April 9–16, 1998
political notebook
Mary Frangipanni's Political Notebook
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That's what Philadelphia Democratic Chairman Bob Brady wants to know.
Brady and Carn are both running for U.S. Rep. in the 1st Congressional District, the seat open since former Congressman Tom Foglietta was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Italy.
Carn is also the Democratic State Rep. for the 197th District in the Hunting Park section of the city. He is not only running for Foglietta's seat, but he is also running for re-election to the House.
On May 19, Primary Election Day, there will be two separate elections. One is the special election to fill Foglietta's seat until the end of the year. The second election is a primary to determine which Democrat will run against the Republican candidate in the November general election.
Because Brady won the endorsement of the Democratic ward leaders in the district, he is the Democratic candidate who will appear on the ballot for the special election. In order for Carn to run in the special election, he was supposed to have changed his registration from Democrat to independent.
According to the Committee of Seventy, Carn would have had to switch his registration before March 30, which was the deadline to file nominating petitions for the special election.
Brady's attorneys have challenged Carn's nominating petitions for the special election, claiming that Carn has filed nominating petitions to run as a Democrat in the primary and as an independent in the special election. They say he is also running as a Democrat for re-election for his House seat.
The Committee of Seventy says that Carn must be consistent, running as either a Democrat or independent. However, he cannot run in the special election as a Democrat because Brady is the party-endorsed candidate.
He can only run on all three ballots, therefore, as an independent.
Carn said Tuesday afternoon that he is running as an independent in the special election and as a Democrat in the primary. This, he says, is perfectly legal. He said he could not comment on Brady's challenge because he has not been served a subpoena by election court.
Carn said he was told by Nona Accurti of the State Election Bureau that he is able to run in the special election. Calls placed to Accurti were not returned and subsequent calls placed to Carn about the status of his registration were not returned either.
"They Can't Not Look"
Washington D.C.: Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and John and Susan McMeel of Universal Press Syndicate hosted the official grand opening of a special exhibit honoring editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant last Wednesday night at the Library of Congress. Hundreds of national editors whose papers carry Oliphant's political cartoons got the chance to browse over 75 of Oliphant's best works.
Oliphant himself attended to sign copies of his new book, Oliphant's Anthem, which features the caricatures at the exhibit and an interview by Harry Katz, the Library of Congress curator.
Oliphant was born in 1935 in Australia. One of his first jobs was copyboy for Rupert Murdoch's first newspaper, The Adelaide News. But what he really wanted to do was draw pictures, so he moved to the United States in 1964 and worked for the Denver Post. By 1965 he was syndicated. His caricatures of politicians appear in hundreds of paper across the nation and have won him numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.
Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole—who used to be fodder for Oliphant's wicked pen attended; he wrote the foreword for Oliphant's book.
Caricatures of Dole are on display at the exhibit, including a cartoon with seven frames of Dole trying to smile in various appealing ways and finally giving up in the eighth frame, saying with a scowl, "It's no good—I am who I am."
"They just can't not look," said Katz of the politicians who came by the library to sneak a peak at Oliphant's exhibit before opening night. Katz says that a number of elected officials come in to the library for meetings and can't help but look to see if they're hanging up on a wall somewhere.
One of Oliphant's better caricatures is one of Bill Clinton in 1996, called the Flimflam Man. The huge charcoal sketch of Clinton—with an exaggerated nose—almost dominates the whole exhibit.
Political cartoons have been making strong social statements since the late 1700s in England, when political cartoonist James Gillray attacked the royal family. In one of his more noted watercolor etchings, titled Monstrous Craws, at a New Coalition Feast, Gillray caustically depicts King George III, Queen Charlotte and the Prince of Wales (later George IV), gorging themselves on the National Treasury.
Thomas Nast was another famous cartoonist who dared to expose corruption. Nast was the dominant political cartoonist in America during the second half of the 19th century. His Civil War and Reconstruction drawings for Harper's Weekly earned him a national reputation, and the series of cartoons he drew between 1869 and 1872 exposing the corrupt "Tweed Ring" of New York City's Tammany Hall led to the group's ultimate indictment and became a landmark in the history of journalistic crusades against corruption in government.
Both Oliphant's Anthem and Monstrous Craws are exhibits worth seeing at the Library of Congress in Washington. They run through July 6, 1998.
