Probe of Philadelphia mayor deepens racial split
PHILADELPHIA -- Mayor John Street gets polite applause when he talks about policy on the campaign trail these days. The big cheers come when he mentions the bug planted in his office by the FBI. In the two weeks since the news broke that Street was a subject of a federal investigation, Philadelphia's second black mayor has sought to cast himself as a man being persecuted because of his race, and the message appears to be resonating with black voters.
Stumping around the city last weekend, two weeks before the Nov. 4 election, Street received raucous ovations from supporters, who hollered approval when he said the investigation is a Republican dirty trick.
"I think people in this city are enormously fair, and they don't like it when they think an injustice is happening," Street said as he campaigned Sunday at supermarkets and churches.
Confounding expectations, a poll suggests that Street's campaign against white Republican businessman Sam Katz has been reinvigorated by the bugging and by a subsequent series of FBI raids on city departments.
A Temple University/CBS3/KYW-AM poll released last week indicated that Street was leading Katz, with 48 percent of the likely voters surveyed to Katz's 41 percent. In the same poll a month ago, Katz had 46 percent to Street's 40 percent.
The survey also exposed the sharp racial divide in the campaign, and how differently black and white voters have reacted to the bugging, which the FBI has not explained.
Among blacks, Street's popularity has surged, with 84 percent of those surveyed saying they intended to vote for the mayor, up from 70 percent last month. Among whites, 72 percent said they would vote for Katz, up 1 point from a month ago.
"It is almost as if they are living in two separate cities," said Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute's Center for Public Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.
"It doesn't appear to me that these accusations have hurt Street; they've only helped. His greatest weakness going into this was a lack of enthusiasm among his base, which is African-Americans and Democrats. The scandal has reenergized that base."
If that trend continues, it could be bad news for Katz.
Philadelphia is nearly equally divided between blacks and whites, and voters in city elections traditionally split along ethnic lines. During Street's first matchup against Katz, in 1999, neither candidate was able to cross color lines to muster much support. Street prevailed by fewer than 10,000 votes.
The chief federal prosecutor in Philadelphia has strongly denied the FBI probe is politically or racially motivated. And Katz has accused the Democrats of trying to exploit the city's racial divisions.
"Philadelphia is in a moment of historic crisis, and unfortunately the mayor has fueled the fires with a blatant appeal based on race. That's just wrong," Katz said. "They know this investigation isn't about race; it's about corruption."
Republicans have rejected the allegation that the probe was planned to disrupt the election. The public would have never learned of the investigation, Katz said, if Street's own security detail had not found the listening devices during a sweep of his office Oct. 7.
But for some Street supporters, those facts have been overshadowed by the investigation's apparent focus on black political figures.
FBI agents hauled away boxes of files last week from the offices of Ronald A. White, a prominent black lawyer and one of the mayor's best fund-raisers.
"I am a black man in America doing what I think needs to be done, and people resent that," White said. "Black men in America are supposed to be bowing down all the time and not doing [anything] but having babies and not taking care of them."
