Michael Nutter didn't wow the anti-casino moms, but he was the ladies' choice at a Women for Nutter fund-raiser Monday night. About 300 women packed the event at the Moore College of Art tonight, reports Catherine Lucey. And the gals paid for the proximity to Nutter: tickets ranged in price from $125 to (gulp) $1,000.
(Side note: What's the money for? Based on the one-time-aired-as-far-as-we-can-tell commercial from Al Taubenberger, any ad war is just gonna be ... lopsided.)
Nutter's political director, Terry Gillen, opened the event with a shout-out to Nutter's almost-entirely-female staff. "We did decide we'd have a male candidate," she said. "Isn't he doing a great job?" Big cheers.
Another crowd-pleaser was Nutter's wife, Lisa, who noted the crowd was big enough to start "our own sorority: Alpha Kappa Nutter."
The man himself tailored his stump-speech comments to the crowd, stressing anti-domestic-violence efforts, inclusion in city work and boards and his abortion-rights views. And he nodded to the fact that the honeymoon with these women -- and the honeymoon with every other voter in Philadelphia -- is now.
If he wins, of course.
If he wins, he said, "January 7 will be a wonderful day of celebration," Nutter said. "And on the 8th, we're going to be very busy."
Comments (10)
That's a really good question: to what purpose is Nutter's fundraising machine running at full steam?
It seems strange that after winning the nomination not beholden to major fundraisers, he is now making such an effort to publicly take all their money.
There are only two scenarios I can think of: he wants to make it appear to be a legitimate race; he wants to run for higher office after his term in the Mayor's office. The first scenario seems unnecessary, as it seems he could conduct a respectable campaign against a feeble MayorAL. I'm not even sure if the second scenario is legal.
Posted by aw | September 18, 2007 8:40 AM
I respectfully disagree with the above poster -- this seems like the healthy, open way to raise money for a campaign, even if you think you'll win.
The old school way was to take cash in back door deals from persons and groups with questionable bona fides and poor records of public performance with public assets and opportunities.
The people who want property and contracts from the city don't seem like the folks at this fundraiser.
One beef -- women aren't concerned that they need "city work" and "board appointments." Nutter's choice position is a given. Assuming this is the direction women want for the city is baffling.
The issues that women in the city care about now are good schools, fair unbiased equalized property tax collection to pay for those schools, and safety/anti-crime strategies that are proven, evidence-based, and not gimmicky.
Posted by lj | September 18, 2007 6:26 PM
10,000 men to stand on street corners organized by the NOI and Kenny Gamble -- gimmicky.
Barbeques for peace -- gimmicky. Million More Men marching with pies and bow ties -- gimmicky. "We can't arrest our way out of this" -- sorry thought that was why police carry handcuffs -- weak!
Kowtowing to every group that claims a local constituency with handouts and giveaways such as property in the name of "urban renewal" -- obviously not working in Hawthorne, Point Breeze, Gray's Ferry, (hello, boarded up empty Odunde office) -- after the fanfare, it creates more blight in the breech --gimmicky. Schlocky policy.
Treating revitalization as bad and stasis as good for the city -- tired. Pretending the government and not this vibrant new marketplace creates jobs -- hubris.
Posted by Women want -- no more gimmicks! | September 18, 2007 6:35 PM
Women in this city can't afford to be victims to crime, so we need more local and state prison space, more probation/parole staff, more judges to reduce court wait times, better IT coordinated from arrest to parole office, and more holding of suspects with records so they will show for criminal proceedings INCLUDING drug charges and "nonviolent offenses" IF a the suspect has a record of previously adjudicated felonies.
Come on.
Women have to be free to walk in the city without fear. Drug and alcohol addiction is highly correlated with violence against women, and the city and PPS is doing a super job making detox and programs available in and out of local prisons.
What is needed is more publicity, and more data collected that shows how well this works. Mental health care in prisons is superlative, and city access to mental outpatient care is working where funded. Social services such as anger management and other programs are proven and women want to see more of it made available to reduce recidivism and crime.
Rendell's push to let "non-violent" offenders out is misguided and numerous studies show, off base.
The broken window theory that cleaned up NYC and Chicago is still working on decreasing crime in cities that use it. We have to be disciplined about using it here.
Women want clean neighborhoods. That means city property, unmaintained scattered site PHA housing, RDA properties in perpetual limbo need to be liquidated to the highest tax paying private bidder to fund high quality PHA projects and city services.
The RDA gives property for almost nothing repeatedly to groups and local celebrities who let the properties remain vacant, boarded up, or empty trashy lots for years at a time. The RDA has to have a no-exception reclaimation and reversion policy that takes back properties not built after their required time, and the policy should let private buyers bid OPENLY.
I fear that Nutter's advisors are in fact abusive of allowing nonperformers to hold RDA alloted property with NO requirement for the RDA to retake the deed for nonperformance. This has devated the reputation of the RDA.
Women want efficiency, openness, transparency, and equal responsibilities for all in the city. Women want to grow a tax base like a garden. That means that if a property can contribute property tax via a viable owner, it must be made available in an open, competitive, process.
NYC stopped trying to be a real estate holding and development nonprofit using federal funds. First, federal funds went away. Second, private builders will do the work at no cost to tax payers to build private housing. Guess what -- boom in NYC jobs, city clean up, and tax revenue.
If I'm to pay more in property taxes, I expect the city to diligently reduce the back log of hundreds of millions in overdue taxes. The last I looked, there was $588 million in overdue taxes, some of it DECADES old.
What normal civic agent allows this? Linebarger is to collect all accounts over four years old per the latest, but the city seems to think it must already back pedal on fair payment and collection. A recent Tribune article claims this is some conspiracy to "gentrify" neighborhoods. But neighborhooods are coming back to the way they once were -- were all classes and races/ethnicities live side by side. What is wrong with that?
Women's issues are fairness issues. While women want poverty to be addressed, the city is not the venue to be the response to all complaints by those who've had years to get it together to participate.
Women want to eliminate waste, fraud, duplication, redundancy in government, overspending, and government that doesn't work based on the real numbers. Each city agency should produce a public annual report available online.
Civic responsibility has to be equally enforced and expected. That is the biggest issue among city women today. No owner can be allowed to walk away from their individual responsibilities to the footprint that sustains them. So lien collection of gas, water, and all city debts has to be foreclosure triggering where property has salient value against debt.
This is a simple Excel program waiting to be written. Women want best practices in government.
It's wrong for the city to be in the business of trying to prevent those who are best served in the rental market from entering it. It's expensive to the city and to city held utilities, without preventing or solving poverty.
Allowing minimal or nonpayment to the city is a tool of weaker pols to solidify votes, quid pro quo. It's by definition a corrupting habit that weakens that which is held in the public trust.
It was Street's modus operandi. Women want a 180 degree turnaround.
Good schools, low crime, fair property tax collection and assessment across the board on market value, with low income senior exemptions that are investigated for validity, have to be the rule, not the exception. Entities that claim property tax exemption should be compelled to annually reapply to show current exempt status. Too many "nonprofits" in the city are no longer yet pay no property taxes at all. There should never be a property that pays no property taxes in the city, since each property incurs costs. Each property strains infrastructure. Each property is responsible for upkeep, as determined by an impartial entity such as a the BRT. The city has to untie the BRT's hands and allow equalizing assessment. Schools can't afford the free-riders.
Women want good government, anti-corruption laws with teeth, and a city that nutures its tax revenue base for schools, safety, and growth.
Posted by What do women want? | September 18, 2007 6:47 PM
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