First-time candidate Jeff Brown got a $1.2 million education in Philly politics before launching mayoral bid

As the only first-time candidate in a mayoral election loaded with City Hall veterans, grocery store proprietor Jeff Brown needed an education in Philly politics.

It turned out to be an expensive degree.

Philly Progress PAC, a political committee that Brown’s campaign manager says existed to edify Brown on issues of policy and politics, raised and spent more than $1.2 million in 2021 and 2022.

The unusual structure of the PAC raised eyebrows when it first appeared in campaign finance reports early last year. The committee was registered with the state, not the city, and it took in donations that were well above the contribution limits for city candidates.

That’s not a problem, assuming the committee followed the strict rules around what those large donations can and can’t pay for. But it raised questions among City Hall observers about what the political newcomer was up to.

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Was Philly Progress PAC going to morph into Brown’s campaign somehow? Or perhaps become an outside spending group that would boost his candidacy?

Brown’s people were tight-lipped about it a year ago, saying that it was not Brown’s “campaign in waiting.” But campaign manager Jimmy Cauley provided clarity this week after new campaign finance reports were released, saying the PAC, which has been dormant since October, was a vehicle for the pre-candidacy phase of Brown’s mayoral bid, which he officially launched in November.

“Mostly it was just the education of Jeff. I just wanted to make sure he was up to speed,” Cauley said. “I would call it more think tank than political apparatus.”

Pre-candidacy or “exploratory” political committees are allowed to accept contributions that are in excess of the maximum amounts candidates can take in — last year, those limits were $3,100 for individual contributors and $12,600 for political committees — so long as nothing they produce is used to affect the outcome of an election, said Shane Creamer, executive director of the Philadelphia Board of Ethics.

A pre-candidacy committee, for instance, can use contributions in excess of the limits to pay for things like polling that help a candidate decide whether to run, Creamer said. But it cannot pay for public-facing advertisements, like yard signs that will boost a future campaign.

Any data or reports made during the exploratory phase and paid for by over-the-limit expenditures, such as researching opponents or crafting a platform and messaging, must be set aside and left unused once the campaign launches, Creamer said.

“If there’s a three-ring binder — ‘Mayoral Policy Platform’ — that is being used currently by the candidate, something that is being used by the campaign currently, that would be something that would be potentially” a violation of city ethics rules, Creamer said.

In 2022, Philly Progress PAC made $100,000 in expenditures to Public Works LLC, a public policy consulting firm based in West Chester, and $15,000 to Ampersand Strategies, a Nashville- and Philadelphia-based “political communications and strategy firm,” according to its website.

Cauley said the PAC, which has no website or social media presence, did not pay for research on opponents. He also said that, being mindful of the law, he made sure it did not produce any reports or literature that could be used once the campaign launched.

“Any work product that it did … was never put in a final form that would be useful in a campaign,” Cauley said. “We never took that last step.”

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The majority of the PAC’s expenditures last year — more than $446,000 of the almost $717,000 spent — went to seven people who are now members of Brown’s campaign team.

Cauley alone made more than $224,000 last year, on top of the $210,000 he made from Philly Progress PAC in 2021.

Jeff Brown’s son Scott, who made $26,000 from the PAC two years ago, took in an additional $49,000 in 2022.

These are eye-popping sums to spend on staff during a campaign’s exploratory phase, and Brown’s mayoral bid is shaping up to be a financial juggernaut. In 2022, Philly Progress PAC doled out more in pre-candidacy expenditures than the actual campaigns of every other candidate except for former City Councilmember Allan Domb, a real estate magnate who wrote his own campaign a $5 million check.

Brown has also proven to be a prolific fund-raiser for his official campaign, which is a separate committee registered with the city that took in $847,000 from donors last year, as well as $240,000 from Brown. And he’s benefiting from TV ads being aired by For a Better Philadelphia, which is a “super PAC,” or an outside spending group that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money if it doesn’t coordinate with a campaign.

In federal elections, super PACs and related “dark money” groups do not have to reveal their donors. But under Philadelphia law, super PACs have to disclose their donors if the PACs spend money within 50 days of an election. It’s possible that For a Better Philadelphia could avoid having to reveal the big-money interests backing Brown if it spends its money before March 27.

The question of whether Brown is sufficiently educated about the issues and machinations of Philly politics has already come up in the mayor’s race.

In a recent Q&A with former Mayor Michael A. Nutter that was hosted by the Philadelphia Citizen, Brown admitted he hadn’t read the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, which is the city’s governing document, and did not know about some more obscure aspects of the budget, such as the Sinking Fund, from which city debts are paid.

And in a January interview after receiving a major labor endorsement, Brown inaccurately said Philadelphia’s pension fund was managed by the state — it is run by the city Pension Board, which includes mayoral appointees — and he misstated the extent to which it was underfunded.

For Cauley, Nutter’s grilling of Brown and other attacks the grocer has seen in recent weeks are signs that he has broken into the top tier of the race.

“In the last three weeks, it seems all the knives have come out,” Cauley said.