A career spent taking good candidates to their principled ends

I'm a huge fan of Dan Gross's gossip column in the Daily News. In fact, when the future of the Daily News was in jeopardy, I wondered where I would turn to scan quickly a block of news print to see which of my favorite bold face people were seen at Buddakan with Cecil Martin or Gervase Peterson.

In today's column, I and my fellow readers got an invitation to a Sam Katz fundraiser. What?!? Sam Katz is running for mayor?

Also, Katz says, there's no way in hell he'll run again next year.

Ok, that would seem to make it unlikely. So what is he raising money for?

Katz, 56, says part of his campaign debt is to himself, and he's not paying himself, but he says he owes a bank nearly $500,000.

Oooooh. I get it. It's an after-the-fact fundraiser where people give $100 to $500 to pay off the campaign debts from almost 3 years ago for a campaign that ended in a 17 point loss - tantamount to betting on Barbaro in the Preakness... today.

Folks who attend the fundraiser get to see Tigre Hill's The Shame of A City, a fantastic look at the 2003 mayoral election from the perspective of the Katz campaign, for about 91 to 491 dollars more than I paid to see it at the Philadelphia Film Festival in April.

I've already disclosed that I worked on the Katz campaign in 2003 as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research, which in the hierarchy of things meant that I could occasionally ask an intern to help me with a web search. I started working there as a naive, former teacher and lifelong suburban resident who hadn't yet really figured out his own political leanings. The person who helped me get the job convinced me that the Republican-Democrat distinction didn't really matter in this case since this election would be a referendum on how the current mayor was performing his duties and a choice between two competing plans for the future of Philadelphia. For a while it was. Early on, the two candidates offered the voters a choice between one who thought that the tax structure in Philadelphia required a radical and admittedly risky overhaul and one who had demonstrated a knowledge of city budgeting and a careful stewardship of the budget while continuing gradual - to the point of nearly invisible - reductions in taxes. By the end, however, those who participated in Election Day could choose between - as portrayed by each other's campaigns - a corrupt, borderline federal lawbreaker and a crooked, Enron-lite, embezzler.

Of course, both images are overspun, campaign-generated caricatures of two guys who, for all of their flaws, are essentially hard working, decent human beings who really want what's best for the city. So while, I'll poke a little fun at Sam's predicament, knowing that it partially results from a few bad management decisions by the folks stewarding his campaign (including, they'll probably say, retaining my services), this City would be well served by having someone like Sam in every election provide at least a viable alternative, another set of choices and a voice for issues that may otherwise get little consideration. It's a thankless job, which at best lets someone get to be famous and give speeches in front of raucous supporters for several weeks before bowing in defeat by nine or ten points and at worst results in a million dollars in debt. But it's precisely the job someone has to do in order for November 2007 to be an election instead of a coronation.