Fake ballot challenges highlight city's complicated politics

To the wacky tales of Philadelphia politics, add that of LaMott Ebron.

A 22-year-old African American elated and inspired by the election of President Obama, Ebron decided to run for office - as a Republican.

Not long after offering himself as a candidate for party committeeman in the May 18 election, he received a subpoena at his Nicetown home notifying him that someone he had never heard of was trying to kick him off the ballot.

It turned out that the challenger, Michael Gilliland, did not live at the address listed on the challenge, which ended in late March. Gilliland never showed up in court and lost his challenge.

In another race for Republican committeeman, the challenger, Rita Wootten, is dead, and had been for nearly a year before the challenge was filed.

And in yet another, challenger Melvin Hamlin listed his address as St. John's Hospice, a Center City homeless shelter. On Monday, a representative of the shelter said it had no record of Hamlin.

Those challenges also fizzled out in court, along with 29 others. The lawyer leading those challenges was Michael Meehan, the head of the Republican City Committee. He withdrew them in the face of documented forged signatures and other problems.

"Politics in the city are just all out of line," Ebron said, "and I think Republicans are to blame, because they almost never challenge the Democrats."

Ebron's tale is a skirmish in a larger battle waged by the state Republican Party against Meehan's city Republicans. A spoil of this war is the GOP's share of patronage jobs, many at the Parking Authority.

This year, an unusual number of candidates filed to run as Republican committee people. These are the lowest-level party functionaries, but the 1,000-plus committee people elect the ward leaders, who then choose the chairman of the city committee.

The chairman is Vito Canuso. He works closely with Meehan, who is widely acknowledged as the party's leader and is the third member of his family to hold that title.

The state party, led by Rob Gleason, has criticized Meehan and other city party leaders as having failed to organize, and claims they leave too much power in the hands of Democrats and hurt state and national Republican candidates.

City Republicans have said that they have done their best in a city where Democrats outnumber their party by 6-1.

And so it came to be that in Common Pleas Court on March 25, Matthew Wolfe, a lawyer, ward leader, and Meehan opponent, presented evidence from 20 people who said they had never signed documents bearing their names that challenged Ebron and other candidates. In an additional 10 cases, according to the Philadelphia Daily News, which first reported the story, the alleged challenger did not live at the addresses on the documents, and some of those people also said they had never signed a challenge.

Wootten certainly never signed hers. She died last April and so could not have signed a document challenging committee candidate Boris Kheyfets in early March of this year.

Meehan withdrew the challenges after the hearings and did not return calls seeking comment.

Canuso said the irregularities occurred because some Republican ward leaders and others involved in circulating ballots for committeemen were "overzealous." Canuso said they were motivated by a belief that some of the candidates were not legitimate.

He would not name those involved in the apparent forgeries and said no action had been taken against them.

"It's not a job," Canuso said. "They're all volunteers. We don't kick people out of their jobs for trying to do the right thing. They were trying to get the people who filed improper nominating petitions off the ballot."

He would not offer specifics on his allegations of irregularities in opponents' ballots.

Al Schmidt, senior adviser to the state Republicans in Philadelphia and an unsuccessful candidate for city controller, said some challenges were made even when a candidate had no opposition, meaning the city committee would rather leave the job empty than see it go to someone it was not supporting.

"Every area of the city deserves to have representation in the new Republican Party of Philadelphia," he said.

Antonio Nicosia and David Neal both got subpoenas asking them to appear in court to explain why they challenged committee candidates. Both men said they had never signed the challenges and had never heard of Michael Meehan until they got the subpoenas.

"I was a little upset, you know," said Nicosia, of West Philadelphia. "Talk about identity theft. They could always forge your name to something, anything."

Neal, who lives near Memorial Hall, agreed.

"I hope it's found out who forged the signatures, and then I hope they are prosecuted," he said.

All that leaves Ebron and others wondering why no one seems to be outraged or investigating the matter. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said it is not investigating because no one has referred the matter to it.

And, arguably, in a town where murder is a regular occurrence, it's small potatoes. Especially because it involves Republicans and not Democrats.

"The consequences of being a Republican candidate in Philadelphia are so minimal that it's not as if real power is affected by this," said Gregory M. Harvey, an elections lawyer and senior counsel at the law firm Montgomery McCracken. "They're not taken seriously, except as the source of patronage that originates at the state level."

Republicans gained control of the Parking Authority in 2001, orchestrated by state House Republican leader John M. Perzel of Northeast Philadelphia. Some observers believe city party leaders are so content with deals such as that and the power that they bring that they don't bother challenging the Democrats for more.

"They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo," said St. Joseph's University historian Randall Miller. "They might be the last of an almost-dead breed. It's a party that self-perpetuates but with no prospect of actually winning anything."

Even so, Harvey, Miller, and others argued that ignoring the allegations in this case may carry a cost.

"One could argue that nothing could be more inconsequential than Republican committee people," Miller said, "but one could flip that around and say it's an invitation to turn a blind eye to the next one, and by ignoring it, we're encouraging corruption."

Zack Stalberg, head of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said questionable challenges also deter legitimate candidates, who sometimes have to spend thousands on legal bills fending off these threats. Sadly, he said, in some large cities, the practice is simply accepted.

"It's stupid, wrong, and unfortunately a very fundamental part," Stalberg said, "of how politics are run in Philadelphia."

The Meehan family influence over the city Republican Party stretches back 74 years, to a time when it seemed the party's grip on city government and politics, which began in the Civil War era, would never end.

Michael Meehan inherited the general counsel's position, and the de facto leadership of the city GOP, in 1994 from his father, William Austin "Billy" Meehan, who had died of a heart attack. William Meehan took over the party in 1961, a decade after Republicans had been displaced by a slate of reform-minded Democrats. He inherited the position from his father, Sheriff Austin Meehan, who began running the machine in 1936.

Michael Cibik, a lawyer and Republican ward leader who helped uncover some of the irregularities, said he cannot imagine appearing in court, as Meehan did, without being sure of who his clients were.

"There is no way on God's earth," he said. "This was not a smart thing to do."

Ebron, who works with the disabled, plans to continue to press his case. He originally hoped to run as a Democrat but decided no committee spots would be open in that party soon enough. Some family members told him he could run as a Republican, where roughly two-thirds of about 3,300 committee spots are unfilled. He went for it - switching his voter registration to Republican.

"My agenda is to really clean up the Republican Party and make it a viable second party in the city," he said. He said he doesn't like some Democrats' proposals to charge a garbage fee and tax sugared beverages.

"I just don't feel like we are being represented," he said.