A Campaign in Turmoil (Street vs. Katz)

Mayor Street and Republican challenger Sam Katz have spent nine months testing their messages with polls and focus groups, raising money, shooting television commercials, and making speeches.

The discovery of an FBI bug in the mayor's office last week has inextricably altered a campaign that should be winding up for a carefully scripted finale.

Now, nothing seems certain. Both camps are scrambling to make sense of the new landscape even as time rapidly runs out.

"There is no primer on what to do when this kind of thing is dropped on you 31/2 weeks from Election Day," said David Axelrod, Street's media consultant. "We still don't know what the fallout is."

The media din, for instance, over the bug and the FBI investigation has drowned out efforts by the candidates to talk about anything else.

Political experts predict other changes, as well. For Street, campaign funds might grow tighter and the news media more aggressive. His campaign most likely will try to keep him away from reporters and before friendly crowds.

Katz faces a struggle to refine his message in light of Street's troubles, recognizing that his voice, too, is being lost in the ongoing static.

To be sure, the mechanics of the last three weeks of a campaign - the rallies, debates and door-knocking - will look much the same as usual.

But expect to see some subtle tactical adjustments. With uncertainty the rule - nobody knows what revelation might come next in the scandal - the campaigns will have to adapt, day-to-day, to a whole new reality.

One thing is clear: The FBI has jolted a campaign that was slogging along pathways familiar from the last time Katz and Street faced each other, in 1999.

"It even is beyond a normal defining moment," said Democratic media consultant Neil Oxman, who handled Gov. Rendell's advertising last year and has worked on every mayoral election since 1979, except this one. "It's just so profound. Nobody can figure out what this thing does - nobody."

After two solid days of bugging news, Street's overnight campaign polls through Thursday night had the mayor narrowly ahead of Katz, according to several campaign sources who declined to give the percentage spread. Street's numbers had not dropped from the week before yet, though his strategists are nervous about what this week might bring.

The Katz campaign suspended its polling on Tuesday because strategists said the situation was too volatile to measure.

"It's like saying: 'How deep is the water?' in a storm," a senior Katz adviser said. "You have to wait for it to settle down to get a true read."

Talk was swirling in some Democratic circles yesterday of the need to prepare for the possibility that Street's standing would plummet, requiring a last-minute replacement candidate. Such a scenario happened last year in New Jersey, when then-Sen. Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, withdrew from the race under the cloud of a federal investigation.

"Any decent politician has a Plan A and a Plan B," said a prominent city Democrat who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being viewed as a traitor. "Some of the highest names in the party... have strategized on who's in the bullpen."

Among those mentioned: City Councilman Michael Nutter and State Rep. Dwight Evans.

But several ward leaders and other powerbrokers denied there was plotting afoot.

"I'm the chairman of this party," said U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, a Street T-shirt slung over his shoulder at a rally for the mayor yesterday. "There has been no talk in no shape in no form... . This is getting to be ridiculous."

Experts in Pennsylvania election law said that Democrats would be able to substitute a candidate if Street were to withdraw from the race, with the city committee of elected ward leaders making the choice. The only limit: the practical challenges of getting a new candidate's name programmed into voting machines for the Nov. 4 election - a tall order at this late date.

"He's our guy," Brady said of Street. "We're going to stay with him and as to him being replaced? Never ever."

Despite the volatility, certain factors are the same as they were before Tuesday. Philadelphia is an overwhelmingly Democratic city with a history of polarized racial voting, and that is unlikely to change, strategists said.

The Street campaign has tried to exploit last week's bad news by suggesting that Street is the victim of a national GOP conspiracy. The hope is to stoke outrage in the black community and drive up turnout on Election Day.

"This is the first time John Street may actually feel to the average person that he's a victim," said Saul Shorr, a Democratic political consultant based in Philadelphia.

"Claiming there was a bug in the mayor's office because he was black and being the victim?" Shorr said. "I think it will offend some people."

Other surrogates for the mayor have been dismissive of the effect of the scandal.

"Is there a cloud of uncertainty? Somewhat," Rendell said. "But in the end, 98 percent of the voters are going to vote on what they were originally going to vote on."

Rendell mentioned, for instance, that exit polls showed a late-breaking sexual harassment scandal did not derail Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California last week.

For that reason, Street campaign officials say they are going to concentrate on the campaign themes that were working before: Katz is a Republican, and the mayor's programs have improved life in city neighborhoods.

"There's nothing we can do to prepare for the leaks, the dribs and drabs coming out," said senior communications adviser Dan Fee. "So we have to maintain our focus."

To allay suspicions raised by news that the mayor is the subject of an FBI investigation, the campaign will push Street as a man of integrity, according to a national Democratic political consultant familiar with the campaign's strategy.

For instance, voters can expect to be reminded that, as a young City Council member, Street was unscathed by the Abscam investigation that swept up others on Council 23 years ago.

"He doesn't drive fancy cars, he doesn't live in a fancy neighborhood, he doesn't go on any fancy vacations," the consultant said. "This is a guy who has been in public service for 25 years. He sent his kids to public schools."

Democratic ward leaders and elected officials who gathered Friday afternoon to talk strategy at party headquarters in Center City said that they were counting on two things: personal campaigning that can bypass news coverage about the scandal, and a belief that the city's Democratic voters will ultimately stick with their party's candidate.

"The P.R. stuff has to stop. You just go right to the street and make people understand that it's about the Democratic Party," said party treasurer John Dougherty, leader of the electricians union. "This is an attack on Democratic principles. It will be a neighbor-to-neighbor campaign."

Katz has his own challenges. His strategists say he will try to change the subject. Aware of the dangers of angering black voters, Katz's campaign will attempt to tamp talk of a GOP conspiracy by repeating ad nauseam that the City Hall eavesdropping had to have been OKd by a federal judge.

"It's really public education," said campaign chairman Brian Tierney, who was on Mary Mason's radio talk show on WHAT-AM (1340) Friday morning with that new message. Katz also plans to return to talking about restoring Philadelphia's "momentum."

On Thursday, Katz began airing a new TV ad featuring a parade of people who said they would vote Republican for the first time. The ad says Street "lurches from embarrassment to embarrassment," mentioning, among other things, an airport contract given to his brother. "We have a mayor who cares more about special interests than our interest," it says.

Contact staff writer Thomas Fitzgerald at 215-854-2718 or tfitzgerald@phillynews.com. Inquirer staff writers Cynthia Burton, Angela Couloumbis, Marcia Gelbart, Michael Currie Schaffer and Marc Schogol contributed to this article.

The situation in Philly is getting rediculous. There was a very close race, then the mayor discovers a bug (most likely because of a leak) and is served with a warrant to seize his blackberry (which the FBI does not get until 2 days later) The scary thing is that there is still talk Street being a competitve candidate. If he is reelected, it will be comparable to DC re-electing Marion Barry after serving his sentence for smoking crack with prostitutes.

(I know, innocent until proven guilty. I am not talking about the sentence, I am talking about probable cause of major crime, and the selection to represent the people)

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I don't think there's any illusion by state and city Democrats that Street has likely committed criminal acts. The FBI investigation into corruption in the awarding of city contracts has been going on for 2 years. I doubt a judge would have permitted Street's office to be bugged if the FBI hadn't presented some compelling evidence.

I think the end game is to defend Street until he is safely elected, then pressure him to resign at which time the deputy mayor, a Democrat can take over.

This situation is approaching Torricelli standards. If polls start to show that Katz is gaining the upper hand, Street will be pressured to step aside just as the Torch did. Then the court battles will begin to postpone the election until a replacement candidate is named, voters can be properly informed of the situation and new ballots be printed.

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