Feature Article |
The Maybe Mayor
By Dan P. Lee
Brady denied this categorically, and even being asked about it made him visibly angry. "Jon is home right now with a cold pack across his tummy," he said at the diner. "He had a hernia operation yesterday. And I talked to him yesterday and I talked to him in the hospital, and I'm going to see him late tonight. Jon Saidel's my dearest friend in the world. He's going to be my driver, my confidant, my David L. Cohen, my pillow to cry on, my crutch to crutch on, Jon's my friend, I don't have many." Judging by the fact that Saidel and Brady are again apparently speaking regularly, it would seem their relationship is on the mend. Still, Saidel has refused to discuss Brady in public, and would not comment for this story.
Regardless of particulars, Brady bungled the way he entered the race. The Saidel incident revealed something profound about Brady's character: that his blood was capable of going cold. And his press got ugly on another front; Jerry Mondesire, the leader of Philly's NAACP, a longtime Brady supporter and now behind black mayoral candidate Dwight Evans, said Saidel's exit was an orchestrated attempt by Fumo and others to posit Brady as the "white candidate of choice," and marked "a betrayal of the legacy of racial harmony that [Brady] promised a decade ago when he went to Congress."
Bringing up the allegations by Mondesire and other black leaders back at the Greenleaf got Brady pointing at me with his fork as he rifled off the number of blacks working with him and bragged about the close relationship he's always enjoyed with the black community. It's surprising that Brady seems to have little perspective on this — that he can't acknowledge that all's fair in love, war and politics. And consider the way Brady himself played the race card during the Katz-Street campaign in 2003, when Brady consistently peddled the idea that the bugging of John Street's office was a conspiracy on the part of white Republicans in Washington. Brady later told a writer for this magazine, "Nah, I was just spinning the shit. And it worked."
The handling of the "Saidel issue" may be a harbinger of rocky roads to come. Philly mayoral veterans Sam Katz and Rendell say Brady should be ready for a campaign of a rigor and magnitude he's never experienced before. Which brings us back to Rendell's crucial questions:
Will Bob Brady be able to formulate his own policy and direction? And will he be able "to articulate his vision of where he wants to take this city to the people of the city?"
Regardless of particulars, Brady bungled the way he entered the race. The Saidel incident revealed something profound about Brady's character: that his blood was capable of going cold. And his press got ugly on another front; Jerry Mondesire, the leader of Philly's NAACP, a longtime Brady supporter and now behind black mayoral candidate Dwight Evans, said Saidel's exit was an orchestrated attempt by Fumo and others to posit Brady as the "white candidate of choice," and marked "a betrayal of the legacy of racial harmony that [Brady] promised a decade ago when he went to Congress."
Bringing up the allegations by Mondesire and other black leaders back at the Greenleaf got Brady pointing at me with his fork as he rifled off the number of blacks working with him and bragged about the close relationship he's always enjoyed with the black community. It's surprising that Brady seems to have little perspective on this — that he can't acknowledge that all's fair in love, war and politics. And consider the way Brady himself played the race card during the Katz-Street campaign in 2003, when Brady consistently peddled the idea that the bugging of John Street's office was a conspiracy on the part of white Republicans in Washington. Brady later told a writer for this magazine, "Nah, I was just spinning the shit. And it worked."
The handling of the "Saidel issue" may be a harbinger of rocky roads to come. Philly mayoral veterans Sam Katz and Rendell say Brady should be ready for a campaign of a rigor and magnitude he's never experienced before. Which brings us back to Rendell's crucial questions:
Will Bob Brady be able to formulate his own policy and direction? And will he be able "to articulate his vision of where he wants to take this city to the people of the city?"
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