Ahead of campaign, city Dems talk football and voting over brunch

ON THE FINAL Sunday before Election Day, Democratic mayoral candidate Jim Kenney visited a Baptist church and briefed canvassers in the Northeast - but he blew off a planned appearance at union boss John Dougherty's bar in South Philly.

Yesterday marked the last "pepper-and-eggs" election brunch at Doc's Union Pub on Mifflin Street near 2nd, and Supreme Court candidate Kevin Dougherty - the owner's brother - as well as Councilman Bobby Henon and Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell all passed through before the eggs got cold.

The event at the tavern marked the end of both the 2015 campaign season and the end of an era. "Johnny Doc" said the bar is in the process of a sale to new owners, ending this election tradition, where he prefers to grab crisp bacon and egg whites.

And although Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 7-to-1, Kenney was still aggressively campaigning. He only missed Dougherty's shindig when church services went into overtime.

Meanwhile, his chief rival - Republican candidate Melissa Murray Bailey - couldn't be reached by reporters yesterday and was AWOL on social media.

"There's nothing better to do than this. . . . The alternative is to sit around and watch football," Kenney said by phone yesterday, after speaking with the door-knockers in the Northeast.

Kenney, who grew up in South Philly, reminisced on the brunch tradition as well.

"They've got the crispiest, thinnest scrapple like my grandmother used to make," he said. "But I only eat it twice a year. If I had scrapple all the time, I'd need a pacemaker."

Kenney had enough football the day prior: He and a few friends attended Temple University's 24-20 loss Saturday to Notre Dame at Lincoln Financial Field.

Johnny Doc was there, too, in a different part of the stadium, with several students from Temple's College Democrats. He got some good seats for the students because he "knows some folks at 'GameDay,' " the ESPN college football show, he said.

"Those special teams are excellent," Dougherty said, heaping on praise for quarterback P.J. Walker. "He throws a hard ball," he said.

The last-minute focus on scrapple and pigskin - instead of, say, absentee ballots - is a hint that Kenney may not be overly worried about tomorrow's result. The longtime former at-large councilman won a landslide victory in May's Democratic primary, aided by an endorsement by his onetime rival Dougherty.

Henon, accompanied by his brother Kirk, spent part of Halloween campaigning in Germantown with Gov. Wolf, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and Kevin Dougherty, with a break to take his son Zachary trick-or-treating that evening. He planned to visit several diners in the Northeast to greet voters after departing from Doc's pub.

In addition to the mayor's race, all 17 City Council seats are on tomorrow's ballot as well as the three slots on the city's board of elections, the sheriff, the register of wills, and a number of state and municipal judgeships.

Statewide, tomorrow's balloting will be dominated by an unprecedented number of openings on the seven-seat Pennsylvania Supreme Court - the result of resignations by two disgraced justices and the retirement of a third.

Democrats are hoping to capture all three seats to lock in a majority for at least the next decade that could play a crucial role in the legislative redistricting that will follow the 2020 census. The winners will serve 10-year terms.

But turnout is expected to be low, likely less than 20 percent of registered voters, and the outcome will hinge on factors such as which party turns out more voters, regional fluctuations in voter interest and whether voters will bother to cast all three of their votes for the high court, said Terry Madonna, a political-affairs professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. "There are so many things that make a difference in these elections," Madonna said.

- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

On Twitter: @JBrandt_TU