Word: ward
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Organized into wards, the local party is further broken down into hundreds of voting divisions. Each division is overseen by two committee persons whose job it is to get their neighbors to vote for the endorsed candidate for every office. My grandfather Charles Patrick Shields was a Democratic committeeman in the 43rd Ward. As you might figure by his name, he was an Irish-American classic. He lived with Grandmom in a row house in Nicetown, on 15th Street, a short walk from the busy corner of Broad Street and Hunting Park. Every night when he was working the night...
What still unites the city's ethnic groups is the goal of a big Democratic win in November. Ward leaders like old Mike Stack of the 58th up in Somerton, where my parents moved us to, still boast of the fact that Jack Kennedy was elected by guys like them. Philadelphia gave Kennedy a 330,000-vote plurality in 1960, enough to swamp the rest of the state. Back then, Pennsylvania had as many electoral votes as California, a state Kennedy lost to native son Richard Nixon...
This April it's going to be hard finding that kind of November unity in the Philadelphia Democratic organization. Michael Nutter, the city's impressive new mayor, is backing Clinton, and a few white liberals are backing Obama, but the ward leaders must answer to their people. Local politics is still neighborhood politics...
With the city split roughly between white and black, the chairman of the party, U.S. Congressman Bob Brady, is not going to shove a candidate down a ward leader's throat. Even after Clinton and Obama make their pitches at the J-J dinner, Brady won't insist that the city committee endorse one or the other. The party needs to avoid a winner-take-all fight among the ward leaders...
...wards that make up the political machine thrive on delivering the vote come Election Day. But they also exist for the patronage and other help that ward leaders and committee persons can offer their people. Like all dreamers, Grandpop was a walker of the neighborhood. He took us on evening walks through Hunting Park, his Phillies cigar a regular part of the ritual. On the way home, he'd stop at the corner next to the subway stop, get the bulldog edition of the Inquirer and chat with the guy selling the papers. That corner, one of my brothers recalled...