Ferrick: Three historic moments from Philadelphia's Democratic mayoral primary of 2015

There was much talk about how Jim Kenney won the Democratic primary for mayor last Tuesday by assembling a "broad coalition" of support.

Kenney's coalition was broad in the sense that it included most of the labor-liberal establishment in the city, but it can't be said that it was deep.

Only about 230,000 Democrats voted in the primary -- equal to about 28 percent of the city's 806,000 registered Democrats.

When all the ballots are counted, Kenney will end up with a total of about 130,000 votes -- good enough to get 55 percent of all votes cast, but that total is only about 16 percent of all Democrats.

To put it another way, Kenney was not the choice of 84 percent of the city's Democrats, either because they supported one of the other candidates or they simply did not bother to vote.

So this is historic moment No. 1: The total vote cast in this contested primary was the lowest in modern political history. It was about 60,000 votes lower than the total votes cast in the last two contested primaries -- in 2007 (won by Michael Nutter) and 1999 (won by John Street). It was 65,000 votes lower than the turnout in the 1991 contested primary with Ed Rendell versus Lucien Blackwell and George Burrell.

And I'm not even going to mention the Goode-vs.-Rendell primary of 1987, where 404,000 votes were cast. Or the historical Goode-vs.-Rizzo primary of 1983, when 626,000 (!) votes were cast.

Why has voter participation declined so much? It's hard for those of us who write about politics to speculate. We spend all of our time covering the donut, not the hole.

But, surely, there is some "D" word to describe the phenomenon. Disenchantment? Disaffection? Disinterest? Disenfranchisement? -- the feeling that a person's vote doesn't matter or won't change anything.

News about the election was in all the newspapers. There was a ton of media advertising. Direct mail flooded the mailboxes. And who among us didn't get robocalls urging us to vote for such-and-such a candidate?

You'd have to work hard to avoid all the cues to vote on May 19. But, 576,000 of the city's Democrats managed to do it. Whatever the causes, it's a sad number to contemplate.

Which brings up historic moment No. 2.

Whenever a paradigm shifts, it usually whacks someone. This year, it was Anthony Hardy Williams. And, boy, did it hit him hard.

As the preeminent black candidate in the race, Williams was justified in working under the assumption that he would get at least 70 percent of the African-American vote. That's what history told us was the bare minimum a black candidate would get in a race with a white opponent. (And, often, it's been higher -- as high as 90-plus percent in three mayoral primary elections in the past.)

In the end, Williams ended up getting 41 percent of the black vote. Kenney got 46 percent. The other four candidates split the remaining 13 percent.

That is a pathetic share for a bona fide African-American candidate and it represents a seismic shift in voter behavior.

People speculate that it was due mostly to the fact that Williams was a lousy candidate -- that if another, more formidable (or more adept) black politician ran, we would have seen the old pattern reassert itself.

I don't agree. The lesson black politicians should take away from this election is that they cannot take their base for granted. This is not 1987, when Wilson Goode got 97 percent of the black vote in the general election against Frank Rizzo.

In 2015, it appears that class and economic interests trump race. Black voters were hearing the right message from Kenney, while Williams' was muddled.

The psychological subtext here is that Williams seemed to act as if he was entitled to the black vote and people resent a sense of entitlement.

In primaries, only highly active voters bother to vote. In Philadelphia, that means mostly older and middle-class voters. For instance, while turnout citywide was 28 percent, turnout in the 10th and 50th Wards in the city's Northwest was 39 percent.  In these mostly middle-class and predominantly black wards, Kenney got 59 percent of the vote.

It helped a lot that Kenney, the white guy in the race, was backed by the black political leadership in this area of the city. But those leaders couldn't force people to vote against their interests.

We'll finish with historic moment No. 3. This race will go down as the one that saw the emergence of super PACs, independently-run political action committees that operate free and clear of the city laws limiting contributions.

Super PACs are the future of politics, both nationally and locally.

In this primary, it will probably end up that the super PACs spent $12 million, mostly on advertising for their favored candidates.

Much has been made of the wealthy suburban businessmen who spent $6-million-plus support Williams because of his pro-charter, pro-choice stance. But they are likely to retire from the scene. They are one-issue givers.

The real future lies in the labor unions, law firms, business interests, developers and others who can create or give to super PACs and escape the contribution limits in the city law and the restriction against big givers getting non-bid contracts with the city.

The Age of super PACs has begun. The age of limiting the influence of big givers is over.