So you're saying I should be direct mailing these blog posts?

Yesterday on Radio Times, guest host Dave Davies was joined by George Burrell, former City Councilman, candidate for mayor in 1991 and most recently the Secretary of External Affairs in Mayor John Street's cabinet. You can listen to the entire conversation here or for those of you with portable mp3 playing technology, download it here.

To save you some time, here are some of the highlights:

First 38 minutes: John Street is [misunderstood/a changed man/a great mayor/a man with values/not as bad as everyone thinks]. To his credit, Dave Davies brought up numerous descriptions of the mayor's leadership style that he had collected from other sources close to the mayor but Burrell stuck to his message. In fact, it sounds a lot like what he was saying to the Inquirer's Marcia Gelbart on the first stop of his "John Street Legacy Tour" in a March 31st story and in his follow up letter 5 days later. See if you hear any of the following in his Radio Times interview:

We are not all gregarious. We are not all extroverted. We are not all charismatic. But I have seen a lot of politicians with those characteristics who have not supported public policies that were fair and progressive or who had the fortitude to do what they believed to be right.

As one who has fought with Street and supported him, I have witnessed the maturing of a politician who has become one of the most important public figures in this city. I believe the Rendell/Street years will be recognized historically in the same breath with Clark/Dilworth.
(from The Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/5/06)

But anyway, moving on to the crystal ball portion of the interview, Dave asks Burrell for his thoughts on the race for the next mayor. Burrell begins by sharing some of the lessons he learned from his own run in 1991, specifically that it takes money to win. Using an odd twist of logic, he says that independently-minded, outsider, minority candidates will be the ones most hurt by recent efforts to establish campaign contribution limits. He explains that the only way these types of candidates can get name recognition is to spend millions on television and without being able to depend on the fifty to hundred thousand dollar contributions, no one will know for whom to vote. He says the mayor's race will end up like the Controller's race where people show up at the polls - or are dragged to them - and vote for whichever name is on the sample ballot that the big burly man outside gave to them.

So why can't these candidates work to reach out to community groups, visit neighborhood associations and educate voters by giving in-depth, thoughtful interviews to the print media? Simple says Burrell in minute 38:

I don’t think we’re going to educate our public through newspaper reading and through magazine reading. Where people get their information today is through television, radio and direct mail. That’s where they get their information.

So Burrell's solution for decreased civic engagement, voter cynicism and candidate's beholden to special interests is to continue it by making sure that the only place voters get information is from 30-second commercials and the junk mail you get with your Sharper Image catalog. Stop reading this blog now. You're not getting any information from it. You! With the Daily News, save your 60 cents, junk mail comes to you for free! Burrell knows he can say such things because most of us only have 30-second attention spans and stop listening to him thirty-seven and a half minutes ago.

But wait, it gets even more interesting. After passing on a chance to comment on each of the likely candidates because of his previously professed support for Chaka Fattah, Burrell comments on one factor that he thinks is important in the selection process.

Clearly, race is going to play a major part in the 2007 campaign whether we'd all like it to or not. This is still a city that suffers from intense racial divisions that can at times be subtle but are mostly overt. A vast majority of the electorate still see skin color and let it affect the way they vote regardless of the relative merits of each candidate. Candidates know this and often try to use it to their advantage.

Just by looking at the pictures of the cast of Six is Enough, you knew race might come up eventually. Burrell decides to get that out there now with this statement in the 44th minute:

I think it’s important to – in the city of Philadelphia – elect and African-American mayor to succeed an African-American mayor. Never in a majority white city in America has an African-American mayor been elected to succeed a two-term African American mayor. And I think it’s important for a number of reasons. I think it’s important to show that continuity, that people can respect that leadership, that it has delivered and people say let’s move forward. It will break the trend of blacks voting for blacks and whites voting for whites.

So there you have it. Race becomes an issue. Discuss.

FYI: according to the 2004 population survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau, Philadelphia is 42 percent white, 44.6 percent black and 5 percent Asian.