Two candidates running against 3rd District Councilmember Jamie Gauthier hit with ballot challenges

Unseating an incumbent City Council member in Philadelphia is a difficult task.

It just got harder for two long-shot candidates angling to defeat City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier in her West Philly district in November’s general election.

Jabari Jones and Andre Kersey were hit with legal challenges Tuesday seeking to remove them from the ballot in Council’s 3rd District.

Jones, who filed to run as a Democrat against Gauthier in the May primary but dropped out after her campaign challenged his nomination petitions in court, now faces a similar challenge from eight voters in the 3rd District.

Three of those voters are Democratic City Committee people in the district and two are progressive activists, a show of support for Gauthier, a reliably progressive vote on Council. Two of the Democratic City Committee members who filed the challenge Tuesday also participated in the successful primary challenge filed against Jones in March.

Candidates need signatures from 750 voters registered in the district to qualify for the ballot.

The challenge said Jones, executive director of the West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, submitted 2,570 signatures last week but that only 683 were valid.

The same eight voters challenged Kersey, a Libertarian Party candidate, asserting that he is not registered to vote and circulated his own nomination petitions. Circulators must be registered to vote. The challenge also said that Kersey’s petition had 1,045 signatures but that only 318 were valid.

Jones, now the lone candidate from the “West Is Best” political party, on Tuesday filed a legal challenge to remove Kersey from the ballot in the 3rd District. That challenge said Kersey submitted 1,048 signatures but that 619 of them were invalid.

The challenges will be the subject of a hearing Friday in Common Pleas Court.

“That will be an interesting day in court,” Jones said Tuesday afternoon after learning about the challenge from The Inquirer.

Kersey, a minister who declared his candidacy in May, did not respond to a request for comment.

Gauthier, a Democrat seeking a second four-year term, ran unopposed in the primary.

She was a political newcomer when she upset longtime City Councilmember Jannie Blackwell in the 2019 Democratic primary.

The Republican Party did not field a candidate in the 3rd District this year.

Although Jones did not run in May’s primary, he remained politically active, serving as chair of a political action committee that ran last-minute negative ads against former City Councilmember Helen Gym, a progressive Democrat running for mayor.

The PAC was funded primarily by Jeff Yass, a Main Line conservative billionaire and Pennsylvania’s richest man. Gym finished in third place in the Democratic primary for mayor.

The PAC is now fundraising to oppose progressives running on the Working Families Party ticket for City Council at-large seats in November’s election.