The City GOP Finally Finds a Mayoral Candidate

(It’s a woman the Dems don’t really want.) Plus: Camden in chaos, Nutter’s budget, dead black male babies, The Onion, and more of what Philly’s talking about this morning
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Couldn’t Have Seen This Coming. After Camden laid off half its police force in January, violent crime is up 19 percent and aggravated assault with a firearm is up 259 (!) percent over the first two months of last year. Good news: Murder rates are down slightly—mainly because the bad guys aren’t good shots. [Inquirer]

City Republicans Find a Mayoral Candidate. She’s currently running for City Council as a Democrat—both in District 1 and in the at-large free-for-all—but the GOP party bosses recruited her anyway, mainly to foil John Featherman, the current Republican mayoral candidate allied with the insurgent group that wants to cast off the party bosses. Her reasoning: “[Karen] Brown said she has been frustrated that the local Democratic Party has not been supportive of her twin campaigns for Council, after she spent years helping to elect other candidates.” Translation: She’s entitled, dammit. [Daily News]

Mayor Nutter Lays Out His Budget This Morning. No major cuts, no tax increases. Then, next week, Governor Corbett lays out his own budget plan—basically, to gut everything and make sure natural gas drillers never have to pay any extraction taxes, ever—and the city will have to scramble to make ends meet again. Good times. [It’s Our Money]

The Mayor Will Also Take PhillyRising Citywide. The little-noticed program tries to rejuvenate long-troubled neighborhoods (cheaply); its first target, in a North Philly neighborhood, was apparently quite the success. [Daily News]

Kermit Gosnell’s Dead Babies Are All Black Males, Even If They Weren’t. For the city’s record-keeping purposes, the seven fetuses the West Philly abortion doc allegedly killed after they were born alive will be counted as black males, even though only one of them has been identified as such. Spokescop Ray Evers explained it to the DN thusly: “Most of the folks that came in to Gosnell’s house of horrors were black,” and, “Males as a gender was picked, because we just picked males.” There you have it. And yes, all seven will be counted in the city’s annual homicide tally. [Daily News]

The Onion Rolls Into Town. America’s Finest News Source™ is launching a 40,000-circulation print edition in Philly, under the business auspices of Philadelphia Media Network. [Newsworks] In case you’re unfamiliar with what The Onion does, here’s a classic sample, from 1994 [The Onion Store]:

The Onion

Congrats, Chooch. Finally, The Scoop would like to welcome Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz’s newborn son, Carlos, into the world. Chooch also has an eight-year-old son—also named Carlos. It’s a good name. [Phillies Notebook]