Stephanie Singer's day off: 'Yay!'...and 'Neigh!'

IT'S AUTUMN'S FIRST Sunday, a glorious one, but Stephanie Singer can't just ride a horse into the sunset. She's got an election to run in 43 days.

Instead, the Philadelphia City Commission chairwoman hops onto a horse named Carousel at McCarthy Stables to work on her trotting and cantering. She does this a couple of times a week.

"It really is totally away from everything," she says, as the Anglo-Arab horse stomps in the dirt to shake a fly from its leg. "I feel like I'm not in the city."

The stable near Chamounix Drive in Fairmount Park runs the Work to Ride program, which gives inner-city kids a chance to ride horses.

For Singer, who helps pay for Carousel's boarding in exchange for riding privileges, it provides a respite from what has been a prolonged baptism by fire on the City Commission.

"I live downtown in one of the greatest cities in the world and I'm five miles from a stable," says Singer, who lives near Rittenhouse Square. "It's pretty cool."

You can't blame her for wanting to get "away from everything" once in a while.

In her first year in office, the former Haverford College math professor is taking heat from the other two commissioners and is dealing with the voter-ID law that Harrisburg Republicans moved through the Legislature in time for the November election.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai has said notoriously that the law, which requires voters to present state-approved photo identification, will allow Mitt Romney to "win the state of Pennsylvania." The official GOP line is that it will preserve the integrity of the electoral process.

Singer, a Democrat, says the funds would be better spent cleaning up voter-registration lists or educating poll workers.

"The law itself is a piece of election fraud," she says, "perpetrated with taxpayers' money!"

A gray kitten jumps onto a picnic table and rubs its chin against a polo mallet. A reputedly ill-tempered goat named Yoda hangs out nearby.

"My ambition is to learn a flying change," Singer says, referring to when a horse changes its leading leg in the air.

That, and to run a free and fair election in 43 days.

- William Bender