Politics: Anne of a Thousand Dreams

But would doing so really preclude her from wearing the sash of a reformer? Or, as Zack Stalberg suggests, might political pragmatism go a long way to making reform actually happen? Take, for instance, the reformer-in-chief himself, Mayor Nutter, who, a month before he was sworn in,  penned an op-ed in the Inquirer lauding the Democratic Machine’s grand pooh-bah, Congressman Bob Brady, as an “important partner in the ‘New Day, New Way’ agenda I have established for Philadelphia.” His argument — that the cost of tossing Brady, one of the most powerful men in Congress, overboard was simply too great — may not sound reformist, but it makes an awful lot of practical sense.

There is also, of course, the entrenched mentality Dicker is combating. As one well-known former South Philly political operative offered, without the slightest bit of self-consciousness: “You get this in Philadelphia politics lately — you get people who have an inflated sense of self-importance but really haven’t been in the trenches. Who the hell does she think she is? The name of the game here is accumulated favors. She hasn’t been around in this town nearly long enough.”


ANNE DICKER is short on specifics on how she could be a more effective senator than Fumo — who has helped bring home $8 billion to Philadelphia over the past two decades, is close to members on both sides of the aisle, was called by the Governor himself to successfully shatter a budgetary impasse last year even after he’d been indicted, and served, until his indictment, as chairman of the appropriations committee, making him in effect the bank teller who distributes every dollar allocated by the state.

But that’s not the point — not as Dicker sees it. One evening in November, I accompanied her to the Convention Center for the formal unveiling of the long-anticipated $1.6 million plan by the University of Pennsylvania’s PennPraxis design group for the redevelopment of Philadelphia’s riverfront. It had been a year in the making — how to transform a seven-mile-long, asphalt-ridden, big-box-store-pocked, mostly blighted waste of arguably the city’s most prime real estate into something modern, beautiful, useable, sustainable, and intelligently, purposefully designed.

It was all about change. Said one planner, “I think ultimately if there is a constituency for that kind of change, that’s pretty new for Philadelphia.”

Anne Dicker sees her candidacy in very similar terms.

“The more I get into this character, the more I see what he’s done to the city, and the state, I just can’t believe he’s still in office,” she says of her opponent. “If Philadelphians can reelect this guy, knowing what he’s done, then I’m not so sure they really want change.”