News Analysis: Republicans continue losing ground in city

Philadelphia Republicans don't stand a chance.

A growing shift toward the Democratic Party was confirmed in last month's mayoral elections, when Republican challenger Sam Katz was soundly defeated.

By all accounts, the race was supposed to be a repeat of the nailbiter in 1999, which Democratic Mayor John Street won by less than 1 percent of the vote.

However, Katz was blown out of the water in 2003, losing by a margin of 58 percent to 42 percent.

According to Chris Sheridan, spokesman for the Philadelphia political watchdog group Committee of Seventy, the Republican Party in Philadelphia has been losing ground for more than a decade.

"This city has become, every year, a percentage point or two more Democratic than it was the year before," Sheridan said.

This year only 17.69 percent of the city's voters registered as Republicans, marking the lowest number since 1983, when the party had only 15.81 percent of the registered voters.

Sheridan also noted that, as a significant portion of Republican voters are getting older, they are not voting as regularly. This significant population of non-voting senior citizens likely contributed to the Republicans recent electoral shortcomings.

But this year specifically, dislike of President George W. Bush contributed to Philadelphia's heavily Democratic leanings, according to many analysts.

Penn Political Science professor Jack Nagel called the national Republican Party "an albatross around Philadelphia republicans... and I think that's going to be true for some time to come."

But one of the most striking parts of this trend has been that it extends to the historically Republican-controlled suburbs.

In the wards in and around Chestnut Hill -- a wealthy, predominantly white suburb -- Katz lost as much as 63 percent of the votes he received in 1999. And in other suburbs like Mount Airy and Germantown, Katz lost between 50 and 100 percent of his previous support.

In the near future, the increasing Democratic influence in Philadelphia could have national implications in the 2004 presidential race.

Nagel stressed, however, that though the City of Philadelphia alone could not swing Pennsylvania for the Democratic candidate, the trend should make the Democratic National Committee very happy.

That is not to say the Republicans won't continue to garner a hold on this notorious swing state.

The Republicans "have made a lot of efforts to try to pick [the state] up, but I don't think it'll work out that way," Nagel said.

According to Nagel, Bush has visited Pennsylvania nearly 20 times, far more often than any other state except Texas.

Bush's steel tariff legislation, which made it more expensive to import foreign steel to the United States, was, according to Nagel, a "brazenly political move" to help garner Republican votes in the steel-producing parts of the state.

But due to recent pressure from the European Union, Bush repealed the tariff on Tuesday, which could achieve the opposite effect.

"In some parts of the state, that's their livelihood," Nagel added. "It doesn't take a huge number of votes to swing a state like Pennsylvania."

With that in mind, the national Republican Party cannot afford to turn its back on Philadelphia.

The trend toward the Democratic Party is not likely to end anytime soon.

Since the mayoral primaries in May 2002, about 45,000 new voters registered in the city. Of those, 31,000 voted for Street, Sheridan said.

"A lot of younger people are Democrats," he said. Newly registered voters are "the ones most likely to vote... and enthusiasm for being in the party that never wins wanes."

The change in the demographics of the city that has occurred over the last decade has also swung the numbers in the Democrats' favor.

"The city has become more multicultural than in the past," Sheridan said. Voting patterns "are partially racial and ethnic. I think that's a big factor."

Regardless of the causes, the Democratic Party in Philadelphia is firmly entrenched and seems likely to remain so for a number of years.

"The only way I can see a Republican victory [in Philadelphia] is if the Democrats nominate a mayoral candidate, particularly a black candidate, that is racially divisive," Nagel said. "Or if there is a big corruption scandal involving the Democratic Party."

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