October 30-November 5, 2003

city beat

Gale Warning

Wake Me When It's Over

by Daryl Gale

Almost time to exhale, folks. Just hang on a few more days and you can resume your normal lives. Because let's face it, all of our lives have been disrupted and put on hold for the sake of this mayor's race. And what a race it's been.

It actually seems like eons ago that the campaigns were trading sarcastic barbs about Frank Keel's wife writing semi-anonymous, poison-pen letters to the Daily News, and Katz's labeling of Operation Safe Streets as scarecrow policing. And considering the chicanery that's gone on since, a couple of letters to the editor seem pretty tame by comparison.

Let's see, there was the alleged firebomb thrown through the window of Katz's North Philly office. The resulting furor got recreation center worker Joey Temple fired and Deputy Managing Director Tumar Alexander reprimanded, but in the end it turned into a big fat So What?

Ditto with the purloined cell-phone records of Michael Youngblood, clandestinely slipped under the doors of editors all over town, ostensibly to create a link between Katz and a Street enemy who happens to be a ne'er-do-well.

Then, there were the e-mails sent to the Katz camp by Street media consultant Dan Fee only weeks before he was hired by the incumbent. The e-mails were extremely critical of his soon-to-be-boss, calling him a rotten manager and thoroughly unworthy of another four years at the helm. Those e-mails, after being circulated throughout Philadelphia's newsrooms, petered out as quickly as the firebomb. Fee offered a lame explanation, Katz's people failed to capitalize and the result was another Who cares?

And who could forget the saga of Edward Joe-Joe Terrell, the almost-reformed drug dealer who was embraced by the mayor at a summer block party. Terrell said Operation Safe Streets drove him out of his illegal business, forcing him to turn his drug house into a T-shirt shop.

Street said at the time that the city should look for ways to help former felons like Terrell find legal and productive ways to make money and pledged his support in that effort. A touching story, except for one snag: Terrell wasn't exactly a former drug dealer in the eyes of the law. With current charges pending against him and facing significant jail time, the story turned into a mayor who opens his arms to criminals while legitimate new- and small-business owners are crushed under the weight of high business taxes and miles of bureaucratic red tape.

But not even that one would compare to the all-consuming juggernaut that would finally take full control of both candidates' campaigns last month: the FBI probe.

The feds planted a bug in the mayor's office, waiting for someone to make some incriminating statements about widespread corruption in city government. The discovery of the bug was spun like mad by both campaigns, with Street's people calling it a devious Republican plot to oust a black mayor and Katz's minions saying where there's smoke, there's fire. Sadly, both statements can be true at once.

Ironically, Street opened the door himself almost four years ago, when he declared that folks who contributed to his campaign would have a better chance of doing business with the city. By openly embracing -- or at least not openly denouncing -- a pay-for-play system of government, Street left a sour taste in voters' mouths even if he was correct in saying that he didn't invent the system and nobody blamed his popular predecessor for not ending it.

The divisiveness and racial animus of the campaign came to a head last week, at the third and final candidates' debate at the National Constitution Center. The fireworks created by the candidates during the debate was nothing compared to what was going on outside.

Hundreds of rival supporters, mostly beefy union members carrying signs and wearing costumes, squared off at the corner of Sixth and Vine. Katz supporters tried to drown out Street backers chant of Four more years with their own chant of Two more weeks. Street's people made every effort to connect Katz to the FBI bugging, George Bush, John Ashcroft and even long-dead Richard Nixon. In a shameless (and shameful) appeal to black fears, a few even carried signs that read, Ku Klux Katz. I'd like to talk to the genius who didn't think those signs would be more insulting to black folks than informative.

Well, I don't know about you folks, but I've had enough. Enough of the insults, the pettiness, and the constant gotcha phone calls and e-mails from both campaigns. It's getting so blacks and whites in this town can't even look each other in the eye anymore. I can't wait to get back to writing stories about good old everyday crime, greed and stupidity.

Daryl Gale's weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.