November 4, 2003: Philadelphia's Nastiest Mayoral Election

John Street

November 4, 2003: Philadelphia elects a Mayor. It has been a very nasty race. First, let's take a step back, to the previous election.

In 1999, Mayor Ed Rendell, a Democrat, was leaving office, limited to 2 terms, although he would be elected and re-elected Governor of Pennsylvania. The Democratic Party's nominee was John F. Street. He was 56 years old, and an 18-year veteran of the City Council, including 6 years as its President, praised for his work with Rendell. His brother, Milton Street, had served in both houses of the State legislature, and had later also been elected to the Council.

Running to become the 1st Republican Mayor of the city since Bernard Samuel left office in 1952 was Sam Katz. He was 49, white, Jewish, and a successful local businessman who had worked for Congressmen Bill Gray and Bill Green, before Green became Mayor.

In 1983, he worked on Wilson Goode's campaign to succeed Green as Mayor, but broke with Goode in his re-election campaign of 1987, and switched to the Republicans, aiding Frank Rizzo, a racist who had also switched to the Republicans, in his bid to regain the office, having been succeeded in 1979 by Green. Goode defeated him. He worked on Rizzo's 1991 campaign against Rendell, but Rizzo died before the primary. Katz entered the primary, and lost. He also lost the Republican primary for Governor in 1994.

Katz did not run against Rendell in 1995, but was unopposed in the Republican primary in 1999. In contrast, Street had a hard-fought 3-way race in the Democratic primary, finishing 1st with 36 percent of the vote. In some cities, that would have forced a runoff, but Philadelphia is not one of them.

The race was very close. Both of the city's major daily newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, supporting Katz, who did everything he could to not make it an election based on racial lines, running as a Jack Kemp-style pro-business tax-cutter. Rendell ran on his record as Council President and his support of Rendell, who had been the city's most successful Mayor in decades.

Sam Katz

In the end, Street won by 5,376 votes, and this remains the closest any Republican has come to being elected Mayor of Philadelphia since 1947. Street got 94 percent of black voters, dominating North and West Philadelphia; while Katz got 80 percent of white voters, dominating Center City, South, Northeast and Northwest Philly.

There was a rematch in 2003. This time, Katz decided not to take any chances: He added corruption charges to his tax-cutting platform, since, while not Street himself, several of his aides, including Milton, had been investigated.

The racist elements that had elected Rizzo in 1971 and 1975, and had tried to return him to office in 1983, 1987 and 1991, returned with a vengeance, and made it ugly, basically saying that black governance of Philadelphia was a guarantee of corruption, and that white governance would fix it -- as if Rizzo hadn't had his own scandals, although Katz himself was clean, as far as anybody knew.

It looked like Katz could win. And then, on October 8, a bug was found in the Mayor's office. The FBI announced that they had planted it. It was going to kill Street's re-election bid.

But Street turned the issue around, saying that the FBI, under the control of the Republican President George W. Bush, was investigating a black Mayor. This enraged both black voters and white liberals, already angry at Bush for the Iraq War. In addition, Governor Rendell pushed the city's business interests to back Street, or to at least avoid openly backing Katz.

Street won 58 percent of the vote, a 78,000-vote margin of victory. He had won over enough white voters, including taking a district in Northeast Philadelphia that he had lost in 1999, to turn a sure defeat into a landslide. Basically, Street was re-elected because of two white men: Ed Rendell and George W. Bush.

His 2nd term was more contentious than his 1st, and when he left office in 2008, he was tremendously unpopular. He later taught at Temple University and served as Chairman of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

Councilman Michael Nutter was elected with 82 percent of the vote in 2007. In 2011, he was opposed for re-election by Milton Street, who had served time in prison for tax evasion in the interim. John Street stood up for his brother, but went too far when he said that Nutter was "not a black Mayor, just a Mayor with dark skin." All that did was remind people that Nutter had run a cleaner administration than the Street brothers. His Republican general-election opponent was Karen Brown, the 1st woman nominated by either major party. Nutter won with 74 percent.

In 2015, another Councilman, Jim Kenney, white, was elected with 85 percent, and re-elected with 80 percent in 2019. In 2016, John's son, Sharif Street, was elected to the State Senate. In 2022, he was elected Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. Milton Street died in 2022, at which point John Street, Sam Katz and Ed Rendell were still alive.

UPDATE: In 2023, Cherelle Parker, a black Democrat, was elected Philadelphia's 1st female Mayor. Like John Street, Michael Nutter and Jim Kenney, she had served on the City Council. Her Republican opponent was David Oh, a Korean-American, and thus the 1st Asian-American nominated for Mayor in that city. Parker won with 74 percent.

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November 4, 2003 was a Tuesday, like most American Election Days.

Baseball season had ended 10 days earlier, when the Florida Marlins beat the New York Yankees 8n Game 6 of the World Series. Football was in midweek.

There were 4 games in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Houston Rockets, 86-75 at the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Denver Nuggets, 71-60 at the Conseco Fieldhouse (now the Gainbridge Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Miami Heat, 80-73 at the SBC Center (now the Frost Bank Center) in San Antonio.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 113-107 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Despite the defeat, the Bucks' Michael Redd led all scorers on the night with 36 points.

And there were 5 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Colorado Avalanche, 3-2 at Madison Square Garden. Karlis Skrastiņš scored the winning goal with 3:46 left in overtime.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 2-1 at the RBC Center (now the Lenovo Center) in Raleigh, North Carolina.

* The Atlanta Thrashers and the San Jose Sharks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Philips Arena (now the State Farm Arena) in Atlanta.

* The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, 3-1 at the United Center in Chicago.

* And the Dallas Stars beat the Nashville Predators, 7-3 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.