The Real Tom Knox

It’s a direct and dramatic and large story, and it’s playing well in the Northeast, in West Philly, in Feltonville. In such places, the future of the city seems once again up for grabs, and they’re believing in Tom Knox. “I see,” one woman at a Knox West Philly community breakfast nods, approvingly, “that he struggled to come along in his day.” It’s why, a month before the primary, the polls have Knox in first place, even though four months ago, most Philadelphians had never heard of Tom Knox.

Such is the power of TV. Yet there’s a small problem with his message. Those who do know him, Philadelphia insiders who worked with Tom Knox for those 18 months during the Rendell years, or who know him from business, don’t recognize the guy in the ads. When you talk to 50 local insiders, Knox’s outsider story, the guy who wants to ride in and clean things up, has them scratching their heads. Or laughing. They present a different Tom Knox, and say there’s a huge gap between the guy they know and the crusader of his ads, the one who seems tantalizingly close to becoming Philadelphia’s next mayor.

SOMETIME IN the mid '90s, Bob Butera, the CEO of the Convention Center, got a phone call from Tom Knox. In fact, according to his account, he got several phone calls from Knox.

Butera knew Knox a little. Through his law firm, Saul Ewing, Butera had tried to get Knox as a client. Once, Knox had invited Butera out to Kasser, a distillery he owned, for lunch; he remembers Knox talking about some turkey farms he’d bought, what a great deal he’d made selling them. And Knox had invited him to the Morris Arboretum two or three times, charity events for what is now called the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. That’s about it.

Now Knox was calling Butera because he wanted to be named the broker of record for the Convention Center’s hospitalization policy, held with Blue Cross. Butera recalls that Knox said that if he was broker of record — the go-to guy on the policy — the policy itself wouldn’t change, and it wouldn’t cost the Convention Center any more money; but he’d get a commission. Butera considered. He knew that Knox had worked under Rendell, and was now out of the administration. Something else: The Convention Center operates at a loss, which is picked up by the city. So keeping good relations with the city is important, and given that Knox was close to Rendell … It was a no-brainer, really. Butera told Knox yes, and Knox was made broker of record, which, Butera was recently told, put $28,000 a year in Knox’s pocket. What he actually did for that money, Butera has no idea.

Such is the quiet, easy way business is conducted among people who know people in Philadelphia, or, for that matter, anywhere. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, though Butera now says that if he had known Knox was making so much back then just for being broker of record, he would have called Blue Cross directly and negotiated a lower premium for the Center’s policy; in an indirect way, given that city taxpayers pick up the Center’s cost overruns, we, the citizens of Philadelphia, were paying a chunk of Tom Knox’s stipend.

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