5 key questions about tomorrow's mayoral primary

FIVE QUESTIONS and answers on the day before the primary election:

Q: Did the so-called SuperPACs political-action committees have any impact?

A: They sure did. American Cities, the independent PAC backing mayoral candidate Anthony Hardy Williams, spent $5 million on TV advertising. Forward Philadelphia (the teachers union and AFSCME) and Building a Better Pennsylvania (trade unions led by John Dougherty) spent a total of $3.2 million on broadcast and cable.

When you add up the money spent by the candidates, PACs and SuperPACs, it comes to $9.6 million spent on TV commercials alone. This isn't chump change.

Combined, the pro-Williams PACs spent $5.7 million on TV. The pro-Kenney PACs spent $3.2 million on TV.

Q: If the pro-Williams PACs spent $2.5 million more than the pro-Kenney forces, why was Williams so far behind in the latest poll?

A: The millionaires at Susquehanna International Group, who provided all the money for the American Cities SuperPAC, have a reputation of being financial geniuses. But political geniuses? Not so much. They support Williams because he is pro-charter and pro-school choice. They plowed $5 million into his losing campaign for governor and $6 million into this effort.

The problem was that people were not buying the product they were selling. Williams was not a strong candidate. In political forums, he performed well, but he never made a convincing case why he should be mayor, nor did he exhibit the passion for the job the others did. His initial plan was to capture a comfortable majority of the black vote and prevail over a divided field that included two white candidates. When that plan sagged late in the campaign, he had no plausible Plan B.

Q: If there were no SuperPAC spending, who would have won the primary?

A: A good case could be made that Lynne Abraham could have won. The initial polling showed her with 30 percent of the Democratic vote, just a half-dozen points shy of what was needed to win in a multicandidate primary. But, the arrival of the SuperPAC money raised the ID of her two rivals while she remained stagnant and then began to sink. She did end up spending nearly $600,000 in TV, but it came late and was ineffective. (She ran two ads saying, in effect, that she was for children getting a good education at a time when the other candidates had already gummed the issue of education to death.)

The rules of the game limited contributions to her campaign to $2,900 for individuals and $11,500 for PACs. She was the one major candidate without an Independent Expenditure PAC, and it hurt her. Such are the new rules of the game, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United case of 2010, which opened the door to unlimited spending on "independent PACs."

Parenthetically, I think Abraham hurt her own cause by not starting her campaign earlier, particularly when it came to raising money. She could have emerged in January as the front-runner with a sizable campaign fund to back her up and money to put on TV early to solidify that lead.

Q: If Jim Kenney wins the primary, does this make John Dougherty the most powerful man in Philadelphia?

A: It could be argued that Dougherty, head of the electricians union, is already the most powerful man, at least in political Philadelphia. Politics are not merely a pastime for Doc. He plays feverishly and to win. He has gotten Doc people elected to City Council and the state Legislature. If Kenney wins tomorrow - as expected - it will burnish Doc's reputation. The big question about Kenney is: Would he be able to say no to the powerful union interests who were crucial to his election? I don't have a good answer to that question yet.

Q: People said it was a dull campaign, but did it have any surprises?

A: Lots of them. I made guesses about voter and candidate behavior that were dead wrong.

For instance, I felt that Williams' baseline vote in the black community was 60 percent - lower than most previous African-American candidates but still enough to win. Now, it looks as if he'll get 50-something percent of the black vote.

I expected Kenney to go off at some point in the campaign and get angry at a voter or another candidate in public. He didn't. He was disciplined and took to campaigning better than I expected.

I thought no candidate would raise more than $1 million for his or her own campaign funds - not including the SuperPACs - but Williams, Kenney and Abraham all went above the $1 million mark.

I was surprised that Williams didn't do better. He was poised and smart at the numerous candidate forums, but couldn't communicate passion or leadership in his ads. When it comes to political leaders, voters want to believe they are supporting someone exceptional. Williams didn't come across as exceptional.

I thought Doug Oliver made the most with what he had, which was less than $50,000.

Yet, because of the forums and other coverage, he got a lot of exposure and is being mentioned as a guy with potential. Next time, though, he should click on his cellphone and start raising money. Also, as the presumed candidate of the young, he didn't make an effective use of technology to reach out to them.

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