I’d be surprised if the current one doesn’t run. It sounds like since she has to resign to run, the responsible thing to do is wrap things up enough to hand it off to a temporary replacement for the election period.

So really, it’s probably two.

I’m not sure why that post said that. The article very clearly says that arrests would be involved when it comes to dealing.

Where it would be left to discretion re: arrest v. diversion to community services teams is for undefined “low-level” crimes (which presumably does not involve dealing, and is more about users).

Also, just like, actually how? They know him! Various officers, officials, lawyers, etc in the courtroom have to know who is, yeah? And he’s there too. Doing it where they can see him. How?

I can’t even fathom how much gumption it would take to walk into a courtroom where any number of people going in and out know exactly who you are, put your shit on a desk, and announce that you’re there to do an absolutely bonkers thing that you are 100% not allowed to do.

It is pretty vague, but it’s a write up of a short speech. Nobody actually goes into much detail at these things - even less is pretty common.

I’m assuming there’s a more detailed document somewhere? Especially regarding how and where this has worked in other cities?

Not really enough to go on here, one way or another, beyond noting that she’s making it part of her agenda in a way I don’t see to the same degree elsewhere (I don’t think any of the other candidates have done an onsite thing?), but I’d be interested in seeing the more thorough version.

Oh, I meant that she and Kenney hate each other. None of his allies would have been viable alternatives to Street as consultants. But yes, I’m sure that every time Kenney is asked for his opinion, everyone is hoping he keeps his mouth shut or says someone else’s name.

And it looks like Rhynhart paid Street for his work in November 2022. Nutter didn’t formally exit the field until mid-January 2023, and there was still chatter about the possibility in the news right up until the end. At the time she needed the work done, he wasn’t an option, and there was a possibility that he never would be.

And he hasn’t endorsed anyone because he said he’s doing the whole interview the candidates series, and issuing an endorsement before that series wraps would be dumb. He basically jumped straight from not running into some high profile vetting of the candidates business, so he’s still not an option. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did when it was all over. She did good work in his administration.

I get not liking that politics can call for making alliances out of practicality rather than ideological perfection. But there’s no prize for finishing in fifth place with the sparkliest reputation. If there’s a candidate you want to win, they’re going to have to actually run for office.

Barring something wild, one of these candidates is going to be the mayor. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than the person I’d pick after her, just because she currently has a better reputation than my next pick. Anyone that can’t make strategic partnerships with people they don’t personally agree with is going to make a terrible mayor - it’s how the job works. So long as you don’t do unethical shit yourself, or knowingly put unethical people in a position of power to do something they shouldn’t, that’s the bar for me.

And if hiring someone to do work they’re qualified to do, and that you need done, but that you wouldn’t personally hang out with otherwise is an ethical failure, then my bathroom remodel is going to send me to hell.

We agree on that at least

There’s no “maybe”. He said he did. He hired him “about” two years ago, for nine months (aka recently) specifically as a consultant for this campaign.

“Ick factor” is a pretty good description for most campaign work, so I can’t bring myself to get that worked up about it. And I certainly don’t want candidates I like to handicap themselves unnecessarily. Everyone in the race needs to be able to play practical politics, and it’s not going to stop once they’re elected.

We’re gonna have to vote for one of these candidates. And they’re all going to do something that we’d rather they hadn’t, and have hung out in rooms we rather they didn’t during this campaign. If you think they haven’t, all that means is that you didn’t find out about it (and/or that they’re not going to be mayor).

So my line requires like, actually unethical behavior or actual conflicts of interest. The appearance of opening the door to impropriety isn’t popping my monocle unless there’s actual evidence of impropriety

I wouldn’t want to put Street back in office, but when it comes to the things Rhynhart’s campaign needs to build up, given that she’s not coming from a council background that gives her an extant constituency of local allies to help rally needed voting blocs, Street is actually a pretty good and qualified choice to turn to for assistance.

Would I rather she hired someone less messy? Sure! But I can’t think of anyone offhand that could offer a comparable tier of needed services that hasn’t also been implicated in some bullshit and would be interested in working with her (like, anyone in Kenney’s camp is going to say no, Nutter was thinking of running himself at the time and wasn’t for hire, etc.).

Would they have had to if it was their own personal funds?

Like, Domb has plenty of his own cash. If he dipped into his own personal bank account that he pays for groceries and shit out of to hire a consultant to evaluate his chances of success in a mayoral race prior to announcing, he could afford to do that.

Would he have to report that? Or would he have to start the Allan Domb for Philadelphia fund first with his own cash, at which point it’s reportable?

I always assumed that until the campaign is launched, as long as it’s not coming from a designated fund (and you only need to create the fund if you’re taking other people’s money) it’s not required to be reported. But I could be wrong about the mechanics of that.

Either way, yeah, it does make me wonder about the surprise, unscheduled AFSCME vote for Brown.

I think it’s probably safe to assume every single serious candidate spent some money and spent time with the right people before declaring their candidacy.

Nobody sane announces that they’re running for mayor without getting into position to start the race first.

Of course, the more money you have on hand from your personal budget, and Brown has a lot, the more you can do to set things up in your favor off the books before making that announcement.

See the article on the recent interview with Brown and Nutter.

… He went on to ask Brown a series of probing questions, including who is advising him about how municipal government works. Brown responded that about two years ago, he hired former Mayor John F. Street to work for nine months as an adviser …

Brown hired him as a consultant before launching his campaign. His own money, prior to the campaign, not gonna be on disclosure forms. We have no idea how much he paid, and only know about it because he offered the information.

Also, the only reason Street is brought up in the article posted by the OP is because he later endorsed her. I guarantee you that other candidates have also spent money on consultants. Some of which will go on to endorse the candidate, encourage others to do so, or assist in other ways.

It’s notable, especially if it coincides with other things that might make it suspect - a larger sum, evidence that no real work was performed in exchange, if the endorsement contradicted things the endorser had said in the past. But it’s not that unusual or inherently damning in and of itself.

If it helps, she’s not the only one who has hired Street. He also did consultant work for Brown, and possibly others.

If anything, the fact that he’s been effectively endorsing her for years in private settings goes a fair way to indicate that all she bought from him was consulting work. It seems to be his genuine opinion then, and he’s been giving it away for free for years.

Should candidates not hire professionals that might later endorse them? Only hire consultants that don’t want them to succeed?

I’m pretty much where you’re at regarding football (you forgot to add the business about the appalling rates of CTE in the sport and that it’s also boring).

That said - I have a vague but cordial relationship with my neighbors and most of us have been on the block for a while. It’s nice to see them happy, and they’re capable of keeping their celebrations reasonable for the most part, with one notable exception during 2008.

It’s not enough to change my opinion of football, or even care about the outcome, or want to be in a bar with a tv when an important game is on. But it’s enough to make me not like, be salty about the idea of football. I don’t give a shit who wins, but I’m not actively rooting for anyone to fail either. Except, you know, the rape and kidnapping guy. He can fail.

I don’t remember what mine was way back when (20 years ago?). It wasn’t so much that I could afford to not work during the summer.

Not all grad students get offered summer work, especially in the first stretch, so until I was getting summer classes, I was definitely scrambling for odd jobs come May, and had to set aside some of my school year pay to cover basics May- September.

But I was making enough to comfortably afford my own apartment. It was in a weird building in an unfashionable neighborhood of a low-tier city, but it was safe, and I didn’t have to find a roommate, and about a 15-minute drive to campus.

There were no vacations, and I had to budget, and if something big came up, like my car dying, or one of my summer jobs or classes falling through, I’d have to supplement with a student loan. But on like, a week to week basis, I was doing ok.

It’s an obvious point, but how much value a profession adds to society and how much money a profession can extract from society are not 1:1 translations.

A hot teenager with rich, connected parents can make more in a month selling diarrhea tea to high school kids on the internet than most k-12 schoolteachers.

You’re right. And it’s still better paying than adjunct work, which is where most of these students will wind up.

Half my job as an adjunct was talking students out of the field. The other half was spent getting myself out.

I’m a big proponent of higher ed as an experience, but absolutely everything about its current financial model is disastrously unsustainable and predatory to almost everyone involved.

Eehhhhh, you’re not wrong. But at this point, in my opinion, being a member of the Union League for the business and connections is kind of like maintaining your membership at a whites only country club for the same reasons or just for the golf, even though you personally aren’t that fired up about miscegenation.

Your friends parents might vote a certain way, but it sounds like their primary political affiliation is “rich”, which is an inherently apolitical stance.

Not really. As long as it made the same amount of money. People would have to refuse to use stores with self-checkout, and in large numbers, for it to make a difference.

It’s also worth noting that in many stores, the self checkouts aren’t actually replacing more lane space than the checkers on hand used to occupy.

In my grocery store, they removed 2 checkout lines to put in two rows of self checkout, each with 6 stations, each row headed by an employee.

I get in and out if there faster, especially with small orders, since there’s less of a bottleneck at the registers. But it’s the same number of people per lane as it was before

And again, if you’re not going to shit but bitch about the people that are pulling their weight, and how it doesn’t matter that you’re not doing shit because too many other people also don’t do shit, then your opinion holds about as much weight with me as the vote you’re not casting weighs in the outcome of the election.

The people you’re complaining about are going to pick your next mayor, just like they always have, and they’re going to do it because you and people like you are too salty to just make an effort. You think they give a shit that you’re sitting this out? They do not.

I frequently don’t like my choices come the general. But sometimes I do. Sometimes they’re even the person I helped collect signatures for, or donated to, or voted for in the primary.

You’re not entirely wrong, but my neighbors up the street regularly park dangerously into the intersection when there is ample and abundant parking literally just on the other side of the other end of the block (so, block and a half to two blocks walk maximum).

Neighbors on this end of my block meanwhile, park in front of curbcuts to avoid walking across the street when they can see parking half a block away.

Some people that are currently fucking up would make better choices if presented with good options. But some people are actually that lazy and disinterested in their neighbors’s safety and well-being

Unless you’re very new here, you know as well as I do that in Philadelphia, the primary is the mayoral election. By that point, when it comes to your vote for this office, you’re either absent or a rubber stamp.

Whether or not you like the primary system is irrelevant. You’re not teaching anyone a lesson by refusing to participate in it.

Refusing to participate and then bitching that everyone who did did a bad job isn’t the principled or unique stand you think it is. Most of Philly doesn’t vote, and most of the ones that do don’t vote in the primary. THAT’S why it’s the same assholes getting in over and over again. Because they’re being elected by the same sliver of the population that’s willing to do shit like, say, throw out mailers sometimes

Who said anything about muting you?

I just said that your opinion here, which is that you can be chased out of the electorate by the threat of recieving mail, means that your opinion on the primary isn’t worth taking seriously

Ah, the person I was responding to in the post you responded to asked for “one”. So I should have said “they”.

And if you’re not registered for the primary, it frankly doesn’t matter what your opinion on any of the candidates is.

I mean, I’d like to have a mayor that’d be a little more than moderate if there’s something practical they can do in response to bad legislation, especially in this state.

So talking the talk does matter a little to me. But otherwise, yeah. Most of the mayor’s power is not in tackling state and nationwide issues. The most they can realistically do there is help rally for state and federal politicians.

Their actual job, if they’re doing it, is making sure boring shit gets handled correctly and keeping a bunch of different special interests with competing agendas not too unhappy, which mostly comes down to being good at financials.