It's no party for some in city GOP

Ernest Pridgen is a 53-year-old Brewerytown resident, a one-time bartender and forklift operator who gets around his neighborhood by bicycle. In the past year, he's taken some unusual steps - changing his political registration to Republican and becoming a GOP committeeman in North Philadelphia.

Republicans are an endangered species in Pridgen's 32nd Ward, outnumbered 17-to-1 by Democrats. Only two people, Pridgen and Robert Lawrence, were interested enough to run for committeeman in the May 18 primary, even after a recruiting effort by Republican State Committee.

Nobody from the city Republican organization called to congratulate the party's new, unpaid field workers, or provide any information about electing a ward leader. Pridgen and Lawrence met at a local community center and agreed that Pridgen would be the ward leader.

Two nights later, Pridgen got a ride to the United Republican Club in Kensington, where newly elected ward leaders were gathering to choose party leaders citywide.

The party chairman, Vito Canuso Jr., asked Pridgen to leave. "[He] said they didn't have me on record as leader of the ward," Pridgen said. "Then they said I was disturbing the meeting. . . . I was so upset I just walked out of the building."

Pridgen is among five or six Republicans elected by their ward organizations to become ward leaders, but the party's Philadelphia leadership has delayed or denied them their seats. Their common link: An alliance with a mostly younger group of party dissidents critical of the party leadership of Canuso and general counsel Michael P. Meehan.

The rejected ward leaders include Kevin J. Kelly, founder of an independent Republican organization called The Loyal Opposition and one of Meehan's most outspoken critics. At two meetings, GOP committeemen in Mount Airy's 22nd Ward elected Kelly as their ward leader, even though he lives in Northern Liberties. City Committee threw out both votes.

Others are Peter Wirs, of the 59th Ward in Germantown, and Don Garecht, an organizer for Republican State Committee, elected ward leader by North Philadelphia's 47th Ward but still invisible to City Committee.

Canuso says simply that a number of Republican ward leaderships "have not yet been resolved." He said he was unfamiliar with the blow-by-blow details.

"All I know is the results. I don't know what happened in the individual locations," Canuso said. "No matter what happens in those [unresolved] wards, I don't see how it's going to change anything."

Indeed, Meehan and Canuso had no apparent trouble winning re-election to their posts when the party reorganized in June. A party-rule change in February gave extra clout to wards with the heaviest Republican voter registrations, mostly in Northeast Philadelphia - the base of the Meehan family's clout since the 1930s, when Austin Meehan, Michael's grandfather, rose to power.

But Canuso and Meehan have been so clumsy in their handling of the dissidents that they've created more problems for themselves - including a potential criminal investigation.

Back in March, when committee candidates had to file petitions to get spots on primary-election ballots, the State Committee's organizers, led by Al Schmidt and Joe DeFelice, recruited candidates for more than 200 previously empty committee spots, mostly in sections of West and North Philadelphia where Republicans are scarce.

Instead of embracing the new recruits, the party leadership filed challenges against several dozen of them - demonstrating that "they'd rather have nobody than somebody," as Schmidt described it at the time.

Canuso said the party leadership was just trying to ensure that everybody followed the letter of the state election code.

In fact, the City Committee's challenges were filled with apparent forgeries. Attorney Matthew Wolfe, the Republican leader in University City's 27th Ward, tried to contact all the challengers and documented 30 situations in which individuals said they hadn't signed the legal documents that carried their names. One of the "challengers" was a Wynnefield woman who had died a year earlier.

Meehan and Canuso blamed the bogus signatures on overzealous ward leaders whom they declined to identify.

District Attorney Seth Williams promised to investigate. Meehan said he spent more than an hour answering questions from the D.A.'s office, some weeks ago.

"We are looking into those allegations," said Williams' deputy for special investigations, Curtis Douglas. "That's kind of where I have to leave it."

So far, despite Wolfe's road map, no charges have been filed against anyone.

And the only party official disciplined in the aftermath has been Wolfe himself: When the party reorganized in June, he was dumped from his post as City Committee's assistant secretary.

Canuso and Meehan also backed new party rules in May that conflict with state law, denying committee spots to more than 100 write-in candidates who got fewer than 10 votes.

After Canuso was re-elected as party chairman, Wolfe and Kelly challenged the result in a petition to Republican State Committee, based on the party's failure to let all elected committeemen participate.

But state party leaders have done nothing yet with the petition. Locals expect the state party to try to minimize the Philadelphia friction through November, fearing that it could hurt their candidate for governor, Tom Corbett, who already has angered Northeast ward leaders with his criminal prosecution of state Rep. John Perzel. Corbett, state attorney general, is said to be petrified about being drawn into Philadelphia warfare.

Kelly said he approached Corbett at the Republican State Committee meeting in June and complained about the fraudulent petition challenges that city Republican leaders had filed in March.

"I said, 'Mr. Corbett, I have some grave concerns about these guys. They're criminals.' He looked me right in the eye and said, 'I'm looking forward, not backward.' "