Mayoral candidate has trouble at the poles

THERE ARE NOW two candidates vying to be Philadelphia's first Latino mayor.

Former Judge Nelson Diaz announced his uphill campaign for mayor in January. Virtual unknown Juan Rodriguez declared his even more quixotic effort yesterday.

Diaz announced at the iconic Tierra Colombiana. Rodriguez announced at a strip club.

"No, it's not a strip club," insisted campaign treasurer Nereida Zayas. "It's called 'Junior's Night Club.' It's like a bar, it's a club."

A Daily News photographer, however, couldn't help but notice a scantily clad woman depicted on the sign, which advertises "Exotic Dancers," at the club on Germantown Avenue near Diamond Street.

Zayas also had trouble explaining the conspicuous metal dance pole near Rodriguez as he was making his announcement.

"There was a pole there," she said. "I'm not sure what the pole's used for, but it's there. "

Zayas described Rodriguez as a "former undercover detective" who wants to improve the city and the school district.

It's not his first run. He ran as a write-in candidate for mayor after he lost a ballot challenge for the 7th District Council race in 2011.

But Rodriguez likely will have a hard time working the polls this go round - Zayas said he had not yet opened a bank account for his campaign or accepted any donations.

"I'm at the bank now, I'm going to open his account and we're accepting donations as of today," she said.

Harrisburg politicians have a knack for getting into legal trouble - Bonusgate; Computergate; Gates we may never hear about. But Vince Rongione seems to have run afoul of the law before he even made it to the state capital.

Rongione, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully last year for the seat vacated by longtime Republican state Rep. Nicholas Micozzie, was accepted on Wednesday into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program on two election-code violations.

Rongione, 37, had claimed in late 2013 that he was living in an Upper Darby house that was actually vacant, according to the affidavit supporting charges of false signatures or statements and unlawful voting.

When a detective noted the absence of furniture, trash or other signs of human habitation, Rongione said he may have slept on the floor, always ordered takeout food and took his trash with him when he left the house.

Yeahhhh.

Under the ARD program, the charges against Rongione will be dismissed after he finishes six months of probation and 16 hours of community service.

Maria Quinones-Sanchez always has been something of an insurgent, bucking party and union bosses who sought to install the son of a white ward leader in the city's only Latino-dominated Council district in 2007 and 2011.

With just $50,000 in her campaign fund at the end of last year, her enemies smelled blood.

So it was no surprise this week when all but one ward leader in Sanchez's 7th District voted to endorse Manny Morales, a virtual unknown with ties to union interests and the councilwoman's mortal political enemy, state Rep. Angel Cruz (a Facebook photo showed Morales posing on a tropical beach with a monkey and a "Cruz for State Rep" T-shirt).

Is Sanchez sweating? Morales, she declared, is a "bottom of the barrel" candidate.

Or at least, second choice. Former state Rep. Ben Ramos says Sanchez's enemies initially sought to run Victor Negron, a successful marketing exec from Norris Square who sits on the board of Concilio, the city's oldest Latino social services nonprofit. But at the last minute, Negron turned them down, sending Cruz and allied ward leader Carlos Matos scrambling to find a replacement.

And for all the bluster over ward leader endorsement, financial support seems to be another issue altogether.

"In Spanish there's a saying that goes, 'Coming out of your mouth it sounds like gravy, but you can blow it out of your a--,' " said Jonathan Cruz, a retired cop who's sparred politically with both Sanchez and Angel Cruz (no relation). "But what good does all this endorsement do when there's no money behind it?"

He doubted Cruz or the unions (stretched thin with mayor's and state Supreme Court races) would actually put up cash. He sees Morales as a protest candidate, put up by Latino leaders angry that Sanchez is supporting African-American mayoral candidate Anthony Williams instead of Nelson Diaz.

Sheriff Jewell Williams, who was elected to the archaic and scandal-plagued office (currently under investigation by the FBI) in 2011, will face a surprise Republican challenger this fall in the form of local activist and loudmouth Chris Sawyer.

The office is responsible for prison transport, auctioning off tax-delinquent properties and foreclosure sales.

Sawyer garnered some notoriety when his foul-mouthed blog revealed that Mayor Nutter had a tax lien placed on his house for a long-overdue gas bill. The story resulted in two apologies from the mayor's office. He's used the same blog to criticize the sheriff.

"I knew what kind of sheriff we were getting when Jewell Williams first debuted in front of City Council asking for a shiny new Chevy Tahoe," said Sawyer, referring to Williams' request to replace his brand-new Ford Escape with a more expensive SUV.

Williams' campaign did not respond to requests for comment, so we'll let his campaign spending speak for him: In late November, he billed his campaign fund for a $935 trip to Palm Beach, Fla.

Mayoral candidate Doug Oliver has finally resolved his paperwork problems.

After missing the deadline to file his campaign-finance report, Oliver delivered it two days late and paid a $40 fine, according to Timothy Dowling, supervisor of elections for the City Commissioners.

Oliver also will avoid facing a misdemeanor charge and a maximum $1,000 fine for failing to authorize and register his political committee, DO2015.

Turned out - by dickens! - Oliver's camp had formally established DO2015 back in November. The confusion stemmed from the fact that Oliver filed his paperwork with the Department of State and not with the County Board of Elections, as required.

So last week, an Oliver campaign staffer retrieved the paperwork from Harrisburg and schlepped it to Dowling's office. Satisfied with the time-stamped documents, Dowling gave Oliver's campaign an OK.