Posted on 11/06/2002 11:13:32 AM PST by Prov1322
On the Saturday before Election Day, Bob Brady, congressman, ward leader, and chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic Party, reached into the left-hand desk drawer at his headquarters in Overbrook, pulled out a $50 bill, and tore it in two.
He presented one ragged half to his 34th Ward deputy, Melvin Shelton, the other to a committeeman named George Washington.
It's a bet they've had going for years. Whoever pulls in more Democratic votes in his division on Election Day gets both halves of the torn $50.
Brady could spare it. There was plenty more in his desk drawer. He had about $14,000 on hand, he said. He sat at the desk on Saturday and passed it out to dozens of Democratic committee people. They waited on folding chairs outside his door for sample ballots, a word with the ward leader, and their share of a time-honored, bipartisan Philadelphia election ritual that predates spin doctors and attack ads:
Street money.
It's what party workers get for knocking on your door, offering you a ride to the polls, and handing you that sample ballot as you head inside to vote. It's what Democratic ward leader Carol Ann Campbell passed out on Monday night from stacks of $10s, $20s and $50s. It's not the prettiest side of the process - a grand jury last year accused three ward leaders of failing to account for such funds - but it is legal, and it fuels what Brady proudly calls "the last Democratic machine in the country."
He said the cash pays for lunches, expenses, gas, and the hard work that goes into turning out the vote.
"We feed all the people who bring results in," Brady said. "We feed the Republicans. Everyone who's there [at the polls] gets fed. It's a tough day out there. We don't need to make it miserable. We take care of people."
All those big campaign donations from lawyers, bankers, CEOs, unions? When the TV and radio ads are paid for, some of that money is left for getting out the vote. This year, Brady said, it came from several campaigns - Ed Rendell's, U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel's, Brady's own - to the Democratic City Committee's bank account, and from there to 69 ward leaders, who in turn pass it out to hundreds of party committee people and temporary Election Day workers.
It is not unique to this city.
"Street money is very pervasive," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist and author of a book about American politics called Dirty Little Secrets. "The key element is that it works. It produces votes and gets people elected."
Keeping the troops happy on Election Day has a long history. As Sabato's book says, George Washington provided 160 gallons of rum, beer and cider at the polls when he ran for Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1758.
Washington's namesake was cooking hot dogs for voters yesterday on a portable grill set up near a polling place on Lansdowne Avenue in West Philadelphia - buns and dogs provided by Brady's 34th Ward.
Washington and fellow committeeman Lynwood Savage cooked one dog for a Republican committeeman - who was so grateful, "he told us that after we fed him he voted straight Democratic. He was a Republican, so we dropped it on the ground a few times," said Savage, eyes twinkling.
The hot dogs were part of a get-out-the-vote drive that began on Friday, with a luncheon at party headquarters in Center City. Rendell, who donated $250,000 to the effort, was guest speaker. At one table was the buffet; at another were checks. Ward leaders lined up. They received $250 per voting division - a total of more than $400,000. From there, many ward leaders walked to a PNC Bank branch, leaving with stacks of cash bundled in paper wrappers.
Brady passed his money out on Saturday. On Monday night, another West Philadelphia ward leader, Carol Ann Campbell, who heads a coalition of African American ward leaders, spent hours in the kitchen of a retirement complex handing out cash to committee people in her 21 voting divisions. She kept receipts, recording even $10 payments for the teenagers who would put leaflets in voters' doors.
Campbell was one of the ward leaders criminally charged last year with failing to report ward funds. She received six months' probation in a court program that allows first offenders to emerge with a clean record.
On Monday night, working with her top ward aide - her brother, Sonny - she gave each committee person $100 and allotted another $50 to workers hired just for the election. It's not much, she said, given that many of her people must take the day off from work.
"They'll take that money and buy breakfast for the election board," she said. "They'll buy lunch. They'll make maybe $30 or $40 when the day is over. To be a committee person, you have to do it because you love people."
Campbell gave explicit orders on how many votes she expected from each division. She told them to focus first on bringing elderly voters out - the party's reliable core - and then to lure voters who typically cast ballots only in presidential elections.
"When you say we've got to go get them, how do we go get them?" a committeewoman asked.
"We always do it by ringing doorbells," Campbell said.
As for Brady, he had cash in his pocket yesterday, and more in his briefcase. He was prepared to spend it all.
His aide, Shelton, roved in an SUV, stopping at polling places to check vote totals, cash in hand in case of emergencies. "If I need any more, I go back to Bob," Shelton said. "He just reaches in there and gets me a whole lot of $50s."
In the middle of the day, Brady paused in his headquarters and said to no one in particular: "You know who we're missing today?"
The busy room went silent.
"Buddy Cianfrani," he said.
Former State Sen. Henry J. Cianfrani, who died July 3 at age 79, was a master at getting out Democratic votes. He, too, was cited in last year's grand jury report - for accepting street money from judicial candidates, but using some of it to write checks that went to nonexistent people.
Street money has no boundaries. The GOP reportedly spent it in Northeast Philadelphia yesterday, and in Center City, former State Rep. Norman Berson, Eighth Ward Democratic leader, parceled out about $7,500 to workers in 30 divisions, in return for receipts showing what they'd spent on letters to voters, sample ballots, flyers and the like.
Here, too, committee people "buy the election board lunch, sometimes dinner, and sometimes breakfast," Berson said. "The whole purpose is to spend it on the election, not to save it. We're not an investment bank."
As Brady said, Election Day is not a time to be frugal. He, too, planned to end the day with no cash left on hand.
"Whatever it takes," he said. "I treat my guys good because they treat me good."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact Peter Nicholas at 202-383-6046 or pnicholas@krwashington.com. Inquirer staff writers Linda K. Harris and Miriam Hill contributed to this article.
In fact, the good ol'boy network got gambling into Atlantic City this way.
So much money on the street it looked like a ticker tape parade!
And it all got properly reported to the IRS, right?
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