Over Trump and on to DeSantis, Philly’s deep pocket, private club crowd looks to 2024

Look beyond the cacophonous conflict of this week’s visit to Philadelphia by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and one pertinent point of agreement emerges between his eager audiences and angry antagonists.

DeSantis is not Donald Trump.

Both sides want the former president to stay former — for different reasons — even as they clashed about DeSantis.

Clout hears the people who paid to spend time with DeSantis at two of the city’s historic and tony private clubs — a fund-raiser at the Acorn Club followed by an award bestowed by the Union League — happily embraced his pro-business, anti-regulation speeches.

That crowd is anxious to move on from Trump, who leveraged his 2020 presidential loss to Joe Biden into disappointing 2022 midterms for Republicans by backing candidates who tanked in November.

Trump declared his third bid for president in November, a week after that election. It hasn’t been a smooth ride since then for the guy who could not accept defeat in 2020.

The protesters outside the Union League — local politicians, members of the clergy, and activists — zeroed in on the same motivation.

The Rev. William Moore, pastor of Tenth Memorial Baptist Church in North Philly, noted DeSantis’ “higher ambitions” and a growing apathy for Trump in a speech outside the club Tuesday.

“They don’t want the other guy,” Moore declared of the Union League members honoring DeSantis. “So they are shopping a new guy. This is his first shopping trip. But this is the wrong city for that shopping trip.”

Clout hears DeSantis spoke for about 15 minutes at the Acorn Club, steering clear of the culture-war bombast he tosses around in public, focusing more on economic issues. He cast himself as a pro-business state CEO, pointing out that Wawa, the iconic Delco-based convenience-store chain, is on track to have more stores in Florida than here.

It was a touch more spicy at the Union League.

Former U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus, a Republican from the suburbs of Pittsburgh still close to DeSantis from their time serving together in the U.S. House, said DeSantis drew from his Jan. 3 inauguration speech.

In that speech, DeSantis described Florida as “a promised land of sanity” compared with other states that have “embraced faddish ideology at the expense of enduring principles.” That’s in keeping with his war on “woke,” which is essentially anything he disagrees with.

DeSantis was awarded the Union League’s highest honor, a gold medal first given to President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, despite the protests of more than 100 dues-paying members who found him undeserving.

Election day will be huge in May — an open seat for mayor, plenty of vacancies on City Council, third-party contenders looking for paths to power.

But what will replace Relish, the West Oak Lane restaurant that became the most popular gathering place for election day lunches?

U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, who helped Relish launch as a business and then made it the center of the city’s political world, says he has options. But he’s not sharing them just yet.

The Famous 4th Street Deli is still Philly’s other election day favorite. That gathering became a tradition in the early 1980s when political consultant Neil Oxman and his crowd began chowing down while forecasting election outcomes.

There was no rivalry for the lunch spots, just different approaches to the same idea. People reserve the same election day tables at The Famous and pick up their own checks, while lunch at Relish was served from a free buffet. Politicians and their entourages swap gossip and predict outcomes at both venues.

Relish’s operators, the brothers Robert Bynum and Ben Bynum Jr., announced last week that last Sunday would be the restaurant’s last day after a nearly 14-year run.

The Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation, which Evans also helped launch, still owns the building that housed Relish, which over the years and through previous owners was supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars in state loans and grants.

“Everyone running for something came to Relish,” Evans said. “It was more than a restaurant. It become a local political hub.”

A poll of 607 likely Democratic voters in the May primary for mayor, conducted last week and obtained by Clout, suggests an early round of ads aired by the independent political action committee For a Better Philadelphia, backing Jeff Brown and featuring Michelle Obama, had an impact.

Brown, who was the first choice of 5% of the people surveyed in a similar poll conducted in September, jumped to 20% this month, the best showing for seven candidates sampled.

Former City Councilmember Helen Gym, who had been at 19% in September, slipped into second place at 15% this month.

Former City Councilmember Allan Domb didn’t move much, despite his own television ads, with 13% in September and 12% this month.

The other candidates in the poll — Cherelle Parker, Rebecca Rhynhart, Maria Quiñones Sánchez, and Derek Green — did not crack double-digits in the poll by FM3 Research. The poll did not ask about two other candidates, State Rep. Amen Brown or retired Judge James DeLeon.

Staff writer Joseph N. DiStefano contributed to this article.

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