At Pennsylvania Society, a mayoral candidate emerges from a smoke-filled room and Republicans rethink mail ballot rhetoric

NEW YORK — Amen Brown packed a smoke-filled room Friday evening with vestiges of wealth and power, past and present, as his plans to run for mayor in Philadelphia became clear.

The West Philadelphia state representative’s candidacy, expected to be announced Thursday, was made public by a deep-pocketed supporter, New York real estate developer Marty Burger. Brown’s event was part of Pennsylvania Society, the annual gathering in Manhattan of the state’s political class.

Three sources who have heard Burger’s pitch for Brown said he has vowed to launch a super PAC seeded with as much as $5 million.

Burger, speaking at a posh cigar club to a crowd puffing on sizable stogies, described meeting Brown at a project his firm is developing in West Philadelphia. Brown later secured $2 million in state funding for the project.

“Amen has accomplished so much for his community, but now Amen needs to expand his community,” Burger said, standing next to Brown. “I’m so proud he’s allowing me to tell you about this tonight — ladies and gentlemen, Amen Brown will be running for mayor.”

Brown, a Democrat who has angered some in his party, in part for supporting a return to mandatory minimum sentencing for some criminal convictions, was joined by some interesting and colorful supporters.

They included former State Sen. Vince Fumo, a Democrat, and former State House Speaker John Perzel, a Republican — two Philadelphia politicians who served prison time on corruption charges. Val DiGiorgio, a former chair of the state Republican Party, was also there, along with George Bochetto, a Republican who ran for U.S. Senate this year and will serve next month as an attorney for House Republicans in a Senate trial for the impeachment of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

“Amen Brown will be our next mayor,” Bochetto declared later. “And I’m 1,000% behind him.”

Brown clearly reveled in the attention and the chance to tell his story about a rise from poverty to that smoke-filled room. And his event soon became the chief topic of chatter at other Pennsylvania Society events.

“I stand before you today, not only as your Pa. state representative but as a survivor of gun violence, a formerly imprisoned person, one of seven children whose mother was heavily addicted to drugs, whose father was incarcerated when I was 2 years old, and a person that didn’t know where my next meal was coming from,” Brown said.

Leaders of the Pennsylvania Republican Party this weekend offered a swift and sudden shift to their approach to mail ballots.

Suddenly, the GOP is all in favor of them.

After two solid years of Republican negative rhetoric about the alleged dangers of mail ballots, party leaders are looking at Pennsylvania’s results in 2020 and 2022.

Democrats vastly outnumbered Republicans in using mail ballots and had two very good elections to show for it.

“We have to now recognize it’s a legal means of voting in our state,” state Republican chair Lawrence Tabas said after the party’s annual luncheon Friday near Central Park. “We cannot allow the mail-in ballot to be ignored. I’m going to make great efforts to get our voters to vote by mail.”

That doesn’t just run counter to the party’s past messaging. It flies in the face of the forming 2024 Republican presidential field. Former President Donald Trump, who has led the pack in lies about election results based on mail ballots, is already a declared candidate.

Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member from Delaware County, said the party is bigger than any one candidate, even Trump. Mail ballots are the way to go, he said. To get there, the party will look past typical political consultants and may hire a professional advertising firm to shift the message.

There have been rumblings about whether Tabas could last his full term, until 2025, after the party lost big in races for governor and U.S. Senate.

Rob Gleason, who was party chair when Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, said Republicans need to “do a lot of soul searching right now” at the state and national level.

“We need to recover quickly,” he said, “and not let another cycle go by with taking a beating.”

Gleason, a Tabas ally, said the party made a misstep this year by not endorsing candidates for governor and Senate, leading to crowded primaries won by State Sen. Doug Mastriano, an avid proponent of Trump’s election lies, and Mehmet Oz, a celebrity television doctor.

At Pennsylvania Society, the party establishment wonders what could have been, especially because Democratic success at the top of the ticket probably helped that party take control of the state House.

“We should never have had the candidates we had for Senate and for governor,” Gleason said. “And I think people learned a lesson from that. Endorsements are very important.”

Gleason predicted Tabas would serve out his full term. Tabas agreed, saying there is “absolutely no movement, no effort” to oust him.

“There’s no story there at all,” Tabas said. “Every election, things go. … People want to talk about change.”

City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson spent time Saturday morning at the same event as former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, the federal prosecutor who oversaw the indictment of Johnson and his wife. They were acquitted at trial last month. Johnson said Saturday was not awkward because he didn’t know McSwain was there and would not have recognized him if he did know.

A typically bipartisan affair, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Saturday morning seminar is usually a staid affair. But this weekend the event at the Gilded Age splendor of the Metropolitan Club was briefly invaded by about a dozen activists with Pennsylvania Action on Climate. “You take bribes! The planet dies!” they chanted at attendees.

Harrisburg insiders spent much of the weekend speculating who will be the next speaker of the House. Democrats won a one-seat majority in November, but one member of the caucus died and two others won higher office, throwing the speakership into question. Democratic leader Joanna McClinton, during a Saturday afternoon reception, alluded to attempts to peel away Republican support.

“We’re looking to have some good news and more victories to celebrate in the coming weeks,” she said, “and with your support, with your friendship — and we’ll be talking to our colleagues across the aisle — we look forward to having a big high-five virtually on Tuesday, January the third.”

Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro addressed the glitzy Saturday night dinner, vowing that the bipartisan coalition of voters who helped him win in November will see a bipartisan government next year that represents all Pennsylvanians. Shapiro also cast attendance by the governor at Pennsylvania Society as “an important tradition“ that he will continue. His ally, Gov. Tom Wolf, spoke at Pennsylvania Society after winning the 2014 election but then turned a cold shoulder to the event while in office.