State Rep. Amen Brown survived (another) ballot challenge while another candidate was booted after pleading the 5th

Ballot challenges — the hardball tactics that candidates use to prevent their opponents from qualifying for an election — are a longtime fascination for Clout. And we may have witnessed two new records this week: the most ballot challenges survived by one politician, and the most times a candidate has pleaded the Fifth while trying to stay on the ballot.

Let’s start with State Rep. Amen Brown (D., Philadelphia), who was almost knocked off the ballot while running for reelection in 2022 and again while unsuccessfully running for mayor last year. Court of Common Pleas President Judge Idee Fox scolded Brown last year for some paperwork deficiencies. She allowed him to stay on the ballot but noted it was his “second bite of the apple.”

“There won’t be a third one,” she said.

Fox was wrong.

Brown is facing two primary challengers this year: Cass Green and Sajda “Purple” Blackwell.

This week, he survived a new challenge that pointed out he was late in filing a campaign finance report. Brown ended up filing the report after the ballot challenge emerged. But it was still outstanding in early February when he signed an affidavit to get on the ballot, in which he swore he understood election law and wouldn’t break it.

The petitioners argued that he really should know by now. After all, he has been fined by the state for late reports at least five times. Brown blamed the late filing on his treasurer.

“He may not be the brightest bulb in the world, but the people get to pick him, not us,” Brown’s own lawyer, Charles Gibbs, said about him at a hearing Monday.

Thanks, counsel.

Meanwhile, Jon Hankins, a Democratic candidate for a state House seat in North Philly, was kicked off the ballot following a hearing in which he invoked the Fifth Amendment — his constitutional right to not answer questions that may lead him to incriminate himself — more than a half-dozen times.

To say that’s an unusual tactic would be an understatement. Ballot challenges are not criminal cases.

“No one in the courtroom had ever experienced a case in which a candidate for office was recommended to start invoking his Fifth Amendment rights,” election lawyer Adam Bonin said.

Hankins was one of three Democrats hoping to unseat Bonin’s client, State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Phila.), who is simultaneously running for auditor general and reelection to the House.

Hankins was removed because he couldn’t prove he lived in the district. He also waded into legally dicey territory while discussing other matters, such as how and when he was paid by a separate campaign last year.

His attorney, Adam Rodgers, periodically waved five fingers in the air to instruct Hankins to plead the Fifth, attendees said. At one point, Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler told him he should probably stop confessing to crimes while under oath.

Ceisler wrote in her ruling that Hankins’ testimony was “contradictory, confusing, devoid of any physical evidence of residency, and wholly lacking in credibility.”

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.