Dan Gomez: The platform outshines the record

Eight days from today, Philadelphia will be going to the polls to elect our next mayor. The Republican challenger, Sam Katz, is looking to unseat John Street. If Katz is successful, he will be the first Republican mayor that we have had since the Democrats seized City Hall in 1951.

What is amazing about this race, although perhaps not surprising, is how close it is. Mayor Street has proven time and time again that he is an absolute failure at running this city. His blatant cronyism and corruption has drawn the suspicion of the FBI, which is now investigating the crookedness of his administration.

And yet, Street has shamelessly tried to dodge the issues that the FBI probe brings up, and has instead passed the buck onto some sort of a Bush administration conspiracy to discredit the mayor (next on President Bush's list are the school board races, and then watch out, comptroller!).

Of course, Mayor Street has done quite enough to discredit himself on his own. Particularly revealing is the fact that before much information was known about the probe, the national news media played a guessing game as to which corrupt element of the Street administration the FBI was investigating. The probe could have been on any number of shady practices or curious transfers of money (an attempted firebombing of a Katz office, a $1.2 million no-bid contract given to his brother and the writing-off of tickets for campaign supporters, just to name a few).

Furthermore, Mayor Street has engaged in the worst sort of racial politics. He has refused to condemn anti-Semitic and racist remarks made by friends and city employees. His surrogates have said the FBI probe has racial motives. Perhaps most egregiously, in a speech during his tenure as mayor, he said that "the brothers and sisters run this town." His defense? That he was at an NAACP meeting.

I could write a book on how awful Mayor Street is (don't worry, I am sure the FBI will book him). But when you compare Mayor Street's record with Sam Katz's platform, there is really no contest.

The next mayor will be in office for all of our graduations. This means he will have a direct effect on whether or not we can find a job in this city after we graduate. Mayor Street has presided over an economy that has lost thousands of jobs (and is losing thousands of people).

At the same time, taxes are at a stiflingly high level. Philadelphia small businesses pay 125 percent of what they do, on average, in the suburbs. The city wage tax forces companies to pay out more in wages to remain competitive. Of course, most companies decide not to shell out more to pay Philadelphia taxes -- they just leave the city.

Sam Katz has a plan to cut taxes without cutting programs from the city budget. He plans on taking out loans to cover the immediate costs of cutting taxes. The tax cut will make Philadelphia a much more competitive workplace and bring more jobs to the area. This sort of formula has worked in this city before. Under Ed Rendell, our mayor before Street, taxes were lowered and employment began to stabilize in the city.

John Street is running for mayor under the moniker "the neighborhood mayor." And this is absolutely true, if by "neighborhood mayor" he means that by the time he is finished with Philadelphia, it will be comprised of one neighborhood. Not only are people fleeing the city under his leadership, but he is actually demolishing parts of the city. This does make some sense -- abandoned buildings and cars need to be taken care of. But this program, called the "Neighborhood Transformation Initiative," shows that John Street has become resigned to the fact that he can't improve Philadelphia. He can only try to clean up the mess that his administration has helped to create.

This is in contrast to Sam Katz's plan. Katz plans on moving the focus away from demolition and onto restoration and creation of new homes. That way, we can preserve the historical architecture that Philadelphia is famous for, along with creating new, affordable housing. In contrast to Street, Sam Katz wants to try to make Philadelphia a better place.

Street knows he can't defend himself on the issues. As a result, his campaign has resorted to pandering to anti-Bush sentiment. Street claims that voting for Katz will help President Bush sweep Pennsylvania. Of course, this sort of electoral calculus is completely ridiculous, as Mayor Street so discredits the Democratic Party in Philadelphia that keeping him in office would probably garner more votes for President Bush. But, to anyone who is on the fence because of this issue, when you are voting for president, do you ever ask yourself what your mayor would want you to do?

John Street has failed as mayor of Philadelphia. I urge everyone who is registered in this city to remember to vote on Nov. 4 for Sam Katz. And for everyone who is interested in volunteering, feel free to e-mail me. It's time for us all to pay attention to the rest of Philadelphia, and that means helping Sam Katz take City Hall.

Dan Gomez is a junior History major from Wayne, Pa. and chairman of the Penn College Republicans.

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