Last Tuesday night, in the dark, smoky confines of a Center City bar called Tangier, a workaday citizen got a chance to rake a major politician over the coals. The citizen was a young woman named Stephanie Frank Singer. The politician was former Democratic Congressman and Senate candidate Joseph Hoeffel. And the event that made this unlikely interaction possible was Drinking Liberally, a weekly gathering of Philadelphia liberals that is popular among local bloggers.

Singer was displeased with Hoeffel's decision not to challenge Rick Santorum in 2006 ("He was a natural candidate," she says), as well as with his decision to support Bob Casey, a pro-life Democrat, in the same U.S. Senate race. Though she was scared to confront him, the friendly barroom environs emboldened her.

"I asked him why," Singer said later in the evening at an outdoor table. "He said, "I was thinking more as a Democrat than as a progressive.'"

Singer wasn't satisfied with the answer — she thinks Casey is no better than a Republican — but she was glad to have had the conversation.

"Where else am I gonna sit across a table from Joe Hoeffel?" she asked.

Hoeffel was just the latest of several local politicians who have made time to Drink Liberally. Senate candidates Chuck Pennachio and Alan Sandals, congressional candidate Patrick Murphy, State Representative Mark Cohen, District Attorney candidate Seth Williams and even Jonathan Featherman, the Libertarian challenging Santorum in the Republican primary, have previously joined the blogger-heavy crowd for drink and conversation. The trend led one regular, Matthew Gold of tatteredcoat.com, to observe that the event is becoming a "rite of passage" for progressive Philadelphia politicians; the popular blogger Atrios has called showing up "the only way to get elected in this town."

This last comment may have been partly tongue-in-cheek, and some of the attendees laugh at the idea that Drinking Liberally pulls political weight. But the presence of politicians at the gathering is testament to the growing influence of bloggers, not only on national politics, but recently, on Philadelphia politics as well. And just as blogging is less restricted than traditional journalism, these blogger gatherings are putting politicians in surprisingly informal situations.

The first Drinking Liberally chapter was formed in New York City in 2003 as an attempt to create a social space for liberals to share ideas. The Philadelphia version was pioneered by Atrios (real name: Duncan Black) in 2004, and despite attendance dwindling to as few as five after the presidential election, the event now attracts about 40 people each week. A high percentage of the Philly crowd is bloggers. In addition to Atrios and tatteredcoat, the proprietors of All Spin Zone, Suburban Guerilla, dragonballyee and Noblesse Oblog are regulars. This could be because Philly is a blog-heavy town (10 of the 50 most popular liberal blogs are written here, according to a recent study), or because Atrios, a star blogger whose site attracts more than 120,000 visitors a day, is a fixture. But non-bloggers, like blog-readers allowed to post comments for public consumption, are welcome at the event.

In some cities, Drinking Liberally invites speakers for formal engagements; here, politicos just pull up a chair, and if a patron starts an argument with one, it's up to him to handle his business. Rep. Cohen, for example, has attended three Drinking Liberallys, and has taken flak there for voting in favor of the legislative pay raise.

"It was one guy making complaints that have been in the newspapers countless times," Cohen says.

This time, though, it wasn't the newspapers saying it — it was just some guy in a bar. But because politicians are meeting bloggers on their own turf, and because of the democratic spirit of blogging, the guy got to say it to Cohen's face.

No one seems to have planned for Drinking Liberally to attract politicians.

"It did kind of start organically," says organizer Peter Baker, who blogs about baseball. Politicians who had heard about the event reached out to Baker, and he was happy to have them.

Gold, an amiable graduate student and blog evangelist, speculates that politicians come for the free publicity.

Cohen says he attended so he could be exposed to different ideas; Hoeffel says he didn't know that so many in the crowd were bloggers, but came to see acquaintances such as Atrios. Pennachio, the Senatorial candidate whom Stephanie Singer prefers to Casey, comes to network.

"It is a crowd of opinion leaders," Pennachio says. "Does it pay benefits? Sure."

Pennachio suggests that blogs are only now gaining regional traction because when the medium first caught on, the presidential election was the focus of everyone's attention. With that in the past, bloggers are free to turn their attention to local concerns, and in Philly, they have. The upstart campaign of Seth Williams and the media frenzy over LaToyia Figueroa's disappearance were both blog-driven. Pennachio, who has collected 48 blogger endorsements, hopes his candidacy will be the next pet project.

For an event of political consequence, the environment at Tangier (owned by liberal activist Jack Roe, who carries no Coors products in protest of the Coors family's politics) is about as casual as an online diary, where writers shift seamlessly between the political and the personal. There are no protocols, just scattered and passionate conversation, plus beer and wings.

Last Tuesday, a middle-aged teacher named Steven Reynolds, who blogs at All Spin Zone, recollected his experience of going on MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson to discuss the Figueroa case. When the producer called him, he said, he had been sitting at home grading papers, and barely had time to shave before the broadcast.

One can see why this highly democratic medium is succeeding in bringing politicians to their constituents. At the same time, some of the neglected formalities could be of value. For instance, questions about whether the discussions at Drinking Liberally are typically on- or off-record were met with quizzical looks and quick dismissals. "I don't blog about what happens here," was a common response, or else bloggers suggested that this was more of a traditional media concern.

The next day, there were postings about the event on at least two sites (neither poster had spoken to City Paper the night before). Changing the names of some, but not all, of his subjects, dragonballyee recapped the night, including a summary of his run-in with two "newbies" he suspected to be covert Casey campaign workers. He also offered a commentary on his brief interaction with Hoeffel, whom the blogger described as "very approachable."

"I was hoping he'd remember me … but I guess not," he wrote. "Maybe if I had introduced myself as dragonballyee? Eh. I have a feeling he'll be back sometime anyways."

The post ended in true blog fashion: with a paragraph-long lament about the impending demise of the author's favorite cargo shorts.

Coming in next week's news section: Was It Worth It? The start of a City Paper series memorializing local soldiers lost in Iraq.