Hatching plans to stop Knox

With a little more than three weeks left in Philadelphia's Democratic primary for mayor, all of the strategic issues have narrowed to a single question: Can anyone stop Tom Knox?

Yes, the same Tom Knox whom the pros dismissed as a hopeless amateur at the beginning of this campaign.

In the headquarters of the four other major contenders, all political veterans, advisers are marshalling voter-turnout organizations, buying as much TV time as they can afford, and trolling public records and news databases for information to use against Knox, the millionaire neophyte who continues to dominate - and lead - the race.

After weeks of predicting gravity would pull down Knox, panic has begun to creep into the voices of some strategists in rival camps. Prominent Democrats are even talking of organizing a "Stop Knox" committee independent of any candidate, thus not subject to campaign-funding limits.

And in a televised debate taped yesterday, two rivals - State Rep. Dwight Evans and U.S. Rep. Bob Brady - pointedly attacked Knox for the first time. Evans accused Knox of inflating his past achievements in government while Brady suggested he had a record of exploiting the common man. Knox and a campaign spokesman dismissed both charges.

"A lot of people are threatened by Tom's candidacy for mayor, and we fully expect the knives to come out," said Josh Morrow, Knox's campaign manager. "We don't know who they're going to come from or where, but we're prepared."

By Tuesday, Knox will have spent $5.1 million of his own cash on TV advertising time since December, according to records on file with broadcasters - about 13 times as much as rival U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who didn't begin advertising until April 9.

Plenty more Knox ads are coming. If he spends at his current rate on TV, he will cough up at least $1.3 million more to broadcasters, and campaigns typically adjust upward if they must respond to attacks.

There are no restrictions on Knox's spending, because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that using unlimited amounts of one's own money to run for office is a free-speech right. The others are bound by Philadelphia's contribution limits of $5,000 from individuals and $20,000 from political committees.

"Television is king," said City Councilman Jim Kenney, who backs Brady. "The other candidates can't compete in terms of debunking Knox or defining themselves. It's unfair. I've never seen an election like this."

Knox has surged into the lead in several polls, with an NBC10 survey last week putting him at 32 percent in the five-candidate field. That's up from previous polls, which had him in the high 20s. In the same NBC10 poll, Fattah had 18 percent, Brady had 17 percent, former Councilman Michael Nutter had 14 percent, and State Rep. Dwight Evans had 10 percent.

The campaigns agree that their private polling shows the same trend: Knox ahead, the others bunched together behind.

Six months ago, few took Knox seriously. But polls suggest that voters are responding to his personal projects-to-riches story and his stance as an outsider positioned to hose the corruption and cronyism out of City Hall.

Opponents roll their eyes, noting that Knox has been a big political donor who at times has benefited from his connections. But his megaphone is much bigger.

Over the last two weeks, for instance, Knox was able to spend $898,000 on broadcast and cable. During the same period, Brady spread $100,000 across several cable channels, which is cheaper but reaches fewer people. "He's running for mayor of Philadelphia - on cable?!" said one worried ward leader close to Brady. ". . . furniture outlets are on cable!"

To be sure, media buyers say Brady has plunked down about $350,000 for a week's worth of spots beginning Tuesday, including on broadcast channels. His campaign plans to start with a 30-second spot that features Brady driving through the streets of the city at night, speaking to the camera about the public's frustration with violent crime.

"We can't gamble our future anymore - people want experienced leadership," Brady says at one point, a gentle jab at Knox.

The ad also says people are "thirsty for change," and it is aimed squarely at potential Knox voters.

Ken Snyder, Brady's media consultant, said he could not be involved with any independent Stop Knox committee because such committees are prohibited by law from coordinating with campaigns, but he doesn't believe it will happen anyway.

"I highly doubt any cavalry is coming in," Snyder said. He believes Knox has vulnerabilities, such as ownership of a bank whose subsidiary made high-interest payday loans.

"His support is wide but not very deep," Snyder said. "If voters become educated to some of the things he's been part of, his numbers would crumble."

Brady, the boss of the city Democratic Party, has the support of most of the ward leaders and is counting on a door-to-door effort in the final days to make the difference.

He got some potentially good news from the city commissioners last week: 7,110 Republicans so far have changed their voter registration to Democratic to participate in the primary. While it's impossible to tell what triggered all the changes, unions supporting Brady, notably the Fraternal Order of Police, made a concerted effort to switch Northeast Republicans.

Fattah has struggled to raise cash - he was the last candidate to go on TV - but he has built a legendary field organization. Run by Greg Naylor and Tom Lindenfeld, the Fattah machine helped elect Mayor Street and deliver Pennsylvania to Democratic presidential candidates in the last two elections.

Knox does not have the same long-established Election Day operation, obviously, but his spending spree is putting to the test the Philadelphia political rule that a good ground game usually beats an aerial bombardment.

"It will be interesting to see what are the limits of TV, and what are the limits of the get-out-the-vote approach," said Chris Mottola, a Philadelphia-based Republican media consultant. "It's almost a case study."

Sam Katz, who was the unsuccessful GOP nominee for mayor in 1999 and 2003, said that street organization can translate to a few percentage points on Election Day, not nearly enough if Knox maintains or widens his current lead.

"It's easy to run a turnout operation when [President] Bush is your enemy, but it's not the same in a Democratic primary," Katz said. "People don't go to the polls in a mayor's race waiting to be guided by their committee person."

If Knox "gets any share of the black vote, I don't see how anyone catches him," Katz said. The Survey USA poll showed Knox with support of 19 percent of African American respondents. The Fattah and Evans campaigns suggest it will be difficult for Knox to hold on to that share, but there is precedent for what he is trying to do. In 1991, white candidate Ed Rendell had by far the most television ads in the Democratic primary - and captured about one-fifth of the black vote against a pair of formidable African American candidates.

However, even Knox's biggest fans would admit that he is not the campaigner that Gov. Rendell is. Also, Rendell had been the elected district attorney and had much deeper political ties across the city than Knox.

"There's not a lot of foundation under those TV ads," said Mark Aronchick, a prominent Center City lawyer who is policy chairman of Fattah's campaign. "In Philadelphia, it's all about field organizations, identifying and getting out your vote. If you drill down to the field, Knox has nothing."

Nutter is positioning himself as the reformer with results, as compared with Knox's promises of a clean sweep. (As a councilman, Nutter sponsored ethics legislation in Council to fight "pay to play.") He has been moving up in polls and has had heavy TV buys for the last four weeks. His strategists believe he can swoop in if Knox falters.

Evans' campaign has its own network of street troops, in the form of ward organizations in his home territory of Northwest Philadelphia, and an important chunk of Street's GOTV organization: Laborers Local 332, Transit Workers Local 234, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, and the largest African American ministers' council.

Evans is counting on voters' "taking a hard look at the candidate's records" and realizing all he has accomplished on fighting crime and improving schools from his legislative position, said spokesman Tim Spreitzer. "Change is in Dwight's DNA."

Fattah's strategists believe African American voters will coalesce around him when it becomes apparent Knox might win. Fattah is the highest-polling black candidate in the race, and he has been tailoring his pitch around "lifting up our communities," as his TV ad says.

Philadelphia voters have been known to vote strategically, especially on racial lines, in past elections. In 1999, for instance, Street eked out a primary win largely because black voters thought he had the best chance to stop Marty Weinberg, a white candidate.

"Can you get the electorate so afraid of Tom Knox that they'll coalesce around one person?" asked consultant Larry Ceisler, who is not working in the campaign. "I don't see it." Negative attacks on Knox - whether they come from another candidate or an independent committee - might be too late at this point. "The closer you get to the election, the more skeptical people become of campaign ads," Ceisler said.

Morrow, of the Knox campaign, said that old Philadelphia political hands are underestimating the strength of Knox's street organization, built on 2,500 volunteers who "buy into the message and want to take the city back. . . . We're doing it beneath the ward structure."

In addition, the Knox campaign has a battalion of lawyers and is braced for Election Day problems. "We're not going to give these guys an inch," Morrow said. "They'll have to beat us fair and square. They're not going to steal this election from us."

Tomorrow Bob Brady

Tuesday Dwight Evans

Wednesday Chaka Fattah

Thursday Tom Knox

Friday Michael Nutter

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