Feature Article |
The Real Tom Knox
By Robert Huber
Knox is always working an angle, as if he’s got to keep the wolves at bay. The $5 million — most of which he has sunk into TV ads — was a loan, which, post-election, meant that people of means would have the opportunity to pay back their new mayor directly. Gosh, that sounds sort of icky and … familiar, not to mention utterly at odds with the Knox party line of cleaning up pay-to-play, but Knox was nonplussed: What if, he wondered, the five mil was a donation and “I got hit by a truck? Then my wife loses $5 million, my kids don’t get $5 million. I’m not stupid. I’m a smart businessman.” In April, though, he changed his mind: Knox announced during a mayoral debate that he was officially giving the $5 million to his campaign.
Much has been made over the so-called payday loans that Crusader, a bank Knox owned, was making back in the ’90s. Knox continues to point out that charging exorbitant interest rates to indigent people who tended to roll the loans over into more loans, spiraling their debt, was serving a “need.” That is, what if a mother strapped for cash needs to get a prescription for her child — where does she turn? Anyway, the idea for the payday loans was brought to Crusader by Ballard Spahr, “one of the largest law firms in the city,” Knox points out. “They presented it in great fashion. They said this helps poor people.”
Always working the angles: When Mr. Outsider is challenged on whether he used political connections to ramp up the sales of his Kasser Distillers products to the state Liquor Control Board back in the late ’80s, he laughs at the stupidity of the accusation; who else, in Pennsylvania, is a distillery allowed to sell to other than the Liquor Control Board? No, in this case Knox was trying to grease the skids in the other direction, hoping to get a government position based on business inroads he had made. In fact, in the flush of Ed Rendell’s election as governor in ’02, Knox was telling people that he was going to be appointed head of the Liquor Control Board. But this, too, was Tommy-jump-the-gun, because naming Knox was an idea Rendell never seriously considered.
Recently, the Daily News discovered that Knox and Vince Fumo, who knows a little about the collision of money and power, teamed up over a possible Knox mayoral run in ’99. A Knox spokesman said no way, that Vince and Tom were enemies. When the Daily News pressed a little harder, the Knox camp shifted the relationship to “Tom did know Vince when he was exploring his run for mayor in 1999, but that became a non-issue because of the residency requirement.” Later, Knox himself clarifies the relationship for us: “The feud goes back to 1990 — I was trying to become president of Blue Cross, and the son-of-a-bitch shot me down.” That didn’t stop Knox from seeking Fumo’s help last fall as the mayoral campaign got under way.
All of this is a little like Knox’s strangely tone-deaf 18 months in the Rendell administration. The problems he caused and his bloated idea of what he accomplished back then don’t add up to something dark in his past so much as a warning about our future: If he becomes mayor, oh boy. And the hints of Knox chummily using his connections in politics are, likewise, maybe not so awful in and of themselves, especially given how anyone with a long career in insurance and banking with the success Knox has had almost certainly stumbles over a few ethical lines along the way. But what they both tell us — his time in the Rendell campaign, his career in business — is that the Tom Knox of his campaign ads, a guy who was front and center in saving the city once and now wants to change the way the game is played in City Hall, is a fiction.
Much has been made over the so-called payday loans that Crusader, a bank Knox owned, was making back in the ’90s. Knox continues to point out that charging exorbitant interest rates to indigent people who tended to roll the loans over into more loans, spiraling their debt, was serving a “need.” That is, what if a mother strapped for cash needs to get a prescription for her child — where does she turn? Anyway, the idea for the payday loans was brought to Crusader by Ballard Spahr, “one of the largest law firms in the city,” Knox points out. “They presented it in great fashion. They said this helps poor people.”
Always working the angles: When Mr. Outsider is challenged on whether he used political connections to ramp up the sales of his Kasser Distillers products to the state Liquor Control Board back in the late ’80s, he laughs at the stupidity of the accusation; who else, in Pennsylvania, is a distillery allowed to sell to other than the Liquor Control Board? No, in this case Knox was trying to grease the skids in the other direction, hoping to get a government position based on business inroads he had made. In fact, in the flush of Ed Rendell’s election as governor in ’02, Knox was telling people that he was going to be appointed head of the Liquor Control Board. But this, too, was Tommy-jump-the-gun, because naming Knox was an idea Rendell never seriously considered.
Recently, the Daily News discovered that Knox and Vince Fumo, who knows a little about the collision of money and power, teamed up over a possible Knox mayoral run in ’99. A Knox spokesman said no way, that Vince and Tom were enemies. When the Daily News pressed a little harder, the Knox camp shifted the relationship to “Tom did know Vince when he was exploring his run for mayor in 1999, but that became a non-issue because of the residency requirement.” Later, Knox himself clarifies the relationship for us: “The feud goes back to 1990 — I was trying to become president of Blue Cross, and the son-of-a-bitch shot me down.” That didn’t stop Knox from seeking Fumo’s help last fall as the mayoral campaign got under way.
All of this is a little like Knox’s strangely tone-deaf 18 months in the Rendell administration. The problems he caused and his bloated idea of what he accomplished back then don’t add up to something dark in his past so much as a warning about our future: If he becomes mayor, oh boy. And the hints of Knox chummily using his connections in politics are, likewise, maybe not so awful in and of themselves, especially given how anyone with a long career in insurance and banking with the success Knox has had almost certainly stumbles over a few ethical lines along the way. But what they both tell us — his time in the Rendell campaign, his career in business — is that the Tom Knox of his campaign ads, a guy who was front and center in saving the city once and now wants to change the way the game is played in City Hall, is a fiction.
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