The Philadelphia Democratic Party purge is growing.
At least 16 neighborhood-level party activists were booted from their ward committee slots last month, fulfilling party chair Bob Brady’s promise to punish those who supported Working Families Party candidates in last fall’s City Council election.
Most of the removals happened in the 22nd ward in Mt. Airy, where Councilmember Cindy Bass is ward leader.
“If you want to play for the Sixers, you shouldn’t be wearing someone else’s jersey,” Bass said in an interview.
The move is provoking angry protests and appeals from the affected ward committeepeople, along with claims that many of the expulsions are more about settling personal scores than ensuring party unity.
The 13 people kicked out in the 22nd ward include several supporters of Seth Anderson-Oberman, who came within a hair of winning the District 8 Democratic primary last spring and blocking Bass’ reelection. Before that, some of the same committee members had sued Bass for trying to keep them out of ward meetings.
Democratic voters elect their local ward committee members every four years. In the past, decisions to expel members were made by the individual wards, but party bylaws were changed in June 2022 to allow the Democratic City Committee to approve expulsions. The period during which removed members can’t run to rejoin their committee was also extended from two years to four.
“They’re modifying party rules to eliminate their political opponents,” said Alex Reusing, who was removed from the committee in Bass’s ward. “It’s about whether we let voters decide things or whether we let the old guard party functionaries decide things.”
Most of those expelled were among 101 party activists who signed a letter supporting the WFP candidates last year, or belonged to outside organizations that endorsed the WFP candidates. But at least one of those expelled was an Anderson-Oberman supporter who says she never endorsed a non-Democrat, the Inquirer reported.
Fears over voter turnout
The party expelled one WFP-endorsing committeeperson in October, shortly before the general election, but then seemed to mostly pause the removals.
The DCC’s unexpected decision to continue following through on Brady’s threats drew renewed laments that the party is going out of its way to alienate progressives whose votes it needs in a crucial presidential election year.
Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia in particular, are expected to play pivotal roles in determining whether President Biden wins an expected rematch with former President Trump. Party officials should be encouraging its most energetic volunteers rather than kicking them to curb, critics of the expulsions say.
“Expelling committeepersons who worked tirelessly to get their voters to the polls is counterproductive to the main role of the DCC to get out the vote,” one group of expelled committee people said in a statement. “We need to increase voter turnout, not hamper it, as the DCC is doing with this purge.”
State Rep. Chris Rabb, an anti-establishment progressive who endorsed the Working Families Party candidates, said in a statement that voting rates have been higher than average in the wards where members were recently ousted.
“It is deeply troubling that instead of supporting these committed individuals who continuously produce some of the highest turnout rates in Philadelphia, the party leadership has chosen to cast them aside without due process,” said Rabb, who was formerly ward leader in the 9th ward. His district includes the 9th and 22nd wards.
“Bob Brady’s willingness to sacrifice the voices of critically important grassroots organizers for the Democratic party in favor of maintaining municipal political power for pro-Trump Republicans ahead of November ’24 is deeply troubling,” he said.
Brady, a former congressman, did not return a phone message left with the Democratic City Committee.
A penalty for selective endorsements
Since Democrat-turned-WFP member Kendra Brooks first ran for an at-large council seat nearly five years ago, Brady has been promising to expel committee members who endorse or support the Working Families candidates.
Brooks and her fellow WFP member Nicolas O’Rourke, who are both now councilmembers, weren’t directly threatening Democrats, because those two at-large council seats are reserved for non-majority parties. Republicans held those seats for decades until Brooks won one in 2019 and O’Rourke won the other last fall.
Because each voter could pick only five of nine at-large candidates at the polls last November, the WFP could in theory have taken enough votes that a lagging Democratic candidate could lose to a Republican. But that was virtually impossible given the Democratic party’s 7-1 voter registration advantage in the city.
In addition, numerous Democratic elected officials have endorsed Working Families candidates, ranging from councilmembers like Jamie Gauthier and Isaiah Thomas to state legislators, Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.
Nonetheless, party leaders like Brady along with many ward leaders and other party faithful object to ward committeepeople violating the bylaws barring support for non-Democrats.
Jeff Duncan, who leads the 9th ward in Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy, said it was “particularly egregious” that some progressive groups like Philly Neighborhood Networks urged residents to cast votes for two WFP candidates and only three Democrats in the at-large race.
That left out two party-endorsed Democrats, Nina Ahmad and Jim Harrity. Both are now councilmembers.
Duncan said it was important to support Ahmad, who lives in the 9th ward, in part because she was running to become the first South Asian woman on City Council. She’s also a chemist whose expertise is needed as the council considers how to act on climate change, he said.
“The first time you’re out running is the trickiest time to get elected,” said Duncan, who previously worked as Democratic aide in the U.S. House and Senate for 31 years. “Unfortunately, we had groups like Neighborhood Networks not endorsing her.”
Neighborhood Networks’ leadership includes Margaret Lenzi and Stan Shapiro, a couple who were both removed from the 9th ward committee last month and are appealing the decision.
They argue their removals were legally invalid for several reasons, including that they were made by a DCC subcommittee and never ratified by the full committee, as apparently required by the party bylaws.
They also note that the 9th ward is one of several “open wards” around the city, meaning that endorsements are voted on by the committeepeople instead of being decided by the ward leader.
“It was our position this was not a democratic way of proceeding, and the 9th ward prides itself with being open and democratic,” Lenzi said. “We felt this went against their basic principles.”
While Duncan said the expulsions in the 9th ward were justified, he said such disputes could be avoided if Democrats were eligible to hold all seven at-large City Council seats. That would eliminate the incentive for some politicians to switch over to the Working Families Party.
“The provision in the city charter that provides this minority set-aside for two seats is an anachronism and should be repealed,” he said. “If it was repealed, we wouldn’t have these arguments.”
Who actually decided to expel them?
Some of the 22nd ward committeepeople who were expelled have tangled with Bass in the past.
Most or all of them supported Anderson-Oberman, a first-time candidate who lost a primary challenge to incumbent Bass last May by just 406 votes out of more than 26,000 cast.
Some of them were also members of an “open caucus” within the ward who sued Bass in 2022 for shutting them out of meetings. They won a court injunction ordering her to “to cease and desist from excluding duly elected members from attending and fully participating…at all future meetings.”
Most of them were among the 101 Democrats who signed the letter supporting the WFP candidates. However, at least one of those expelled was reportedly an Anderson-Oberman supporter who didn’t sign.
Reusing, the expelled 22nd ward committeeperson, says he signed the “meaningless” letter out of solidarity with Black committeepeople who he heard faced possible expulsion for supporting Brooks — not because he’s a big supporter of the Working Families Party.
After Brady said signatories could recant their WFP endorsements, Reusing said he sent an email to the DCC saying he supported all the endorsed Democrats. But he was removed nonetheless.
“We just all happened to be people who were prominent supporters of Cindy’s opponent in the primary last year. I have no idea what this is about, but it seems weird,” he said.
The revised party bylaws allow the removal of “unfaithful” ward members either by individual wards or by the Democratic City Committee. It’s unclear who exactly decided which committee members would lose their positions and why. The expelled members received form letters signed by the party’s Committee on Organization saying they were removed for supporting non-Democrats.
Bass refused to discuss whether she asked for or had a role in deciding who was expelled, referring questions to party chair Brady.
“We received communication from the Democratic City Committee that there would be action taken if folks did not follow the principles of the party and the bylaws,” she said.
Duncan, the 9th ward leader, said his ward has in the past voted to remove a committeeperson who was refusing to cooperate with other members, but did not act on Renzi and Shapiro.
Party officials asked him if the ward wanted to handle their alleged violation of party bylaws, but he decided that “since this was a complaint from the city committee, action should be taken by the city committee.”
