Former Philadelphia district attorney and current mayoral candidate Lynne Abraham gave Holme Circle residents a live preview of her new television ad campaign last week.
Abraham was the lone mayoral hopeful to speak during the Holme Circle Civic Association’s candidates night on April 29, joining seven City Council candidates, two state Senate candidates, a candidate for city commissioner and 19 judicial candidates. All but the Senate candidates will seek party nominations during the May 19 primary. A special election to fill the vacant 5th district state Senate seat will be held simultaneously.
Much like her TV spot that debuted last week, Abraham said she plans to support schools if she’s elected mayor, all schools in fact.
“Regardless of whether they’re public, parochial, private or charter,” she said.
In her TV ad, Abraham accuses one of her opponents, frontrunner Jim Kenney, of favoring public schools over the others. She further accuses another leading candidate, Anthony Hardy Williams, of favoring charter schools.
Abraham said she wants to improve educational opportunities at all types of schools, a message that resonated with the audience inside the multi-purpose room at St. Jerome’s Parish School.
“I hope parochial schools stay around for a long time,” she said.
Abraham vowed to get more public school funding from Harrisburg, even if she has to take state government to court to get it. It will have to be a bipartisan project because the administration is led by a Democrat governor in Tom Wolf, while the legislature has a Republican majority.
“Governor Wolf says he’s going to give us money, but we don’t know how much. Hopefully, the legislature will agree with him,” Abraham said.
Describing schools as her “number one, two, three and four priorities,” Abraham said she wants to make sure schools have all the “tools they need.” She also wants to get more parents involved in their children’s education.
Abraham said she will also prioritize bringing jobs to the city because it still hasn’t recovered all the jobs it lost in the recession. She also plans to improve the delivery of city services and integrate modern technology to make the city run more efficiently.
While recognizing that city employees and retirees are facing a “pension grand canyon,” she did not mention any specific proposals that would help the city’s pension fund from digging out of a $5.4 billion shortfall.
Abraham is one of six Democrats seeking the nomination.
The Democrat council candidates to speak at the meeting included at-large incumbents Ed Neilson and Blondell Reynolds-Brown, along with at-large challengers Derek Green and Sherrie Cohen. Sixteen candidates are vying for five nominations. Voters may select five at the polls.
Neilson, a Northeast resident, said he has been working hard during Council’s ongoing budget hearings to determine how city departments are spending taxpayers’ money wastefully or ineffectively. Council identified one instance where the city’s information technology office was responsible for $40 million in “miscellaneous spending” last year. He’s trying to find out what was included in miscellaneous.
Council further learned that the Philadelphia Water Department bills the city for water service at the city’s administrative buildings even though the water department is itself a city agency. Worse yet, the water department makes the city pay the same rates as private customers have to pay.
Reynolds-Brown touted her work in Council in several areas. As the only woman at-large member since 2000, she’s leading the effort to get a Commission for Women added to the Home Rule Charter. The issue will be posed to voters as a ballot question on May 19. Reynolds-Brown also led the effort to get nutritional information posted on menus at city restaurants.
Green has served as an attorney in Council, an assistant district attorney and a deputy solicitor. He is the son of a 31-year public school teacher, so education is very important to him. He has become a strong advocate for special education because his own son has autism.
Cohen has been engaged in public activism since her childhood. She is the daughter of former longtime Councilman David Cohen and the sister of longtime state Rep. Mark Cohen. She has been involved in civil rights campaigns and has fought to protect libraries and public pools from city budget cuts.
The Republican at-large Council candidates to speak included incumbents Dennis O’Brien and David Oh, as well as challenger Matt Wolfe. Seven candidates are vying for five nominations. Only the top seven overall vote-getters in the general election regardless of party will win at-large seats.
O’Brien, a longtime state representative from the Northeast, is completing his first term in Council. He touted his advocacy in both the House and Council for criminal justice bills, autism advocacy and other causes. He is also pushing for the administration to implement the fire department recommendations that emerged from an independent investigation into the blaze that claimed the lives of Lt. Robert Neary and Firefighter Daniel Sweeney in 2012.
Oh, also seeking a second four-year term, favors a traditional Republican agenda of tax cuts and spending cuts. He argued that if the city improves its property tax collection efficiency by just 2 percent, it would reap more than $26 million in revenue that would benefit the city budget and public schools. Specifically, he wants to cut the city wage tax in half.
Wolfe echoed a similar agenda. He wants to limit spending to “core municipal services and not much else,” while seeking ways to attract new jobs to the city. He contends that problems like crime won’t be solved until there are enough good jobs in the city. He was an executive in the state’s Department of Labor and Industry under Gov. Tom Ridge. ••
