FBI bug added to wide vote margin

As the final numbers came in on Tuesday night, one thing was clear -- current Mayor John Street had won his bid for re-election by a landslide.

In an election that had widely been predicted to be close, Street carried 58 percent of the vote to Katz's 42.

"What else can you say, that's a blow away," Political Science Professor Henry Teune said. "There's no ambiguity. Katz lost."

Analysts, and the latest polls, had predicted a larger win for Street than his 1999 defeat of Katz -- he won by less than 1 percent -- but few predicted a double-digit victory.

Even the mayor and his campaign team admitted that they had not predicted the landslide.

"I didn't think it was going to be that big," Street campaign spokesman Mark Nevins said, echoing similar comments the mayor made in his victory speech Tuesday night.

There are several different factors that could have caused the almost 3-to-2 margin of victory for Street in this election, and perhaps the most obvious is the number of voters Street persuaded to vote for him this time.

"It's not as if he managed to turn more people out than last time," said Ken Snyder, a Democratic political consultant. "He only managed to convince more people who did turn out to vote for him."

"Last time he got 88 to 90 percent of the African-American vote, this time he got 97 percent," he added.

Part of the increase in the black voter percentage, analysts said, hinged on a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe in which Street is acknowledged to be a subject. News of the probe, which broke with the discovery of an electronic listening device in the mayor's office, pushed many who may not have voted for Street strongly into his camp.

The probe "was like a gift from heaven," Teune said. "That ended the campaign right there."

But Street may have had the election in hand even before news of the probe broke.

"The campaign was pretty much where it was [in 1999] before the bugging incident," Snyder said. "The bug just galvanized folks in a way that hasn't happened for him before."

By all accounts, Street used the bug to his advantage by immediately declaring it part of a larger conspiracy set in motion by the national Republican Party.

"Street was aided substantially by a galvanizing message that was handed to him, that John Ashcroft and George Bush are as popular [in Philadelphia] as a UPS truck blocking Walnut Street," Snyder said.

Additionally, he said, the Street campaign reacted more quickly to the breaking news.

"Their reaction, that the bugging was racially motivated... was part of the story on day one," Snyder said. "Katz didn't really get in the story until week two, that was just too late."

But the bug was not the only explanation for Street's victory. In fact, Katz never held much of a lead in the polls, and throughout the campaign was viewed by analysts as a long shot underdog.

"I don't think [Katz] ever was over the top, he never moved," Teune said. "It was like the campaign of Dole against Clinton, he started out behind and never got near."

It wasn't for lack of trying, though. The Katz campaign had 17 offices around the city and what appeared to be a well-organized team to get out the vote in areas that were supposed to be his base. It turns out the voters just didn't vote the way his camp thought they would. In fact, in what was supposed to be a completely racially divided election -- Street is black and Katz is white -- more than one in four white voters cast their vote for Street.

"The problem [was] that Sam Katz never made a gut level connection... with the people of Philadelphia," Snyder said.

Katz was gracious in defeat, congratulating his opponent and calling on him to work to reunite the city.

"We left nothing on the field," Katz spokesman Nate Raab said. "Sam went to every neighborhood... talked about the issues, talked about his vision and got a lot of support from people who wanted him to be the next mayor. The voters made their decision yesterday, and we're at a point in the city's history where we need to unite."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.