City Dems file new party rules at elections board, after denying they existed
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
The new rules were in Commissioner Clark's City Hall office from March until October. They were sent to the elections bureau shortly after a City Paper article raised questions about whether the rules had been changed.
Back in October, City Paper reported that party operatives were alluding to an updated set of Democratic Party rules in Philly, but nobody could furnish CP with a copy of them. The new rules were important, some people said, because they no longer required a ward leader to live in the ward he represented.
Well, it turns out there was an updated set of rules after all. They were time stamped March 31, 2014, but they weren't on file in the city Board of Elections, as required. Instead, they were in Commissioner Chair Anthony Clark's office in City Hall.
And the part about the ward leader's residency requirement? That hasn't changed under the news rules. But there are other changes that shift more power to ward leaders when it comes to filling vacancies for elected offices.
Here's what we've learned.
A new set of Rules of the Democratic Party of the City and County of Philadelphia were put on file at the County Board of Elections on Oct. 22. Up until then, the elections board had the old rules, adopted in 1954, on file.
The new rules came with a cover letter signed by Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Bob Brady, and with a stamp from "City Commissioners Room 130 City Hall" dated "2014 MAR 31". Room 130 is Commissioner Clark's office. A title page is also dated March 31, 2014, and is signed by Brady and notarized.
The party's rules were the focus of an Oct. 16 article in City Paper, probing whether local political leaders were violating party rules by being registered to vote in one ward and being ward leaders in another ward.
At the time, Gary Williams, who is the ward leader of the 32nd but is registered to vote in the 16th ward, was quoted as saying that the rules had been modified after the last primary to remove the residency requirement. But both the old and new rules require a ward leader to be "an elector [registered voter] of the ward he is to represent."
Before the story was published, City Paper repeatedly asked Brady's office if any other version of the rules existed. Brady's staffers repeatedly insisted that the 1954 version, posted online by City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, were the "only" rules.
The Democratic City Committee did not answer calls for comment last week on this story. Requests to Commissioner Clark for comment went unreturned.
Kevin Kelly at the Board of Elections said the new rules were delivered to that office on Oct. 22.
Commissioner Singer confirmed that that she only learned about the new set of rules recently. She questioned whether the proper procedures for approving county party rules under the State Democratic party by-laws had been followed.
As Singer noted last fall, the old rules were not stamped or notarized, raising a question of whether they were "certified" as required under the Pennsylvania Election Code. The new rules have been stamped by the Commissioners' office, ostensibly resolving that question.
Most of the changes in the new set or rules appear to be merely cosmetic: A table of contents was added, some typos were fixed, and a few new ones were added.
Two of the changes, however, shift power away from committee persons to ward leaders when it comes to filling vacancies on the ticket for general and special elections, thereby consolidating the power of party bigwigs.
When a vacancy exists for "members of Congress, delegates to the National Convention, state Senators, state Representatives and Councilmen" the Democratic Executive Committee — the ward leaders — can now effectively veto the recommendation for filling the vacancy made by committee people in the district.
In addition, under the old rules, a vote of the committee persons would select a replacement candidate for state Representative seats. Now, "the vacancy shall be filled at a joint meeting of all ward leaders in said legislative district."
While vacancies are uncommon, they are not unheard of: in early March, Ed Neilson was selected by Philadelphia's 69 Democratic ward leaders to replace Bill Green as a Democratic candidate for councilman at-large. Green left council to become chairman of the School Reform Commission. Neilson handily won the council seat in a special election in May.
