U.S. Congressional candidate shoots for upset victory

Philadelphia is a tough place to be a Republican.

Tough, but not impossible.

Stewart Bolno -- the 58-year-old soft-spoken but hard-charging Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's second district -- knows it will not be easy to win the hearts and minds of citizens in a city that registers four-to-one for the Democrats.

But the lifelong Philadelphian is paying that no mind as he forges ahead with his bid to unseat the perennially popular Rep. Chaka Fattah to represent Southeastern Pennsylvania in Washington.

"It's time for the Democrats to apologize for ... continuing failed systems," Bolno says.

He stands on a platform of personal accountability -- one that he says can reverse the social ills caused by what he calls 50 years of liberal rule in the country.

"Who has been running these platforms for 50 years?" he asks.

Bolno is a small businessman turned college professor -- who has taught courses at Wharton -- turned management consultant, turned, most recently, politician. This is his first-ever race. Though Bolno was approached at one point to run for City Council, he turned down the opportunity at the time. He says now that he is ready for the fight ahead.

"This was a put up or shut up time for me," he says. If he didn't do this now, "I would have doubted myself for the rest of my life."

In between jabs at the "liberals" who have historically controlled politics in Philadelphia, Bolno passionately reflects on the issues of the day, from public education to welfare to the issues in Iraq. Though he does not profess to be an expert on any of these issues, Bolno pledges to surround himself with people who are, in order to be an effective communicator of new ideas.

Bolno counts this among his strengths -- the ability to connect with people -- and touts his ability to analyze and take a common sense approach to problems. Among his weaknesses, he counts his inexperience as a candidate and his relative obscurity at this point, which he calls "the third quarter in a four-quarter game."

Bolno carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his shirt pocket and a stack of books by conservative thinkers in a backpack, and describes himself as a conservative because, he says, that is his intellectual framework. His "team," he says, is the Republican party, but his thinking is Conservative.

While his policies are on the the right of even the conservative spectrum, he says that he is open to new ideas, and has even voted for Democrats in the past -- Bill Clinton in 1992, and Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street in 1999.

"I thought Clinton was more moderate and wanted [to win] more than Bush," he says of his 1992 decision. And independent thought and articulate expression are just what the Republican party in Philadelphia is looking for in its candidate.

"He's fearless, he's intelligent, he's articulate, [though] he is on the more conservative side of the spectrum," says Matthew Wolfe, Republican Leader in the city's 27th ward -- the area that includes University City. But "in a race like this, putting up a Fattah clone is not necessarily going to help us very much."

Wolfe says that the party's goal in this election is to put themselves in a position to win, even if it doesn't seem likely at this point. Fattah garnered 86 percent of the vote in 1998, 98 percent in 2000 -- there was no Republican candidate that year -- and 88 percent in 2002.

But Bolno knows what he is up against, and is readying himself for the opportunity, should it arise.

"My hope is to point out damage caused by the liberals, touch hearts ... and open people's minds to another way of thinking," Bolno says, adding that he hopes to capture 50 percent of the Jewish vote and 20 percent of the city's black vote, both of which are traditionally liberal.

Wolfe thinks he's got a chance and is in a position to get a good race going.

"To the extent that he has the opportunity to get people to meet him, I think they will ... find him Congressional material."

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