Johnny Doc is, of course, at the very center of Saturday’s Local 98 testy leadership fight

Local 98 will make a crucial choice Saturday about union leadership.

And Johnny Doc is at the center of contention about that. Where else would he be?

John J. Dougherty, the man known affectionately and derisively as “Johnny Doc,” spent three decades building the Philadelphia electricians union into a political powerhouse, courted by candidates for president, senator, governor, mayor, and more.

He’s already been convicted on federal bribery charges and still faces two more criminal trials. A term in prison seems probable.

But for now, Dougherty is right at home: in the middle of a political maelstrom.

Dougherty is backing Todd Neilson to lead Local 98 and campaigned for him during a three-candidate June 3 election for business manager that prompted Saturday’s runoff election.

Neilson took 46% of the vote while Mark Lynch Jr., backed by Dougherty to lead the union a day after his bribery convictions in November 2021, took 48%. Tim Browne, the third candidate, received 6%.

Lynch now calls Dougherty “disgraced” and, in a statement Thursday to Clout, accused him of “doing everything possible, no matter how false or underhanded, to help” Neilson win Saturday.

Lynch also complained that Dougherty was “browbeating Local 98 members” to support Neilson for eight hours during the June 3 election.

Dougherty and Lynch had a falling out after Local 98 did not side with the former union leader in a fight with an insurance carrier about continuing to pay his legal bills.

Dougherty, who once called Lynch “the right man at the right time” to lead the union, told Clout in February his successor had acted “with vindictiveness’” in the insurance dispute.

Lynch now says Dougherty backs Neilson “because I wouldn’t cave to his demands for money and fought his attempts to maintain control.”

In a video sent to union members last week, Lynch said he was sure they were “shocked” to see “some familiar faces” at that election.

That was followed by a rapid-fire montage of eight photos of Dougherty from media reports about his trial and FBI raids on his house.

“I’ve got a question,” Lynch said in the video. “Am I running against John or am I running against Todd?”

Lynch also questioned whether Neilson had be open to members about hiring aides, predicting that would “put us back 10 years to the same old, same old.”

Neilson, the brother of State Rep. Ed Neilson, a former Local 98 political director, sent a letter to union members two days later, accusing Lynch of being willing “to say just about anything” to win the election.

“Let’s set the record straight!!! John Dougherty will have absolutely NO role in the future of our union,” Neilson wrote. “There is no secret job for him or any of his previous appointees.”

Dougherty, seeming to build on Neilson’s effort to put a little space between them, engaged in some of his typical idiosyncratic stream-of-consciousness on Facebook, including a post that declared in all caps that Neilson “never had any involvement” in any of his criminal cases.

In the balance is a regional union with more than 5,000 members who, through payroll deductions, fund a political action committee that had $13.6 million in the bank as of June 5.

Browne could play kingmaker, because he won more than 100 votes in the first election and could urge his supporters to back a candidate Saturday. He has more in common with Neilson; Lynch fired both from union posts after taking control.

Neilson, Dougherty, and Browne did not respond this week to Clout’s hails about the election.

Clout counted 18 references to the “rule of law” from Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy during the 80-minute discussion he had with supporters Tuesday at The Union League.

They covered immigration, prison sentences for drug dealers, and Ramaswamy’s conviction that America suffers from an “identity crisis.”

Exempted from the rule of law: Donald Trump, the former president Ramaswamy is challenging for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Ramaswamy, a Yale Law School graduate, vowed outside of Trump’s arraignment in Miami to pardon the former president and challenged other Republican contenders to do the same or explain why not.

This tactic has a strong foundation in GOP messaging. Not so much in the rule of law.

Trump faces 37 counts, accused of taking secret and classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida private club and residence, after his presidency and then resisting the federal government’s efforts to get them back.

Ramaswamy’s pardon pledge is based on Trump’s claim that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to keep the records. And Ramaswamy points to what he called the “tainted history” of the Espionage Act that Trump was charged with.

That’s for a judge and jury to mull. But plenty of experts, including some who have practiced more law than Ramaswamy, have already poked huge holes in Trump’s nascent defense.

Ramaswamy, who would certainly benefit if Trump’s legal issues kill his comeback campaign, is trying very hard here to have it both ways.

“I am not defending Trump,” he told Clout while defending his call to pardon Trump. “I would have made different decisions than Trump. That’s why I’m running for president against him. But a bad judgment is not the same as breaking the law.”

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