Three insurgent candidates try but fail to win across city

Oxford Circle

Jared Solomon came close to ousting longtime state Rep. Mark Cohen in the 202nd District, which stretches across lower Northeast Philly neighborhoods that have shifted from solidly white to very diverse in recent years. But the growing pains are severe: Poverty is on the rise and voters are concerned about crime.

Two elderly women who had lived in Oxford Circle since 1949 told Solomon that he had their vote.

One said, "My street's not so bad."

Her friend was more pessimistic. "We're scared to death," she said, leaving the polling place at Tarken Recreation Center. "My children won't come visit me."

"Everyone else moved away. Is there anybody left?" she asked.

She also complained that the recreation center's "bathrooms are disgusting."

Solomon shared their distaste. "Those swings," he said, gesturing toward the playground, "look like torture devices."

Cohen, the son of a progressive City Councilman, has been heavily criticized for his use of per diems as a legislator.

"His father was a very wonderful man, David Cohen," the woman said.

Solomon grew up in the neighborhood and has spent the past few years organizing a community organization called Take Back Your Neighborhood in Castor Gardens.

"We brought together one of the most diverse areas of the city," he says, arguing that the lower Northeast should embrace diversity as a strength. "This neighborhood's my passion."

But 73-year-old Leon Moss, walking his dog near the rec center, explained one reason so many Philadelphians don't vote. "Every politician is a bullshitter," he says.

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Bridesburg

Republican City Council candidate Matt Wolfe quickly got into a polite policy debate with a man gathering signatures on a petition to abolish the School Reform Commission when he arrived at the Bridesburg Recreation Center. Longtime 45th Ward Leader Kevin Pasquay quickly tugged him inside the sleepy polling place.

Wolfe, a lawerly University City ward leader, relied on Pasquay as a guide to the white-working class River Wards — they're heavily Democratic, but pass for a Republican stronghold in the city of Philadelphia. Rep. Taylor, the only Republican representing a district that is entirely within the city and a master of constituent services, represents the area.
Wolfe lost decisively to Democratic state Rep. Ed Neilson — the former political director of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 — in the special election to fill SRC Chairman Bill Green's vacant Council seat.

Wolfe has been at the forefront of a messy process of rebuilding the city's Republican Party after its longterm decline. Though he lost, the campaign shows that Republicans are now playing to win.

At Samuel Recreation Center in Port Richmond, Pasquay dashed after a woman who said she had given up on voting after being directed to the wrong polling place.

"I don't want to miss a vote," he says. "I've seen Communist countries" where people cannot vote, and Philadelphians "take it too lightly."

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West Philly

Beating a party-backed incumbent is always challenging, and Algernong Allen didn't even come close to defeating state Rep. Jim Roebuck in the 188th District. Allen owned the popular Cedar Park bar Elena's Soul Lounge before it burned down in 2012. On Tuesday, he confronted the old-school skepticism that dominates low-turnout elections when he visited Harrington Elementary School on Baltimore Avenue.

Lottie Bazemore, who says she has been a Democratic committeeperson for 48 years, complained that "some of these young folks get in there" and are "trying to push the old folks out." She was referring to Gregory R. Benjamin, a Kingsessing community activist who led a slate of neighbors seeking committeeperson seats as part of a challenge to 51st Ward Leader and former Clerk of Quarter Sessions Vivian Miller.

Bazemore did allow that the younger men might be ready for office in a few years time.

Two years ago, the 188th district race became a proxy battle in the war over public education when third-party, school-choice groups spent money to back a challenger allied with state Sen. Anthony Williams, a voucher and charter advocate. Roebuck is a public-education advocate, and critic of charter-school financing and vouchers. It was also a fight between two political powerful politicians long seen to be at odds: Williams and City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell.

But Williams is a likely candidate for mayor in 2015, and he says that he and Blackwell are now on good terms — and both backed Roebuck. Williams says that he and Roebuck have some things in common when it comes to education.

"He and I have had conversations about our perspectives regarding education," says Williams. "It's clear that our district needs us to be working together because we have probably the highest percentage of underperforming schools in the city."