Politics: Anne of a Thousand Dreams

Clearly, the middle-aged woman, lips pursed, wasn’t satisfied. “The War on Drugs is a war on us,” she explained. “The reason Prohibition was repealed in 1933 was because women rose up and said, We can’t live with the violence in our neighborhoods anymore from trying to keep people from drinking. People are killing each other over heroin or cocaine or what we consider dangerous drugs.”

Dicker stammered. “Absolutely, I agree with you,” she said finally.

Silence.

“Make weed legal!” someone finally shouted. The room laughed and cheered.

“All right!” Dicker said, laughing and jokingly pumping her fist. “But listen,” she went on, and noted that a freshman senator out to “make weed legal” probably wouldn’t go over so well. She invited the woman to get involved in her campaign, “to work on this issue.”

Setting aside whether making weed legal is or isn’t good policy, it was impossible not to wonder how this sort of conversation, these sorts of people, this sort of candidate, would translate to other parts of the First District, perhaps the most important in the Senate. It comprises a major portion of Philadelphia — Center City and its business district, most of South Philadelphia, parts of North Philadelphia and Southwest Philadelphia, and the huge stretch of land along the Delaware River from Dicker’s home in Queen Village to lower Kensington, all regions where the rub between old residents and new is fueling seismic changes, what could be a new political landscape that started with the election of self-styled reformer Michael Nutter as mayor. That Anne Dicker is the candidate challenging the legendary Fumo — and that she stands even a snowball’s chance in hell of defeating him — says a lot not only about Dicker, but also about this moment in the city’s long, often sordid political history.

Which isn’t to say she’s wholly virtuous. If anything’s to get done in Philadelphia, high-minded reformism must meet politics as it really gets practiced; Nutter himself seems to be paying lip service, at least, to the old guard that didn’t support him as a candidate. And though it has begun alienating her from some in her own progressive quarters, Anne Dicker doesn’t appear above mixing it up some.

“Being pure in this game can usually get you in trouble,” says Zack Stalberg, president of the nonprofit ethics watchdog group Committee of Seventy. “Dicker’s a pragmatist and a street fighter. I think the fact that she might be willing to make unconventional moves is probably a good thing.”


VINCENT FUMO, 64, was born and raised in South Philly. He assumed his seat in the Senate in 1978, after Buddy Cianfrani was convicted on charges of racketeering, bribery and obstruction of justice; he has handily won reelection in every race since. Rich, mercurial and peripatetic, Fumo is widely viewed as brilliant both politically and in his ability to squeeze as much money out of Harrisburg for this city as it’s possible to get. He is also, according to a 267-page complaint recently lodged by U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan, criminally corrupt, having misused government employees and defrauded taxpayers of more than $2 million he used to, among other things, spy on his ex-girlfriends and stock every floor of his four homes with Oreck vacuum cleaners. Still, despite a trial in federal court expected in September, he’s heavily favored in the April primary, and enjoys the support of the city’s most prominent politicians and the Governor.

---