Progressive City Council candidates are facing new attacks over injection sites and ‘defund the police’

The closely watched race for two Philadelphia City Council seats took a decidedly negative turn Tuesday when a political group launched an ad campaign blasting progressive candidates as “radical” and describing “a city in crisis.”

The ads, which are running on cable television and online, decry incumbent Councilmember Kendra Brooks for recently voting against legislation that effectively banned supervised drug consumption sites across most of the city. A narrator in the ad says Brooks and her running mate, both of the progressive Working Families Party, also “support defunding our police.”

An independent expenditure committee called the Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth — which legally can’t coordinate with other candidates — paid for ads. The group, which is a super PAC that can raise unlimited sums of cash, in the spring funded attack ads against former Councilmember Helen Gym, a progressive who finished third in the Democratic primary for mayor.

During the primary, the coalition raised more than $1 million, most of which came from Main Line billionaire and conservative mega-donor Jeffrey Yass. Campaign finance records filed this month show that the group has raised about $100,000 since the spring, and that Yass was not among the contributors.

Top donors include Richard Green, the former CEO of Firstrust Bank; Richard Vague, a tech venture capitalist; and Mo Rushdy, a real estate developer who is leading the effort. The first batch of commercials is running on Fox News.

» READ MORE: Your guide to the at-large City Council race

Rushdy said he’s a Democrat who does not vote for Republicans, but ”believes in solutions and not rhetoric.” He said Brooks and her running mate, Nicolas O’Rourke, would “set the city back.”

“What we’re trying to do,” he said, “is bring people on Council that are serious about getting people out of poverty and tackling neighborhood issues in a pragmatic way.”

Eric Rosso, a spokesperson for Brooks and O’Rourke, said in a statement that the ads are “weak and desperate attempts to smear Kendra and Nicolas” and said it’s “no wonder they’re airing these ads on Fox News.”

The negative ad campaign marks the latest wrinkle in the competitive race for two seats on City Council that represent the city at-large. The seats are effectively reserved for non-Democrats, and were held by Republicans for decades until Brooks in 2019 won as a third-party candidate.

Now she is up for reelection and the Working Families Party is trying to take both seats by backing Brooks and O’Rourke. But Republicans say they learned from 2019 and are confident in their candidates, civic leader Drew Murray and small-business owner Jim Hasher.

Hasher, who is backed by the politically powerful Building Trades & Construction Council, is the only candidate currently running ads, which are considered one of the best ways to reach voters. His campaign commercials are largely biographical and say that he would prioritize public safety, the opioid crisis, and tax relief.

Whoever prevails in the Nov. 7 election could potentially tilt the ideological leaning of Council, which is dominated by Democrats and is responsible for setting tax rates, negotiating the city budget, and connecting constituents with city services.

Much of the campaign between the GOP and the Working Families Party has been about ideology, with both sides attempting to cast their opponents as extreme.

The ads funded by the Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth first attack Brooks for being the only member of Council who voted last month against legislation that used zoning law to prohibit supervised drug consumption sites in most of the city. Brooks has been a proponent of the sites — where people can use drugs under the supervision of a health-care provider and be revived if they overdose — and she led a delegation of colleagues to tour one operating in New York City.

She said she voted against the bill because it offered “no hope for the countless people who are praying for their loved ones to live long enough to make it to recovery.”

» READ MORE: Philly mayoral candidates are distancing themselves from ‘defund’ and say police staffing is a key priority

The ad also said Brooks and O’Rourke are in favor of “defunding the police,” an idea that gained popularity in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Rosso said in a statement that “Philadelphians reject the notion that public safety is measured by only one department’s budget.” He said that “the safest communities have quality schools, clean streets, and youth services and voters agree.”

Amid the nationwide racial justice movement, Brooks said she would be supportive of disbanding Philadelphia’s police department. She said that racism was ingrained in criminal justice system and that she doubted reform or training could eliminate it.

“You can’t professional-develop people out of being racist,” she said at the time. About two weeks later, Brooks voted against a city budget proposal, saying that it did not sufficiently reduce the police department’s budget allocation and that “they have failed to historically make our communities safer.”

The same year, O’Rourke was quoted in Grid Magazine saying that defunding the police was “less about harming the police and more about investing in our community.”

In the years after the 2020 protests, Brooks has voted in favor of several city budget proposals that added new funding to the police department. The city has increased the police force budget by more than $100 million since then, largely to cover contractually obligated pay raises and upgrades to the forensics lab.

Brooks’ and O’Rourke’s public safety platforms are largely focused on increasing investment to improve communities hardest hit by gun violence. Both also support funding for more mobile crisis units, which are staffed by behavioral health providers and respond to some emergency calls instead of police.