Butkovitz hires media strategist

PHILADELPHIA The campaign committee of Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz - a potential mayoral candidate next year - has hired a nationally renowned media strategist whose most impressive recent victory was a write-in campaign that elected Mike Duggan mayor of Detroit.

Butkovitz is prohibited by the City Charter from saying that he is running for mayor without first resigning from his current job. In an interview late Tuesday, he said his campaign committee, Friends of Alan Butkovitz, had hired Joe Slade White & Co. for "whatever I'm doing next." He said he still had not made a decision about the 2015 mayoral race.

Butkovitz, a former state representative from Northeast Philadelphia, won his third term as controller in November. It's unlikely he would need high-powered strategists if he was only eyeing a reelection campaign three years from now.

The media company's most famous client is Vice President Biden, whose sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has been at Joe Slade White for 15 years. She has managed "every campaign" in her brother's political career, according to the company website. Butkovitz said he had an initial meeting with Owens to examine the company's "reel" of political ads.

Butkovitz called company founder Joe Slade White "a genius" who brilliantly employed short Internet clips in the Detroit mayoral race.

"I'm really glad he's willing to work with us," Butkovitz said. "He distills the core idea about people, their records, their plans. He gets there very, very quickly. It's very impactful."

Butkovitz is among a handful of Democratic officeholders considering a run for mayor, among them City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, and Councilman James F. Kenney.

For Democrats eyeing the party's nomination next spring, the campaign season could start as early as late summer or early fall.