POLITICS

By Christopher Doyle

Contributing Writer

The recent Democratic primaries in Philadelphia drew national attention for its headline result – the landslide victory of progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner over veteran prosecutor Carlos Vega. Overlooked were the down-ballot judicial races, the work of local ward leaders, and the growth of progressive activist groups – things that are all making their own impressions on criminal justice and city politics.

The May 18 Philadelphia Democratic Primary Elections featured, in addition to the district attorney contest, races to nominate candidates for a total of 15 vacancies between two local courts and three statewide courts. (There was also a race to nominate a candidate for city controller, in which incumbent Rebecca Rhynhart was running unopposed.)

Primary candidates, especially those for local judicial races, rely on the support of the Philadelphia Democratic Party. That support can come from either the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, the central governing body of the city party, or from a share of Philadelphia’s 66 wards – political subdivisions in which local, partisan ward committees can choose to issue their own endorsements, separate from that of the city committee. Republican primary candidates likewise depend on endorsements from the Republican City Committee and GOP ward committees.

Gregory Benjamin is the Democratic leader of the 51st Ward in Southwest Philadelphia and a minister at the Church of Christian Compassion on 61st and Cedar Avenue. Benjamin said that he worked to keep voters and ward committee people informed through canvassing and Zoom meetings with the candidates – taking a more virtual approach than in years past due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that pivot towards online forums helped make information about the candidates more accessible to some residents.

“I’m one of those ward leaders that really believes in community engagement, my involvement with this process is not just prior to the primary or prior to the general, my involvement is year-round,” Benjamin said. “And so, I’m constantly trying to figure out ways to educate our people and get the information out.”

When reaching out to the community, Benjamin said he worked to convince residents of the importance of the 2021 primaries, emphasizing the impact that judges have on people’s everyday lives.

“This was the most important election of the four election cycles that takes place over a fouryear period,” Benjamin said. “This is about your judges, these are about the people who are local, who really have an impact.”

“President is important, don’t get me wrong,” Benjamin added. “But that judge that can make a decision over you, you got a better chance of seeing that judge than seeing that president.”

Carol Jenkins, the Democratic Leader of the 27th Ward in University City, said that her ward also held Zoom meetings with the candidates, due to the pandemic. But with COVID-19 cases in the city receding due to the vaccination campaign, 27th Ward voters seemed eager to get out to the polls for the in-person election day experience.

“A lot of people were coming in and they had intended to vote by mail, because they were used to voting the last two cycles by

JUNE 16, 2021 • PHILLYFREEPRESS.COM • UCREVIEW.COM • 3 What we learned from the May 18 Philadelphia Democratic Primary Elections (Part 1)

mail, but then when the pandemic started to be alleviated with the vaccinations, they changed their mind,” Jenkins said. “Some states have [all] mail in, and they love mail in, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be loved in Philadelphia.”

Overall, however, Jenkins did not find voters to be especially enthusiastic about the year’s races, outside of that for district attorney.

“They maybe got a little bit more enthused when it looked like Vega was getting some traction and they started to panic that Krasner might lose,” Jenkins said about voters in the ward. “But I don’t know if that translated into enthusiasm.”

Jenkins said she was pleased with the slate of candidates that the party had endorsed through the city committee. She noted that all the committee -endorsed candidates for the Common Pleas Court were either “recommended” or “highly recommended” by the Bar Association of Philadelphia – something that is required to receive an endorsement from the 27th Ward. Two of the three committeeendorsed candidates for Municipal Court were also Bar-recommended.

“I think there has been more media attention, I think social media attention has also increased knowledge about people being endorsed or not endorsed by the Bar,” Jenkins said. “I think it’s the voters’ change, that they are being made aware of Bar recommendations and highly recommended judges and I think that has influenced the results that we’re seeing, especially in this cycle.”

Benjamin said that he was also satisfied with the qualification of the committee’s slate of candidates. He added that he was encouraged to see the committee endorse a large number of Black candidates. (Five of the 11 candidates the committee endorsed for local races were Black, as were three of the four candidates that the committee endorsed in statewide races.)

While the city committee and wards remain an important source of support for primary candidates, local, leftwing organizations have been playing a larger role in recent elections. The last five years have been marked by the success of progressive candidates not backed by the city committee, including Democratic City Councilmember-at-large Helen Gym in 2015 and Councilmember-at-large Kendra Brooks – who is a member of the Working Families Party and in 2019 won one of council’s two at-large seats reserved for parties in the minority.

Reclaim Philadelphia, which was founded in 2016 by former staffers of the first presidential campaign of democraticsocialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), has been one of the more influential of the city’s left-wing groups. Over the past five years, Reclaim has supported a number of progressive candidates, including Brooks and Krasner. One Reclaim member, Rick Krajewski, even ousted longtime incumbent Jim Roebuck in the 2020 Democratic primary to represent part of West Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania state House. (Benjamin also ran in that primary, finishing in third.)

Sergio Cea, a member of Reclaim and a Democratic committee person in the 46th Ward, said that Reclaim members canvassed around the city and phone banked in support of their candidates, who are recommended by the Reclaim steering committee and voted on by Reclaim’s dues-paying members. Cea said that Reclaim focused on building relationships with residents he said are left out of conventional city politics and said that the group’s reach was particularly deep in West Philadelphia.

“We had a citywide approach to the election, but we did a lot of canvasing and phone banking throughout West Philadelphia and Southwest,” Cea said. “A lot of our membership base is really strong in these areas already, and that’s been growing ever since we first got involved with Larry Krasner, and then supported in the primary last year Rick Krajewski.”

“People kind of already know us in these areas, and people already kind of look to us when it comes to our endorsement, specifically when it comes to candidates like judges where people don’t have as much information,” Cea added.

Reclaim is part of the Judicial Accountability Table, or JAT – a coalition of political and civil rights groups focused on promoting progressive judicial candidates in Philadelphia and holding sitting judges accountable. Cea said he was excited to see the success of what he believed was a progressive slate of potential judges win nominations, and said the results forecasted future reform of the criminal justice system.

“People are looking for that when it comes to their judges,” Cea said. “They know it’s not just on the district attorney, judges play a huge role when it comes to people who are impacted by the carceral state, and [considering] the freedoms that we can lose when we’re in front of a judge, we want [judges] to be more reflective of the community.”

“What I’m more invested in is getting people to pay more attention to these races every year and to start thinking more critically about these candidates,” Cea added.

Of the local judicial races, there were 16 Democratic candidates running for eight open seats on the Philadelphia

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Court of Common Pleas, which hears general criminal and civil trials; and four Democratic candidates running for three open seats on the Philadelphia Municipal Court, which hears landlord-tenant cases, small claims in civil cases no greater than $12,000, real-estate and tax cases where the amount in dispute is no greater than $15,000, and criminal cases in which charges carry a maximum prison sentence of no greater than five years. Philadelphians could vote for as many candidates in each race as there were open

me out for some reason?

There was no drum roll when the victim began reviewing the lineup. Happily, none of us was signaled out. When the process was over, we were told that we could go. We were released without an apology for having been inconvenienced. We also had to find our own way home. The rudeness of the process was monumental.

Another time, police ordered me inside a van to join a group of men they had scooped off the streets at random while driving through Center City. The men had been walking downtown after a night out at the bars. While there was no police lineup this time, our group spent the night in jail, and in the morning put before a judge and a galley of heckling spectators who were there for entertainment purposes. The judge mumbled something then dismissed us with a smirk.

Philadelphia needed a Larry Krasner in the 1970s. In fact, if there had been a Krasner DA at that time, I would not have had to write letters about my police van experience to the ACLU. As it happened, I sent copies of those letters to The Inquirer (where they were published and generated some action, like a face-to-face with the police captain then in charge of the Center City District in question). Individual ad hoc appeal processes like this, however, were still a crapshoot.

I did not soon forget my experiences at the hands of bad police officers, so I welcomed ev-

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Need a Fresh Look for your Business without Breaking the Bank? ery opportunity to attack the politician that most represented the police: Frank Rizzo.

I attacked Rizzo in print in The Drummer newspaper and in columns in the Welcomat. Years later, in the 1980s, I interviewed Rizzo when he was a radio talk show host. I was pleasantly surprised when the former mayor greeted me like an old friend, invited me to lunch, and repeatedly clutched my shoulder in a brotherly way while telling me to write about him “anyway I wanted to.”

“Call the shots as you see them,” he said.

Over time, I began to notice positive changes in the city when it came to the police. The process didn’t happen overnight but the change was so apparent in the late 1990s going into the 2000s, so that one rarely thought of the police as “the enemy” at all.

In 1993, then Mayor Wilson Goode issued an executive order regarding the formation of a Police Advisory Commission, which has grown over the years to achieve a budget of $668,700 in 2020.

But while the police were now doing their job in a much more humane manner, criminals were slowly becoming bolder in their exploits.

DA Larry Krasner appeared on the scene just as crime was spiking in the City of Brotherly Love.

Born in 1961 in St. Louis, Krasner is the son of a writer father and a minister mother. He spent his childhood years in both Philadelphia and St. Louis before getting degrees at the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. As a young law student, Krasner was already working for homeless people, the urban poor, and for “indigenous” rights. Those impulses were still strong in him when he returned to Philadelphia in 1987 to work as a public defender and civil rights attorney. In 1993, he opened his own law practice.

Krasner’s decision to run for district attorney in 2017 was greeted on all sides with derision. A 2018 New Yorker article quoted Philadelphia FOP president John McNesby calling the idea of a Krasner candidacy “hilarious.” Krasner’s own law firm was said to have broken out in laughter at the announcement of his candidacy.

If Krasner had a hard

DA Larry Krasner

road at first, he soon found celebrity status thanks to a PBS eightpart documentary series, Philly DA. He has also become one of the faces of the national “progressive prosecutor” movement.

Yet Krasner was soon presiding over a crime wave that rendered him unpopular in many areas of the city. Since he took office, shootings and homicides soared. As of April 15, 2021, 145 homicides and 442 non-fatal shootings have been registered in the city, including 55 children shot. So far this year, homicides have increased 32 percent from this point in 2020, itself a year when the city experienced its second-highest homicide rate in 60 years. Many of the perpetrators have been found to be repeat offenders or men released on reduced bail due to decisions from the district attorney’s office. The unbelievable was happening. While Krasner was making some needed reforms, he was tipping the scales to the far left just as Frank Rizzo had gone to the far right when it came to the criminal justice issues.

Sentiment against Krasner began to build, especially in city neighborhoods such as Fishtown, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, and South Philadelphia, all traditionally Democratic areas.

Before the May 18th primary, a recent story in Billy Penn reported that a coalition of Democratic elected officials gathered at the statue of civil rights hero Octavius Catto in front of City Hall to deliver their endorsement of Krasner. “The next morning,” the story continued, “officials with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 parked a Mister Softee truck across the street from the DA’s office and gave out free soft-serve” to mock Krasner’s position on crime. “Soft on crime. Soft on sentencing,” tweeted FOP president John McNesby. “Come enjoy a mister softee cone on the cops.”

Despite the vehement anti-Krasner sentiment throughout the city, the DA sailed to an easy victory in the May primary.

Carlos Vega, Krasner’s challenger, received 35 percent of the vote, a small piece of mince pie considering the intensity of the campaign to unseat Krasner. Vega put up a good fight but in the end the Philadelphia Democratic Machine and campaign money from George Soros and wealthy left-wing philanthropists proved far too powerful.

Krasner will now meet Republican challenger attorney Chuck Peruto in the fall. But no Republican ever gets elected in the City of Philadelphia. As the journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote in “The Shame of the Cities,”

All our municipal governments are more or less bad, and all our people are optimists. Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented.

Krasner’s primary win all but guarantees his re-election in November. Philadelphia can expect four more years of the DA’s social justice reform agenda.

We can also expect many more shootings and deaths.

McGillin’s & Troegs Brewing Announce Partnership

Brewery to create house beers for City’s Oldest Bar

Apartnership is brewing between McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the oldest continuously operating tavern in Philadelphia and one of the oldest in the country, and Troegs Brewing, a local independent brewery started 25 years ago by two brothers. Troegs will now supply the historic bar with its three house beers -- McGillin’s Genuine Lager, McGillin’s Real Ale, and McGillin’s 1860 IPA, which was created for its 150th anniversary in 2010.

The new beers are now on tap and are expected to be served for the bar’s next 160 years. The beers will be available for $5 per pint. A six-beer sampler, featuring the three new McGillin’s house beers, as well as O’Reilly’s Stout, Walt Wit by Pennsylvania Brewing Company and a seasonal beer of choice is available for $9.50. McGillin’s is currently open Tuesdays from 4-11 p.m. and Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays from 12 noon to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from 12 noon to 2 a.m. No reservations. First come/first served. Inside and out.

For the past 25 years, McGillin’s three house beers have been produced by Stoudt’s Brewing. McGillin’s served more Stoudt’s Beer on draft than any other tavern in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. With the Adamstown, PA brewer going out of business, the historic tavern needed to get a new brewery on tap.

“It’s with much gusto, many delicious brews, a heavy heart, and teary eyes that we toast to our friends Carol and Ed Stoudt, as they retire and close the brewery. When they opened Stoudt’s Brewing in 1987, Carol was the first female brewmaster in the United States since Prohibition and the first female sole proprietor of a brewery. They will surely be missed,” said Chris Mullins, Sr., who owns McGillin’s with his wife, Mary Ellen Mullins, and their son, Christopher Mullins, Jr.

While the closure is bittersweet, the Mullins family is enthusiastic about working with Troegs, one McGillin’s best-selling beers, among the 30 that McGillin’s serves on tap and another familyowned business.

While the names of the house beers will stay the same, Troegs has put its own spin on the three house beers, rather than trying to replicate the existing flavors.

McGillin’s Genuine

Lager - Can only be found at McGillin’s and Troegs Brewery. This golden Helles lager is smooth and satisfying with a clean malt character reminiscent of freshbaked bread. German hops add a hint of floral notes and subtle bitterness, while lager yeast lends a crisp, refreshing finish. 4.3% alcohol/21 IBU.

McGillin’s 1860 IPA - Brewed exclusively for McGillin’s and inspired by Troegs Hop Knife.

This hop-forward IPA is fresh and aromatic with bold notes of citrus and tropical fruit courtesy of six different varieties of classic American hops. 6.2% alcohol/87 IBU.

McGillin’s Real Ale - Brewed exclusively for McGillin’s and inspired by Troeg’s HopBack Amber, which has been discontinued earlier this year. This deep ambercolored ale boasts flavors of grapefruit and pine balanced by a hint of spice and complex malty notes of caramel and toffee. The use of whole flower hops creates a bright, citrusy aroma. 6 % alcohol/55 IBU.

BACKGROUND

McGillin’s Olde Ale House is the oldest continuously operating tavern in Philadelphia and one of the oldest in the country. It opened in 1860, the year Lincoln was elected president. The 161-year-old tavern has now survived two pandemics. The tavern opened around the time the Liberty Bell cracked and long before anyone ever tasted a cheesesteak. It’s known for having 30 local craft beers on tap, homemade comfort food and the camaraderie that has attracted not only young patrons but their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents before them.

McGillin’s, 1310 Drury Street (between Chestnut & Sansom, 13th & Juniper), 215/735-5562. www.mcgillins.com. FB & Twitter: @McGillins IG: @McGillinsOldeAleHouse

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tal, Clayton Mitchell, senior vice-president of real estate facilities and construction and Kevin Kleinschmidt, who leads the Jeff Stat program, a medical transportation service owned and operated by Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

“This discussion this evening is about the preservation and protection of our level one Trauma Center so we can continue to care for the community we serve, and we are hopeful that we can enlist your support in regard to this overlay ordinance,” said Lavery who has been with Jefferson for 33 years.

Throughout those years, Lavery said he has had a chance to work closely with such organizations as the Washington Square West Civic Association and appreciated the “work they do to improve the city and this neighborhood.”

“In two years, we’re going to be celebrating our 200th anniversary while Wash West officially started in 1935, this neighborhood has been around a lot longer than Jefferson from a historic point of view so we’re very faithful to this longstanding connection and the relationship we have with many of you,” he said.

Rich Webster, Jefferson’s president said that, as “a lifelong resident of Philadelphia”, he too appreciated the commitment of neighborhood associations “and the mission that you all have of protecting the quality of life of the neighborhood while trying to embrace the various businesses”.

“In my time I am very pleased to see the expansion that Jefferson has made in the immediate area around campus and also am really pleased to see the general revitalization of the area around Jefferson. When I think of 13th street and what that was like 15 years ago and when I think about Chestnut Street and the improvements that occurred there, it’s really great to see,” Webster said.

Webster went on to express his pride in the services provided by Jefferson and to summarize some of those services for those attending the meeting.

“I am proud that we are the number one Trauma Center in the city of Philadelphia, we’re a comprehensive stroke center, we are a burn center, an NCI [National Cancer Institute] designated cancer center, home of the Rothman Institute for Orthopedics as well as a key partner with the worldrenowned Wills Eye and we obviously have numerous academic and research facilities on campus,” Webster said.

“We’re also one of the largest employers in the city of Philadelphia as most people are probably aware of and do bring significant economic impact to the community and neighborhood.”

With the closing of Hahnemann Hospital only several miles from where Jefferson now stands, Jefferson’s services to the community are even more necessary and valuable.

“We are two miles from Hahnemann, and we saw overnight such a huge significant increase in our trauma population as well as the number of ED [Emergency Department] visits that we had and the number of fire rescue ambulances that came to our department,” he said adding that the hospital worked closely with the city to expand loading and unloading for ambulances and fire rescue.

During the civil unrest following protests against police brutality, Jefferson’s services were again in high demand and Webster made it clear that the hospital’s services were essential to the well-being of the city and the helicopter transport services were of the utmost importance.

“It’s important that we are able to get patients here as quickly as possible. Right now, Jeff Stat, our helicopter program, has about 3,000 landings [annually] that occur at the main campus hospital and that happens 247. When we see the outcomes and understand the impact that we have saving lives, you really can’t necessarily measure that,” said Webster.

Bottom line: “So we are concerned with some of the heights that have been proposed for some of the developments and I really look forward to working with you and the Councilman [Mark Squilla] and other organizations to see what we can do to still provide the services to the community. It really is lifesaving.”

Clayton Mitchell, senior vice president of real estate facilities and construction for Jefferson University hospital began by thanking the members of Wash West for informing the hospital about another development project whose original height was deemed a concern for the hospital as it would have possibly interfered with the path to the helipad.

The developers worked with Washington Square West and Jefferson officials to modify its original plans, but Jefferson had concerns that other development projects could subsequently present problems to its flight path in the future.

“We talked about the increasing amount of development around the city and particularly around the Jefferson campus said Mitchell.

“We actually encourage that because its good for services for our folks whether it’s homes, whether it’s retail or other amenities but the critical nature of the trauma unit, as you are aware, requires access to that helipad - both approach and departure,” he said.

Given this fact, Mitchell said it was necessary to take steps to protect it.

After considering the potential of future real estate development in the area and the impact such development could have on the operation of the helicopter’s ability to transport trauma patients, it became more and more essential for officials at Jefferson to propose an ordinance that would limit height of future developments in the area.

“That’s why we put together a very narrowly tailored ordinance. It was our intent not to infringe or impact on significant parts of this community and localize it to the extent possible to facilitate full operations of the trauma Center,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell expressed his belief that Jefferson has had support from Washington Square West and asked for its continued support as they pushed the ordinance that would impose height limitations on future development in the area surrounding the hospital’s helipad.

“This is the only trauma helipad in Center City so if we lose this capability and Center City loses a lot in terms of the academic medical capabilities and, more importantly, to all of those patients that are represented by the 3,000 patients that come into that site every year. It’s a 24-7, 365 days a year operation that is really vital to the core mission of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.”

Next week, the Philadelphia Free Press will share detailed plans of the proposed ordinance and get comments from official and residents of the area.

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