STREET CITY (Philly Race)

STREET CITY Just how desperate is the national Democratic Party for a win? Desperate enough to send both DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe and Democratic lightning rod James Carville to Philadelphia to campaign for embattled Philly Mayor John Street.

Street, who is in a tough race against moderate Republican Sam Katz, remains ahead in the polls, and Democrats don’t feel he can afford to lose. "If we lost Philadelphia, even in an off-year election, it would be devastating to the party’s psyche," says a DNC fundraiser. "We got beaten up in 2002, McAuliffe is getting hammered for his lack of leadership, our convention in Boston is hemorrhaging money and we’re fighting amongst ourselves over that. To lose that mayoral race would be just be icing on the cake. It would hurt."

McAuliffe was in Philly around the same time that GOP Golden Boy Rudy Giuliani was in town raising money for Katz, who is fighting an uphill battle for the mayoral chair.

With the exception, perhaps, of the New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles mayoral runs, national parties have rarely played up any role they might take in what is considered basic backyard political races. But McAuliffe is said to sense an urgency to win a race, any race, leading into what could be a bad 2004 season for the party, particularly with the economy showing signs of growth.

I've got an alternate explanation for this one.

Consider that this kind of nationalization of a mayoral election is unheard of. Consider that the Democrat Party, at significant cost to itself, used and abused its best weapons in the CA recall elections. The party even went so far as to destroy the reputation of one of its major newspapers and all but admit to actively courting and promoting the illegal alien vote.

Could it be that the Democrat Party realizes that while moderate Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Katz will not greatly advance conservative goals they will put a serious crimp in the Democrat vote fraud machine right in the areas where they use it most?

We know that the Democrat party benefits from voter fraud, primarily in bigger cities, and in areas with a high number of illegal aliens. It is fairly certain that while this activity is known and approved of by Democrat Party leaders, it is coordinated, controlled, and organized at the local level. This gives the party as a whole plausible deniability when a Becky Red Earth or an Irv Slosberg gets caught.

An honest and fair vote in Philly dramatically increases the chances of Republicans winning the state in 2004 at a national level both presidentially and congressionally, and stopping the rampant illegal alien vote in California moves the state that the Democrat Party *has* to win to have any chance of beating Bush up for grabs.

Viewed in this light, the extreme antics of the Democrat Party begin to make rather alot of sense.

The original post is generally correct. However, I want to correct the later comments about the "98% voter turnout" in Philly. This is an urban legend that I have repeatedly challenged, asking for one specific of a precinct, by name and number, where this happened (except maybe a precinct with a dozen or two voters). No one ever has.

But, I continue to search for evidence. Here is what I found recently, with sources.

A source showing total Philly turnout, as pretty low.

Year-- Turnout of Registered---- Voting-Age Pop.Voted

2000-- 53.9%--------------------53.2%

(excerpted from: http://www.seventy.org/stats/regstats.html)

This web site has the 1996 registered and voted figures by wards.

http://www.nonvoters.org/Turnout_Decline/turnout_decline.html

This shows only one ward as high as 71% -- and that is ward 58, One of the more GOP wards in Philly ( Bush over 1/3 of the vote)

This site

http://www.nonvoters.org/NonVotersReport.PDF

has 2000 total vote figures by wards, showing modest increases in a number of wards, but nothing that would push any of them to implausible turnout levels.

The full report at that site gives turnout in some 180 precincts that had been targeted for "good government" increased turnout effort. If you are looking for a really suspiciously high turnout, you should look at the few precincts that had a very high increase over the 1996 figures. E.G.,

ward 13, Division 22; Ward 8, Division 15 (increases over 100%), though those could be places with new housing or collapsed precinct numbers.

The one missing link to nail this argument down tight would be the 2000 registration figures by precinct. I haven't found a source for that, but anyone who is convinced that there really were precincts with 98-100% turnout should be able to come up with those numbers.

Also, 1996 clinton vote by precinct in 2 strong dem wards :

http://civic.net/civic-values.archive/199907/msg00019.html

showing no turnout above 88% of DEM registration (not counting GOP and Ind registrants)

So, though a final proof would require an examination of every one of the 2000+ precincts in Philly, with the 2000 registration and vote figures, the above data makes it pretty hard to see where such figures would come from and still get the ward and selected precinct figures shown. Perhaps the burden should be on those who make the claim to demonstrate a single such precinct.

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