Republicans in Philly again face a mayor problem

At the United Republican Club in Kensington last week, Vito Canuso, city chairman of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, exhorted the faithful:

"If anyone has any suggestions for mayor, let us know."

Just days from the March 8 deadline for nominating petitions, the city GOP has no endorsed candidate for mayor.

Canuso is chairman, but Michael Meehan is the party boss, a job he inherited from his father, William "Billy" Austin Meehan, and grandfather Austin "Aus" Meehan.

Depending on whom you ask, the three generations of Meehans deserve credit for either keeping the party's little skiff upright in a Democratic sea, or letting it founder in exchange for government contracts and patronage jobs.

One thing is clear: The GOP has not captured the mayor's office since 1947.

The party's last major citywide victory was in 1989, when Ron Castille was reelected district attorney.

Losing is one problem. Meehan and Canuso are also grappling with a GOP faction trying to topple them. Questionable signatures - including one from a dead woman - on election documents last spring have led the District Attorney's Office to investigate.

Plus, the party is nearly broke. On its most recent campaign finance report, the Republican City Committee listed a cash balance of $313.79.

Canuso said the party has since raised more money but declined to offer specifics.

The party, Canuso said, will soon endorse someone for mayor - "it could happen in a matter of days."

The Republicans courted Democrat Brett Mandel, but he turned them down. Canuso also said the party is considering "everyone," including John Featherman, a real estate agent who has been running for several months.

Featherman, who is seen as aligned with the renegade group, said party leaders did not talk to him about his run, and he doesn't care.

"We need new leadership," he said. "We're not getting anywhere with the current team."

He has tired of seeing his party remain silent as Mayor Nutter and City Council raised the sales tax and the property tax. He could have also pointed to the latest poll, in which 53 percent of the voters who responded said they were dissatisfied with Nutter, a Democrat.

Sam Katz and Al Taubenberger, the party's last two candidates for mayor, see the problem differently.

In his first campaign, Katz came within several thousand votes of beating John F. Street - the closest the GOP has come to winning in a half-century.

Although he has criticized Meehan and Canuso, Katz said they worked hard to elect him.

Blaming leadership for party problems, Katz said, "is not only unfair, it's myopic."

Katz says a Republican win as Philadelphia mayor is nearly impossible, "a very complex piece of mathematics."

When he ran in 1999, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 4-1. That ratio is now more than 6-1.

To win, a Republican must lure many Democratic voters. So Republican candidates know they probably will lose. And it's a lot of work.

"It's a year of your life," said Taubenberger, a Council candidate this year.

Al Schmidt, a GOP candidate for city commissioner now disenchanted with Meehan, said the local party had not done basic political organizing. If Republicans, including Richard Riordan in Los Angeles and Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg (elected as a Republican, he's now an independent) in New York can become mayors in heavily Democratic cities, it can happen in Philadelphia, Schmidt said.

Randall Miller, a St. Joseph's University history professor, agreed.

"The party has simply engaged in the process of atrophy," he said. "It speaks to the fundamental problem of the Republicans in Philadelphia, which is that except for a few pockets, they have not bothered to do the necessary party-building."

Tully Speaker, a lifelong Republican, said he pays almost no attention to the local party. "I would love to see the Republican Party rejuvenated in Philadelphia," but the candidates "seem to be very parochial in their views and mostly negative in their proposals."

Stay tuned, said Billy's son and Aus' grandson. He wouldn't answer most questions about his party but said it would have a mayoral candidate yet.

Said Meehan, "I'm working on it as we speak."