Philly’s Democrats are asking the Harris campaign for $1.2M to fund street money and other expenses. But they’re not counting on it.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ Pennsylvania campaign is negotiating with the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee over funding for the local party’s campaign expenses, including sample-ballot printing, get-out-the-vote-events, and Election Day “street money” to pay thousands of committee members, according to Bob Brady, the longtime chair of the Philly party.

The talks began earlier this year, but are now being finalized amid scrutiny of the relationship between the vice president’s Pennsylvania team and Philadelphia Democrats brought on by reports of local officials raising concerns about the Harris team’s strategy for winning votes in diverse neighborhoods of the city.

» READ MORE: Philly officials criticize Kamala Harris’ campaign for overlooking their role in winning Pennsylvania: ‘They’ll blame us if we lose’

Following those reports, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, whose allies questioned whether the Harris team was effectively deploying the popular first-year mayor as a surrogate, went on a charm offensive, convening a get-out-the-vote news conference, appearing at a neighborhood canvass in Brewerytown, and enthusiastically greeting Harris on the Philadelphia International Airport tarmac.

Brady, meanwhile, has at times said he barely works with Harris’ campaign, and at other times said they are in lockstep.

“We don’t care what they’re doing. We’re doing what we’re doing,” Brady, a former congressman, said in an interview Friday.

A day later, he appeared at Parker’s rally and said, “We’re working hand in hand.”

Like other local parties, the city committee always seeks funding from the party’s presidential nominees, and this year Brady said he is asking for $1.2 million to cover expenses like the so-called street money the party pays out to its committeepeople on Election Day. (Despite the ominous name, street money is not cash that gets paid to individual voters. Instead, it’s more like money for some last-minute paid canvassing.)

For presidential campaigns, which have their own get-out-the-vote operations in Philly and work with other political groups in the city besides the party, dealing with local parties can be a balancing act. Many see funding the city committee, which isn’t known for cutting-edge campaign tactics, as an unwise use of limited campaign cash. But it may also be a bad idea to tick off party leaders in the biggest city in the most important swing state.

The Harris campaign declined to comment.

Here’s what you need to know about how the city committee operates and the status of its relationship to Harris:

The foot soldiers of the local Democratic Party are committeepeople, the thousands of Philadelphians who work on a mostly volunteer basis to get out the vote and advance the party’s interests.

There are 66 political wards in Philadelphia, each of which has anywhere from 11 to 51 voting divisions, or precincts, for a citywide total of 1,703 divisions. Each division is supposed to have two elected committeepeople from each party. (A vast majority of Democratic committeeperson spots are filled, but there are numerous GOP vacancies.)

They are elected to four-year terms by their neighbors in their precincts during midterm primaries, meaning the 3,000 or so Democratic committeepeople now in office were elected in May 2022. The committeepeople in turn elect their ward leaders, who constitute the executive committee of the Democratic City Committee and choose the party chair.

Brady, who served in Congress from 1998 to 2019, has been chair since 1986, an astonishing run. A former carpenter and City Council sergeant-at-arms, Brady is an old-school wheeler-dealer, but he isn’t a top-down tyrant like the party bosses of old. Instead, he has stayed in power for so long by appeasing the various factions of the city’s Democratic establishment through constant horse-trading and compromise.

Consequently, ward leaders now enjoy enormous independence within their neighborhoods. In Brady’s telling, that’s a good thing, because ward leaders know their neighbors’ needs best. But for critics, it means the city’s Democratic Party often lacks a coherent vision and a citywide strategy for winning elections.

Criticisms of the party have gained resonance because Philadelphia’s share of the statewide Democratic vote has declined in recent presidential elections. That’s a worrying sign for a party that once relied on a simple formula for statewide races: Run up the score in Philly and Pittsburgh to overcome deficits in the vast red expanse in between.

State Rep. Chris Rabb, a Northwest Philly progressive who frequently clashes with Brady and the Democratic establishment, said that the party’s focus on Election Day operations like street money is less important than what happens — or doesn’t happen — between elections.

The party, he said, is more invested in ensuring its preferred candidates win low-turnout local elections like judicial races than in preventing former President Donald Trump from regaining the White House.

» READ MORE: Some Philly Democrats worry the city party isn’t prepared for November

“Between election cycles, they need to be telling people what it means to be a Democrat and why these positions matter. We need to promote literacy and engagement,” Rabb said. “Street money is not a real thing because if you’re a volunteer elected as a committeeperson, whether or not you get a crisp hundred-dollar bill on Election Day — that is not going to determine your competence and your ability to do the work.”

Brady said the party has been working day and night ahead of the Nov. 5 election to promote Harris, touting a get-out-the-vote initiative by young Democrats and Philadelphia’s highest-in-the-nation use of the Democratic canvassing software MiniVAN.

Traditionally, the candidates who received the city committee’s endorsements make contributions to the party to fund the printing and distribution of the sample ballots bearing their names.

And in the past, that has meant that presidential campaigns have written big checks to the local party to ensure Philadelphia’s committeepeople are committed to running up the score for the Democrats in the city.

But ever since former President Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012, things have been a bit more complicated. Obama famously sidestepped engaging with state and local parties across the country. One reason was that his team felt it could do a better job than the antiquated party machines by using modern campaign tactics. Another factor was that Obama didn’t need to rely on the party’s get-out-the-vote troops because his historic candidacy attracted countless volunteers.

Similarly, in 2014, Tom Wolf, who was then making his first run for governor, declined to pay the city committee for street money. In those cases, party leaders still paid committeepeople on Election Day, but they got the money elsewhere. In 2014, for instance, former Gov. Ed Rendell helped Brady raise the money.

The pendulum has begun to swing back. During her presidential run in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s Pennsylvania campaign gave the city committee $135,000, according to campaign finance reports. President Joe Biden’s team gave the local party $400,000 in 2020, the reports show.

Brady said that those payments don’t cover the party’s expenses and that his ask for $1.2 million represents something closer to the real cost of street money, printing, and other expenses. Brady said that while he doesn’t expect his entire request to be fulfilled, the Harris campaign has indicated it’s likely to make a substantial contribution to the local party.

“We got a proposal, but we’re not going to get that,” Brady said. “Whatever I get, I’m going to put out on the street. We’ll be broke on Wednesday [Nov. 6].”

The Harris campaign declined to comment, and it hasn’t yet reported making any contributions to the city committee aside from a $973.10 donation in early August.

Street money is the term for the small cash payments, usually $100 or so, that are paid to Democratic committeepeople on Election Day for the party’s last-minute get-out-the-vote efforts.

The main task is to track which reliable Democrats in their neighborhood haven’t yet voted and encourage them to come to the polls. Sometimes the committeepeople dole the money out to other people in neighborhood who help them.

“The committeepeople pay workers to check who’s coming in, who didn’t come in yet, and also to canvass,” Brady said.

Others stand outside polling stations and hand out the party’s sample ballots, which are a list of endorsed candidates.

Brady says the party’s reliance on locally elected committeepeople, rather than volunteers who travel to swing states from all across the country, is more effective because voters are more likely to trust and engage with familiar faces.

In Philadelphia, street money is not — repeat, not — money that gets paid to voters for casting ballots for Democrats. Unlike with Elon Musk’s increasingly scrutinized cash giveaways to voters, there is no question about the legality of the street money because it is simply payments to campaign workers.

Republican City Committee chair Vince Fenerty said the local GOP has not gotten street money from presidential campaigns in “many, many years.”

“I imagine back when funds were more available, but I haven’t had anyone reach out in the last couple years to distribute to wards to pay workers to get voters out on Election Day,” Fenerty said.

Some ward leaders raise money on their own, said Fenerty, who runs a beef-and-beer event each year to bring in some cash to distribute to workers.

The Trump campaign did not distribute money to the GOP city committee in each of the last two elections, either.

“Should the Trump campaign give us some money to run a better street organization? It would be an idea,” he said. “Right now our people are all volunteers, and Trump has a lot of volunteers. It all comes together.”

Fenerty doesn’t see a problem with Democrats keeping the tradition alive.

“It’s the way politics is done in Philadelphia: Everyone who can get paid wants to,” he said. “And if they work hard on the polls, they probably deserve it.”