As Kenney wins, Green weighs a possible challenge

The November ballot for mayor of Philadelphia at this point may be missing a big name.

Former City Councilman Bill Green IV, a lifelong Democrat and son of a former mayor, is weighing an independent challenge to the expected ascension of Democratic nominee James F. Kenney.

"I have kept my options open to evaluate the election results and make a determination," Green, a member of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, said Tuesday.

He added that a recent Inquirer poll, which found that 43 percent of voters think the city is headed in the wrong direction, showed "an opening for somebody who is capable of being mayor" as an alternative.

"Jim Kenney's been in government for 35 years, and obviously those people who think the city is on the wrong track have to consider that," Green said.

With Democrats enjoying a 7-1 voter registration advantage, the labor-backed Kenney begins as the prohibitive favorite against Republican nominee Melissa Murray Bailey.

As an independent, strategists said, Green would face formidable odds, needing to raise millions of dollars and compete without the natural political base of an elected official.

Green had been backing State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, who lost despite nearly $7 million spent on his behalf by a trio of billionaire school-choice advocates who founded Susquehanna International Group, a Main Line stock trading firm.

The state SRC may have seemed like a potential launching pad to the mayoralty - or more - to Green when he quit Council in 2012 to accept Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's appointment as the board's chairman. If that was the plan, it turned sour.

Green led the charge in October to cancel the teachers' union contract, saying the district could save $50 million a year by requiring teachers to pay for their health benefits. He became a lightning rod for public anger, the teachers sued, and the case is headed to state Supreme Court.

Then Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, in February stripped Green of the chairmanship of the SRC.

The last independent elected Philadelphia mayor was Rudolph Blankenburg, a German-born businessman and reformer known as "the Dutch Cleanser," in 1911.

Blankenburg benefited from a split in the GOP between progressives and the old guard, said Randall Miller, a history professor at St. Joseph's University.

And the last significant independent challenge was in 1983, when former City Controller Thomas Leonard got about 8 percent of the vote against the Republican nominee and the winner, Democrat W. Wilson Goode.

"There is no path for an independent candidate to win in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, unless there's a great deal of dissatisfaction with the party's nominee," strategist David Dunphy said. "Kenney has a broad coalition of support."

Some city leaders, dismissing the underfunded Republican, Bailey, said there is a need for another voice.

"The campaign just concluded did not shed a lot of light on anything significant that needs to be done in Philadelphia," said Sam Katz, who ran for mayor as a Republican in 1999 and 2003 and had been considering an independent bid this year until last week.

Among the ignored issues, he said: what the city should do if Harrisburg does not come through with a cash infusion to fix the city school system - a shaky prospect. He also said there is a need to streamline city government and take politics out of contracts.

"These are conversations the city needs to have and, I suspect, only will have if Bill Green runs," Katz said.

Tom Knox, a multimillionaire former insurance executive who financed his own unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2007, said Green would make a "great" mayor.

"I think competition in the general election is a healthy thing. Otherwise the new mayor goes in without having to make commitments," Knox said. He said he would consider giving money to Green if asked - but also was open to backing Kenney. He wants to hear from both, particularly on reducing business taxes.

Green still had about $102,000 left in his Council political committee as of May 8, according to campaign-finance reports.

One possible source of support for Green: the SIG traders.

"They're focused on school choice, which they believe is the civil rights issue of our time, and any candidate in sync with their vision probably at least would get a hearing," said a source familiar with both Green and the traders.

215-854-2718 @tomfitzgerald

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Inquirer staff writers Chris Brennan and Kristen A. Graham contributed to this article.