Knox makes himself a player

Tom Knox sat for more than six hours in the front row of City Hall's Courtroom 676 on Tuesday, playing idly with a nail file as he watched fellow mayoral candidate Bob Brady squirm.

Then Knox used a recess in the court proceedings to stick a shiv in Brady's back.

"It's a no-show job," Knox told reporters, tapping papers that his lawyer had unearthed, showing the carpenters' union gives 140 hours' worth of pension contributions to Brady, a U.S. representative, each month for being the union's unpaid adviser.

Knox's effort to knock Brady from the May 15 Democratic primary ballot - for omitting his ties to the carpenters and his city pension from a financial disclosure form - is just the latest demonstration of how Knox came from virtually nowhere to seize control of the Philadelphia mayor's race.

A little-known former insurance executive, Knox has spent just over $4 million of his own cash on television ads since December. Polls show he has rocketed from zero to serious contention in that time.

Earlier, Knox's financial advantage over the four other major candidates led Democratic apparatchiks to try to repeal city campaign-finance limits - until public outcry persuaded them to stop.

And now, Knox's legal gambit means the campaign for mayor is frozen in amber until the courts rule.

"No doubt about it, Knox is driving," said Saul Shorr, a Philadelphia-based Democratic media consultant who is neutral in this race. "The real question is whether he's got a learner's permit or a permanent license. There's a long way to go."

The latest media poll, for NBC10 two weeks ago, found Knox in a statistical tie with the race's initial front-runner, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah. That survey was based on interviews with 442 likely voters and had an error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

"I think we surprised a lot of people," said Joe Trippi, Knox's media consultant, whose national experience stretches back to Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign. "I remember everyone was laughing at us a few months ago."

In addition to his cash, Knox, who is white, might benefit if the three major African American candidates - Fattah, State Rep. Dwight Evans, and former City Councilman Michael A. Nutter - wind up splitting the black vote. And Democratic Party chairman Brady, the other white candidate, can be caricatured as an old-politics insider - perfect fodder for Knox's pitch that he is the "outsider" who can't be bought and will clean out the stable.

After all, the underlying strategic terrain of the mayor's race is this: Vast majorities of voters tell pollsters the city is headed in the wrong direction.

Conventional wisdom says Knox risked a backlash in seeking to have the courts knock Brady off the ballot, that he could look like a whiner. (Knox initially kept his distance; some of his supporters filed the suit while he paid the lawyers' bills.) But the Knox camp calculated that spotlighting Brady's alleged omissions and his unusual union pension setup would help build their anti-insider case - whether they win in court or not.

"It's about deals like this, that's why I think we're moving" in polls, Trippi said. "We're betting people are fed up enough with Philadelphia politics to turn the page and move forward."

A former carpenter and a member of the union since 1964, Brady arranged with union officials when he went to Congress in 1999 to have the union keep contributing to his pension in exchange for part-time work, according to financial disclosures Brady filed with the House. The filings show the union has put in at least $58,969 since then - and that his pension now is valued somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000.

In testimony Tuesday, Brady was vague about his duties at the union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Regional Council: "From time to time, they call me up. I go to the apprenticeship school, I speak to the apprentices. I go to banquets."

(The carpenters' pension fund is an investor in Philadelphia Media Holdings, owner of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.)

While Brady's tie to the carpenters is no secret, the Knox backers claim he was obliged to list the carpenters' union as a source of income on two sections of the state disclosure form required of candidates for municipal office.

Brady's lawyers say he did not need to disclose the carpenters' pension because he draws no income from it yet. They say his other pension, from City Hall jobs he held two decades ago, is the type of "mandated" government payment that the disclosure forms instruct candidates to omit.

Not that Knox's multifaceted insurance and banking career isn't facing similar scrutiny from his opponents. Indeed, now that his profile has grown, Knox can all but expect attacks on any vulnerabilities in his business dealings. That happens often in campaigns with rich self-funded candidates - as New Jersey's Gov. Corzine discovered in his bumpy but successful U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.

Already, rival campaigns are gingerly suggesting that Knox may be the kind of insider he rails against. Knox also has been involved in complicated business deals that could open him to attack.

For instance, a bank Knox headed in 1999 made short-term payday loans, charging interest rates that eventually ran up to 400 percent. Federal regulators told Crusader Bank to stop this in 2000 as a condition of its sale. Knox has defended the loans as a boon to struggling people - but he said he made the right move by getting out of that business.

Knox has given at least $314,000 to various other candidates over the past 25 years, records show. More than a third of this went to Gov. Rendell, whom Knox served as a deputy when Rendell was mayor.

While there is nothing wrong with political donations, they could allow opponents to question whether Knox's business interests ever received favorable consideration from state or city government.

"Knox's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness: Nobody knows who he is," said Randall Miller, a historian and analyst of Philadelphia politics at St. Joseph's University. "Others might be prying to open his past, and that might be different than the autobiography he's been writing in his ads."

So far, that has not happened. Until Knox took on Brady in court, the five major Democratic mayoral campaigns had mostly stayed positive in advertising and public appearances while building field organizations.

But there is a danger in picking on a guy who has pledged to spend up to $15 million or more on his own campaign. Knox can return fire.

"He has the chance to shout back and keep a positive track going at the same time," said Neil Oxman, a veteran political consultant who is working for Nutter. "That's why everybody's afraid to go negative."

Meanwhile, Brady was back on the trail this weekend after several days in Washington on congressional business, his advisers hoping to move beyond the courtroom drama. Brady was planning to hold street rallies in the Swampoodle section of North Philadelphia and in South Philadelphia.

"We believe voters are smart and recognize authenticity," said Brady spokeswoman Kate Philips. "Just because you spend millions on slick ads doesn't mean you can sell a product. Just ask the makers of New Coke."

For continuing coverage of the mayor's race, including profiles of the candidates, go to http://go.philly.com/mayorEndText