Johnny Doc’s nephew is seeking to run for Rep. Kevin Boyle’s state House seat

A member of Philadelphia’s politically powerful Dougherty family is making a run for a state House seat, to replace incumbent Democratic State Rep. Kevin Boyle.

Sean Dougherty, son of State Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty and nephew of former labor leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, is collecting petitions to run in the Democratic primary for the 172nd House District, a party official said.

Boyle, 44, is “seeking help,” House Democratic Leader Matt Bradford said, after a Feb. 8 outburst at a Montgomery County bar circulated on social media and police were called to the scene for threats that he would “hit female employees.” He’s represented his Northeast Philadelphia district since 2011, when he first flipped the Northeast Philadelphia seat from Republican control by beating Republican State Rep. John M. Perzel, a former House speaker who was later sentenced to prison on corruption charges.

Dougherty, 30, began collecting signatures on Saturday, according to an event posting by the Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee. He could not be reached for comment, but resigned from his job with the Defender Association of Philadelphia on Monday, a spokesperson for the public defender’s office said.

Boyle’s under-the-influence tirade came at a challenging time for House Democrats, who hold a one-seat majority in the state’s lower chamber. Any candidate hoping to appear on the April 23 primary ballot in Pennsylvania must file the necessary petitions with voter signatures of support by 5 p.m. Tuesday, leaving candidates seeking to jump in at the last minute to replace Boyle only a few days to collect the necessary 300 signatures.

It was not clear Monday whether Boyle, who has been open about his mental health struggles in recent years, would file his own petitions to seek another term. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

Two Republicans — Aizaz Gill and Patrick Gushue — are vying for the Republican nomination, in what GOP members consider one of Philadelphia’s few attainable House seats. About 59% of the district’s registered voters there are Democrats, while 28% are registered Republicans and 13% are independent.

Dougherty graduated from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in 2019 and completed a law clerkship under now-State Supreme Court Justice Dan McCaffery, according to his LinkedIn. He began working in the Defender Association in November 2020.

His name was mentioned several times during his uncle’s second federal trial last year, at which Johnny Doc was convicted of more than 60 charges, including conspiracy, embezzlement, and more.

According to prosecutors, Sean Dougherty was one of several of Johnny Doc’s nieces and nephews who benefited from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98. Prosecutors said the young Dougherty received union pay for weeks he spent down the Shore while he was a student at Chestnut Hill College. Between August 2013 and August 2015, Sean Dougherty was paid $9,600 in wages for weeks investigators said he wasn’t actually working.

In a series of July 2016 text messages shown to jurors, the nephew asked his uncle if he could take a few days off for a beach vacation. Dougherty told him to just take the rest of the summer off — a point John Dougherty’s attorney, Greg Pagano, later said was “clearly sarcastic.”

But Sean Dougherty said he couldn’t do that.

“Too many non-unions trying to come to Philly,” he texted back. “Somebody’s got to stop them.”

Boyle has a history of seeking mental health treatment. In 2021, he was arrested and charged with harassment after showing up at his ex-wife’s house, violating a protection-from-abuse order she’d filed against him. The charges were dropped and expunged from his record, according to court records.

Boyle told his constituents in a 2022 letter that he had been experiencing psychosis at the time, which he said he believed was caused by an adverse reaction to the Adderall he was taking for ADHD. (There is some research that shows a relationship between psychosis and Adderall usage, but it is relatively rare.)

“Family and friends could tell that I was starting to act differently, that my mental health was in decline. But I couldn’t see it myself. I lost touch with reality and suffered from paranoid delusions,” the letter said.

Boyle said in the letter his life was saved after his arrest and subsequent treatment at a mental health facility. “I am very, very lucky. I now understand, in a personal way, that a mental health problem can develop in any person.”

In the incident last week, police were called to Gaul & Co. Malt House in Rockledge after Boyle allegedly threatened to hit the female staff and said he’d “end this bar.”

Prior to his outburst, Boyle had been circulating petitions to run for reelection.

Staff writers Jeremy Roebuck and Oona Goodin-Smith contributed to this article.