Philly’s Political Odd Couple

DOUGHERTY HAD AN EXCELLENT Election Day this May. Green won easily. So did Mark Squilla, the Local 98-endorsed Council candidate in the First District, who will replace Dougherty adversary Frank DiCicco next year. But Dougherty’s biggest victory came in the Sixth District, in the Northeast, where longtime Local 98 political director Bobby Henon racked up an impressive 65 percent of the vote. Of Dougherty’s five endorsed candidates who ran in heavily contested districts, only one lost; for a guy whose pull was thought to be waning not long ago, batting .800 isn’t bad.

Doc has pledged not to interfere in Henon’s day-to-day operations, which would be a marked contrast from the days when it was suspected that Rick Mariano’s- office was an extension of the Local 98 machine. But even if he’s not handpicking- Council staffers and authoring legislation, there’s no question that Doc will hold considerable sway for the next four years.

Green, unfazed, points out that his and Dougherty’s agendas can overlap. It’s a simple point: If Green succeeds and the city’s economy improves, more people will come here, which will lead to building and union jobs. Be that as it may, Green’s pro-business-reformer cred took a hit in June. To kill Mayor Nutter’s soda tax, Green traded Council votes and ended up supporting the sick-leave bill that, just weeks earlier, he had claimed was bad for business. And then he sided with the city’s municipal unions in voting to keep the hugely unpopular DROP program. He also sent an aide before the city’s ethics board to decry what he sees as its too-tight regulations on campaign finance contributions—the same pass-through contributions that, earlier this year, netted him tens of thousands of dollars from John Dougherty.

A FEW YEARS AGO, while Dougherty was under a particularly harsh media spotlight, Green told the Inquirer that he was “more honest than Lincoln.” That’s something I doubt even Doc’s closest friends believe—Green admitted it was hyperbole—but it shows the extent to which Green is willing to stick his neck out for his pal. That hasn’t changed.

At our McGillin’s lunch, I mentioned to Green that it might have been expedient to distance himself from Doc, that Doc’s baggage could be a liability in a mayoral run.

Green looked at me as if I’d insulted his mother.

“I think he’s my friend, and that’s not how you treat friends.”

Doc’s past doesn’t matter to Green. What matters is that Doc has been good to him, and if you don’t like that, well, he’s not going to lose any sleep.

But chances are, you don’t care. Nobody I talked to thinks this relationship will cost Green in 2015. Voters’ memories are too short, and Green’s opponents will likely have political machines and unsavory characters in their backgrounds, too. And therein lies the rub: You can run for mayor in this city as a self-styled reformer and have as your patron a man who, for an entire decade, represented all the seedy machinations of Philly’s power structure, and it won’t matter, because it’s something we’ve just come to accept as normal.

It probably won’t even come up.