City, state forces vie to run GOP

ABATTLE OVER leadership of the city's Republican Party is rapidly intensifying, the stakes growing to include control of the party's main patronage source, the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

For now, the Parking Authority is strongly in the grip of the GOP's current leader, general counsel Michael P. Meehan.

A loyal Meehan ally, Republican ward leader Vincent Fenerty Jr., became the authority's executive director four years ago despite evidence that Fenerty illegally pressured rank-and-file workers to make political contributions to the city Republican organization.

But the terms of two Parking Authority board members are expiring this summer. The fight over their potential reappointment or replacement is shaping up as a proxy war between Meehan, the city Republicans' acknowledged leader for the past 15 years, and state GOP chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr., a Johnstown insurance executive who has been openly critical of Meehan's performance.

Besides the early maneuvering over the Parking Authority positions, other developments mark the escalating friction within GOP ranks:

* James T. Dintino, a former Republican ward leader with strong connections in South Philadelphia and a reputation for hard-nosed politics, is giving up his post on the Board of Revision of Taxes to become executive director of Republican City Committee. There's talk that he could replace Vito F. Canuso Jr. as party chairman, with the blessings of Meehan and Canuso, when the party elects new leaders in June.

* Republican ward leaders are scheduled to meet tomorrow night to vote on new party by-laws that would solidify Meehan's control. Instead of each ward leader having an equal say in electing party leaders, the new rules would weight the ward leaders' votes depending on how many Republicans are registered in their wards. The proposal would strengthen the power of ward leaders in Northeast Philadelphia, the base of the Meehan family's political clout for three generations.

Al Schmidt, hired by Republican State Committee as its "senior adviser" in Philadelphia, is urging the GOP's 67 ward leaders to oppose the rules change. But some may have trouble even finding the meeting. It's scheduled to take place in the United Republican Club in Kensington, at Frankford & Allegheny avenues, but Schmidt noted that the official invitations carried the wrong address, for a pub on Frankford Avenue about 40 blocks away.

* Ahead of the meeting, an unspecified number of ward leaders have been notified by Meehan or Canuso that they're being removed from their positions. Meehan describes it as a routine effort to replace ward leaders who resigned or failed to perform. But two threatened ward leaders dispute that and suggest their ousters are tied to the current turmoil.

For political intrigue, nothing compares to the potential fight for control of the Parking Authority, whose payroll has doubled in size, swelled by Republican committeemen, their families and friends, since the agency was delivered to the GOP in a 2001 coup engineered by state House Republican leader John Perzel of Northeast Philadelphia.

Both Meehan and Dintino have personal stakes in the outcome.

The Parking Authority has been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Meehan's law firms. His old firm, Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen, received $1.3 million from the Parking Authority from 2003 until the firm closed last year. So far, about $145,000 in Parking Authority legal work has followed Meehan to his new firm, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, according to authority records.

Dintino has been collecting about $38,000 a year as a "media consultant" to the Parking Authority, in addition to his $70,000 salary at the Board of Revision of Taxes. He did not return calls from the Daily News.

Perzel's coup gave control of the authority to six long-term appointees of the governor, based on nominations from House and Senate leaders. At the time, the governor's office, the House and Senate were all controlled by Republicans.

The terms of two original appointees - former mayoral candidate Al Taubenberger and bankruptcy attorney Michael A. Cibik - are due to expire next summer.

Meehan wants to dump Cibik, a Republican ward leader in Center City active in a group of GOP dissidents calling itself The Loyal Opposition.

But next summer's appointments will be controlled by the Republican majority in the state Senate, where Gleason likely has more clout than Meehan.

One of Gleason's alternatives could be a Parking Authority appointment for Schmidt, the Republican candidate for city controller last year, who's already had a political run-in with Fenerty.

Last October, Schmidt alleged that Fenerty had asked him to ease his criticism of incumbent Democrat Alan Butkovitz, while Butkovitz was auditing the Parking Authority.

Schmidt is now leading the Republican State Committee's effort to rebuild the city organization, chiefly by recruiting candidates for committeeman in hundreds of voting divisions where the positions are vacant.

Candidates for committeeman need signatures from 10 registered Republicans in their divisions to get onto primary election ballots on May 18.

The elected committee members in each ward elect a ward leader, and the ward leaders convene to select a party chairman and other citywide GOP officers.

Party rules allow the chairman to fill ward leader positions when vacancies occur.

But in recent weeks, as friction has escalated, Republican City Committee declared at least a couple of vacancies over the live bodies of existing ward leaders.

Mark Supple, elected four years ago to head the 46th Ward in West Philadelphia, received a letter from Canuso last month telling him that his services as ward leader were no longer needed. There was no explanation.

Meehan told the Daily News that Supple had asked to be replaced. "He told us two years ago he had moved out of the city, and didn't want to participate," Meehan said.

"That is just crazy," Supple replied, noting that Canuso had contacted him at his West Philadelphia address. "I plan on leaving this city, this house, in fact, when they carry me out feet first. . . . Perhaps he was mistaking me for someone else."

The Republican City Committee Web site now lists the leader of the 46th Ward as Michael P. Meehan.

"I'm a placeholder, for the time being," Meehan said. "We're looking for a volunteer."

Jerry Brown, who volunteered last year to lead the 17th Ward Republicans, said his name was dropped from the party's Web site in December, the day after the City Committee's Christmas Party.

Inadvertently, Brown said, he had sat down to eat at a table where Matthew Wolfe, the University City ward leader who has been one of Meehan's most persistent critics, was already sitting.