario), she could have beaten Mariano this time, I think.
2 out of 3 voters in your friend's district voted against Donna. Like-ability is a fragile thing.
People like Irv, Vern, and even Damon should look at what Maria did right and learn from her.
Thanking all the valiant candidates endorsed by Philly For Change, and looking forward with GREAT expectations to the first four years of MAYOR MICHAEL A. NUTTER!
I think that insurgents can
I think that insurgents can beat incumbents (Street as Council President almost lost to Julie Welker), but you have to run smart races and have a lot of money. (She was also backed by Bill Gray, and two other candidates ran, but he almost lost b/c of the strong dislike of the Center City part of his district.)
By smart, I mean, find a candidate who matches the demographic of the district. A white candidate is not winning the 5th Councilmanic District. I am struggling now to remember who was the white candidate was who last won the seat. (I think that Raymond Pace Alexander was the first African American district councilman in the 1950s, but I can't remember who was before him and Committee of Seventy doesn't have it on their website.)
Also, run candidates in the base of the incumbent. (Thank Ralph Nader for President George Bush as an example.) If some no name candidate from Germantown had run, and got 1,000 votes (which is to say that he/she would have been crushed), the election result would be different. Same is true in the 4th. If some no name candidate -- Will Mega as an example -- had run, he would have changed the election results, but lost.
Maria has run for a long time, and been active for ever. She has been active in that district for at least 20 years that I can count. So, yes, you can win, if the incumbent goes to prison, the seat is redistricted to be have a strong minority presence, you are a member of the minority group, and the new councilmember is not. (Back to my point above, pick a candidate who matches the District.)
Vern is going to have a hard time ever beating DiCicco -- two strikes rule in politics for a while. Unseating Donna requires, I think, a single candidate or at least no Greg Paulmier. Darrell Clarke is not losing the 5th to a candidate who is not an African American, unless seven other candidates run. An African American candidate could beat Verna, but not for a while, and it is unlikely.
Raymond Pace Alexander First Black Democrat in City Council
The Fifth District was created in 1951, when the city had ten districts for the first time. Previously, the city had eight districts which elected a total of 21 councilmen, with districts getting variable numbers of councilpeople depending on their population.
I would be surprised if, pre-1951, the Republicans did not have black councilpeople. They elected a small number of black legislators during their period of dominance in Philadelphia, beginning with Henry Mintess around 1910. I do not know what the equivalent of the current 5th District was before 1951, or held the seat. I would welcome finding out that information,
Raymond Pace Alexander was the first black Democrat to serve in City Council, winning election in 1951 and 1955 from the 5th District, and winning election to the Common Pleas Court over the all-out objections of the Philadelphia Bar Association in 1959.
Alexander was succeeded by Thomas McIntosh, a brilliant man who unfortunately was not able to complete law school. McIntosh was elected from the fifth district in 1959, 1963, and 1967. After his surprise 1971 defeat, he held mid-level positions of responsibility in city government until shortly before his death in early October of 2003. My father's death a day or so before his probably led to his death getting less publicity than it otherwise would have.
Dr. Ethel Allen became the last Republican to hold the 5th District Seat, upsetting McIntosh as the councilman in 1971 running on the coattails of Thacher Longstreth, the Republican nominee for Mayor against Frank Rizzo who became the last Republican in Philadelphia history to sweep the black community.
Allen knew her victory was flukish, so she ran for Councilman at Large in 1975, was elected, and then joined the Thornburgh Administration as Secretary of State in 1979. She did not last long in that position, getting hurt by her proclamation of Gay Pride Day (or maybe Week) and her accepting of speaking fees from groups she was regulating. She died in her fifties a few years after her resignation as Secretary of State.
Her seat was won by Cecil B. Moore in 1975. Moore was an NAACP leader who had led the successful effort to integrate Girard College, a free boarding school for children without at least one parent which its founder had established for "free white males." It now accepts young women as well as blacks.
Moore died in 1979, and was succeeded by John Street, who held the seat until his resignation to run successfully for Mayor in 1999. Street's successor was Darryl Clark, a longtime aide to Street who just one a decisive victory on Tuesday for re-nomination.
Mr. McIntosh (father not the
Mr. McIntosh (father not the son, whom I like as well), was a pure class act. We used to sit and talk at long length about being Councilman at that time. But he was a very low key guy, and his son, class act like the father, is low key as well, so I thought the fact that the press did not make much ado about his passing fit a man whose life spoke louder than his actions.
Thanks for the history. Raymond Pace Alexander, who I believe finished third in his law school class, was completely rejected by the Bar Association, and if memory serves me correctly, would not have won but for the support of someone in the party.
If memory serves me correctly, Raymond Pace Alexander was the first African American elected to City Council. I do believe that there were some Republican Ward leaders at or around the time DuBois lived in Philly. But I'd be willing to look that up and see who was the first.
But to the original point, that district has had some giants in the African American community serve it. Raymond Pace Alexander, and his wife, Sadie T.M. Alexander (the first African American woman to graduate from the law school at Penn, and the first African American woman to have a PhD in Economics) were a giant power couple in the African American community. (The Alexander family is an old family in Philadelphia, if memory serves me correctly.)
Mr. McIntosh was a well respected party guy. I forgot all about Dr. Allen and the positions she went to serve. Cecil Moore was a giant and had a flair about him that is Philadelphia's version of Adam Clayton Powell, although, he didn't preach. (He was a lawyer.) John Street is Mayor, etc. (Although I think most older folks think of it as Cecil Moore's seat.)
All of that to say that knowledge of that history is important, b/c when you seek to replace an incumbent, and say, we would recommend replacing that incumbent with someone of a different demographic background, the feeling about what the representative should stand for, and some instances look like, is guided by history.
That's not a knock on Longacre or anyone else running for office. (I am not saying that a white candidate could not win, Bob Brady holds a majority African American congressional seat, but it would be difficult.)
I am still thinking about how to frame this issue, i.e., progressives (I think that term either means white, middle class liberals or most happen to be) can connect with communities of color for a common agenda. One part of that is appreciating history -- that's for both sides.
Free Advice
Free Advice for Those Running As Non-Incumbents:
1. Cable TV is a waste of money. There's a reason why the ad buys are so cheap -- because very few people see the ads, and of the few people that do, almost none are registered voters. Only do TV if you can buy a week of broadcast at $350,000.
2. Direct Mail. Mail remains the most cost effective way to literally get your message in the homes of voters. The obvious advantage of mail is that 100% of the people receiving it are voters, and they can be targeted based on voting history, race, location, etc. While TV is highly effective at communicating a message, a lot of the people watching it are not voters. This is why Knox sent out so many pieces of mail despite his huge TV campaign.
As a voter with a perfect primary and general vote history, I should have received mail from just about everyone running for office this cycle, but I didn't. The only At-Largers I received mail from were Kenney and Bill Green. Sharif Street could have won -- there's no better advantage than having the sitting mayor be your dad -- but he spent his money on wasteful things like having his face on the sides of SEPTA buses. I also think Toy could have won, or at least come very close to winning, had he sent 4 pieces of direct mail to voters outside of Center City and NW Philly.
Other cost effective ways of making direct voter contacts are robocalls.
3. News Papers. Ok, running ads in the Philly Inq are not direct voter contacts -- not everyone who reads the paper is a registered voter or registered to vote in Philadelphia -- but it's probably a pretty safe assumption to say that the people who still buy and read it are registered voters with a likely chance to vote in the primary. Candidates only started running ads in the final few days, which is almost worthless since your competing against every other campaigns' ads. Bill Green was smart and started running ads in early April. At the time, he was the only campaign advertising in the Inq. and it really stood out.
Also, I saw that some people ran quarter page ads in the smaller locals. Anything less than a full page ad is worthless.
4. Lawn Signs, Palm Cards, Websites, Blogs, etc. do not win elections. Direct Voter Contacts Do. The amount of money spent on lawn signs this cycle was staggering. The Roosevelt Blvd was insane. That $3,000 smaller campaigns spent on lawn signs could have been 50,000 robo calls.
The other thing to add is
The other thing to add is the difference between district and at large. Obviously news paper ads are more bang for the buck if you are Citywide as opposed to a 10th of the City.
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"yes adam gave some informative comments but he also seems to sprinkle a little adam dust on it." - merkin
You Can't Keep a Good Stier Down!!
I want to commend you and thank you for wanting to serve this city. This city would have embraced you as Council at Large. But this isn't the end, we need your help more than ever. Its too bad that it didn't show in the polls. I voted for you and have no regrets to that vote. It was a tough race , but the race isn't over. It was a pleasure to have met you and converse over the issues that plague your district. I don't know what our council will do but I know it would have been in good hands with you aboard. I look forward to working with you in the future to make this a better Philadelphia. There is always next term!!!!!
Junior Williams
juniorwililams007@earthlink.net
http://mycityscapephily.eponym.com/blog
A couple of comments
At-Large is a city wide race and as such requires a lot more money and name recognition or yet more money to buy name recognition than I think Stier or Toy or Derek Green had this time out. Sharif Street had both and his face on half the busses and trolleys in town and still didn't make it. Bill Green had simply tons of money and he did. Greenlea had decades of contacts with the ward leaders to take advantage of and he barely squeaked by.
The other factor is that this time out the City Council races were simply drowned out by a very competitive, super media heavy, 5-way mayoral race that occupied everyone (including on this and other discussion forums) nearly 24-7. It was simply nearly impossible to get an "insurgent" message out in such a circumstance. People went in with a decision for the mayor's race but tuned out council or simply voted for the names they recognized i.e. theincumbents or candidates with same name as former mayor's for better or worse.
2011 will be different. Anticipating a popular Nutter incumbency, the mayor's race will be a snoozer but may of the issues that are lurking in the background will still dominate the Council races - property taxes including tossing or refocusing the 10-year abatement and full-value (which are coming regardless of symbollic ballot initiatives) property assesments and how to protect elderly and long-time residents, fixing L&I and zoning, schools, the ballooning cost of city employee benefits. 2007 was a mayoral election year but 2011 will be first and foremost a City Council election year.
Watch races like Damon Roberts vs. Anna Verna and Vern Anastasio vs. DiCicco become front and center in terms of media coverage, should the same characters choose to restage those races.
In terms of Vern and the "two-time" rule - I don't think that really applies because in 2003 Vern never actually ran a campaign, he had a court case that made a number of election law lawyers a good deal of money but did very little to spread name recogintion or discussion of the issues out to the public. This time he ran a heavily out-spent race (I've heard numbers ranging from 5-1 to 8-1) against an established incumbent and captured 1/3 of the votes when DiCicco had released a poll with Vern only getting 16% of the votes a mere 1 week previously. On top of that in a year when "crime" topped voter's concerns DiCicco advertisied fairly heavily on TV featuring an endorsement from the DA while Vern only put up commercials in the final days and the "hard-hitting" one detailing the illegal but uncharged acts the FBI allege against DiCicco in the 139 Fumo indictments was banned because of threats of a law suit from the DiCicco camp. All of that will be different for Vern in 2011 should he run again.
The DA will be Seth Williams (who is notably more independent from the Fumo/Brady camp than Lynn is) with any luck. 4 years of the newly empowered Ethics Board will have certain effects on a number of sitting Council incumbents, probably including DiCicco. The stuff alleged by the FBI against DiCicco in the Fumo indictments will not require any effort or explanation by Anastasio because they will have been dragged out repeatedly by a long and heavily discussed and most likely succesful Federal trial against Fumo. Vern will finally get the race he still hasn't had a chance to run - one exculsively about policy and his vision of how to make Philly a better place. I think at the very least it will be a much, much more competitive race should Vern choose to run it.