Learning the Ropes

Down goes Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde along the judicial-election road

by Tom Namako

Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde was sitting in the hallway of a Germantown nursing home. Her crutches leaning against a wall, she was about to ask a handful of ward leaders if they wouldn't mind telling everyone they know to vote for her.

Her husband, Pete Lyde, put his hands on each side of the chair and leaned toward her. It was time for the pep talk.

Pete whispered as Frazier-Lyde stared at the wall, occasionally nodding — a boxer between rounds, ready to get back into it. That's the image Frazier-Lyde loves.

"With this high crime rate," she told the ward leaders, "this is a fight the city's in, and I'm making it clear I'm a fighter."

But, you see, Frazier-Lyde can't make too many boxing references. Pete whispers this to her all the time. It makes her one-dimensional. He also reminds her, over and over, to keep her comments short and sweet.

"But I happen to be quite engaging," Frazier-Lyde said, laughing. Her husband shot a wary glance back.

Frazier-Lyde is a first-time judicial candidate for Municipal Court who's trying to navigate an election system that is sometimes confounding and not exactly open to people who want to show themselves around. This is a system that, as Frazier-Lyde's ward leader, Bob McGowan, described it, supports those who've "paid their dues" to the Democratic machine. Frazier-Lyde simply hasn't done that, he said, and that's why she's his second choice, behind Diane Thompson.

But Frazier-Lyde will hear none of this.

Her next stop after leaving the nursing home was an endorsement hearing at the Democratic City Committee headquarters. Frazier-Lyde sat with nearly two dozen candidates in a cramped lobby on 15th and Walnut, waiting to appear, literally, in a back room: wood paneling, with a spread of baked pasta along one wall and a gaggle of the city's power brokers on the other.

Frazier-Lyde hopped in on the crutches — she hurt her knee and ankle after a nasty spill on Broad Street — and went to the races, shattering the five-minute time limit judicial candidates are allowed to speak.

This is where Frazier-Lyde becomes her own enemy. She doesn't exactly have a stump speech — it's more like a collection of thoughts she frequently stumbles across. It could take her anywhere from minutes to hours to say the following: Yes, I'm Joe Frazier's daughter. But I'm also a graduate of Villanova law school. I'm upset about the shootings in the city. I'm also upset about the long Municipal Court backlog. I want to help change that as a judge.

A quick, self-promoting pitch to small groups is not Frazier-Lyde's style. She's more at home in a courtroom, arguing that boxers should have the right to profit from rebroadcasts of their fight videos. She'll hang on Broad and Olney for hours, talking to an ex-con who found religion. She'll show up at a Friday night Blue Horizon fight, sit ringside and talk shop with referees, lightweights and friends.

But in Philly judicial elections, it's the small groups that matter.

At about the 12th minute, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, City Council President Anna Verna and Councilwoman Carol Ann Campbell's once-welcoming smiles turned to stone.

"You went over, way over," were Brady's first words once Frasier-Lyde was finished. He said this with a smile.

There was only one question for her: "Do you have the endorsement of your ward leader?"

She doesn't.

They thanked her for her time.

On the way out, Pete said she did go a bit long.

"Heh," Frazier-Lyde said, clacking on the crutches. She smiled. "They'll be OK."

Frazier-Lyde sees herself as self-sustaining. She was raised in poverty. She launched a champion boxing career at 37. She turned down a part in the film Hannibal because she didn't want to play a drug dealer. So why should she rely on others if she wants to be a judge?

"It's up to the people to decide if I win," she said. "I'm an underdog. Don't get me wrong, I like trying to get endorsements. But whether they endorse me or not, I know who I am and know my ability to deliver."

Outside the committee, Frazier-Lyde and Pete ran into McGowan. He's a throwback: loose necktie, Jeff cap and beige overcoat, with a fleck of dried blood on his chin from shaving.

"I was going to tell them how good-looking you were," Frazier-Lyde said, drawing a laugh. This is the side of her that doesn't come out when speaking to small groups. "Instead I just said you've got some tough endorsement decisions to make."

McGowan looked right at her. "Look, you're probably not going to get this endorsement," he said. "And I've spoken to other ward leaders. You talk too much. When you go before them, you've got to be short, sweet and light on the boxing."

Frazier-Lyde nodded. "I understand."

"You're young," McGowan said. "I'm telling you this for your own good. I don't pull punches, you know."

She looked up. "Neither do I."

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)