Clout: Andy Reid for Council? Impersonator weighs a run

S

TEVE ODABASHIAN

is a Philadelphia attorney and stock trader who dabbles in comedy and plays the piano professionally.

You know him - on sight - as Eagles coach Andy Reid.

Odabashian, 41, wonders if you should know him as councilman.

Odabashian, best recognized for impersonating Reid at Eagles games - a Motorola headset, fake mustache and glasses really do the trick - is thinking about running for a City Council at-large seat but hasn't decided whether to do so as a Democrat, a Republican or an independent.

Odabashian, who held up a "Dallas Sucks" sign for a Philadelphia Weekly front-page profile story in 2007, says his resemblance to Reid is one motivating factor in his potential political career. TV cameras always seem to find him in the stands at games. "A lot of that is fueling my decision," Odabashian said. "It's a lot of free publicity. The higher they fly, the better I do."

In the Eagles' first game since making his political aspirations public, the Birds beat the Houston Texans last night, 34-24.

PhillyClout says Odabashian should consider a run for mayor, but only if the Eagles win Super Bowl XLV in February in Dallas.

And if you think Odabashian is just another pretty football face, consider his method for getting into Villanova law school after being wait-listed. He showed up at every student-orientation event and made himself known - and that it was his birthday - to the people he wanted to be his professors and fellow students. The dean took notice and admitted him. Odabashian, who lives in Northern Liberties, says he has met Reid a few times and the real deal takes the homage with humor.

Nutter vs. Green: The poll

Mayor Nutter's polling firm, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, was testing opinions this week on his administration compared with a potential 2011 Democratic primary election rival, City Councilman Bill Green.

Mike Shapiro, a local attorney who worked on the 2008 Obama presidential campaign in Pittsburgh, said he received one of the calls Tuesday evening.

Shapiro said the poll was mostly focused on Nutter and Green but also asked for opinions about potential campaigns for mayor by two 2007 candidates, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady and millionaire Tom Knox, along with three-time candidate Sam Katz, state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams and City Controller Alan Butkovitz.

Shapiro told us the poll asked questions about potential political attacks on Nutter: Is he seen as weak and ineffectual, has he cozied up to the good-old-boys rather than the reformers, and is he failing to help the financial health of the city? The poll also asked about City Council and the job Green is doing there.

Another attorney, Joe Doherty, also received a call from Nutter's pollster. Doherty, who recently organized an effort to draft Katz to run for mayor, said he was asked if he would be more or less likely to support Green if he was backed by electricians-union leader John Dougherty. Green, a persistent Nutter critic who had been saying for months that he would not run for mayor, told us three weeks ago that he was reconsidering that position after Katz ruled out a fourth campaign. That would explain Green's prominent placement in the new Nutter poll.

"I voted for Mayor Nutter and I would not again," Shapiro said. "I think that he just wasn't what he put himself out to be. He put himself out as a reformer, and he is not that effective at all."

No 'Cheap Victory' for new D.A.

Just how competitive was the race to replace District Attorney Lynne Abraham when she retired last year? New D.A. Seth Williams is still trying to pay off his campaign debt, even though he won the November election with 75 percent of the vote.

That was the easy part.

First Williams had to prevail in a five-man primary, in which he took 42 percent of the vote to Dan McCaffery's 30 percent for second place. The other three guys took a combined 28 percent of the vote. Williams said he started this year with about $200,000 in debt - campaign-finance reports show that to be mostly legal fees and communications-consulting bills - but has paid off about $160,000 of it.

Williams is hosting an annual fundraising breakfast Thursday, and the invitation makes clear he still has several bills to pay.

"Our hard fought victory was not a cheap one and we still have campaign debt to retire," Williams writes in the invitation.

Williams this week told us the city's complicated campaign-finance law, coupled with the downturn in the economy, cut into his ability to raise cash. Add to that the recent state races for governor and the General Assembly, in which there were no limits and fewer regulations to consider and which soak up a lot of political cash.

"You never stop, really," Williams said of fundraising. "I spend so many parts of the week, mornings or afternoons, over at my campaign offices.

You've got to raise money. It's a necessary evil. You have to raise so much."

Quotable:

"A lot of assertions have been made about the potential 75,000- job loss. I know enough about economics to know that a lot of this is the WAG theory, which is a wild-assed guess. And we don't know."

- City Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. in a public hearing this week on a proposal to rework city business-tax rates.

Staff writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.

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brennac@phillynews.com.