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Ed Rendell for Hillary

It came as little surprise when former Philadelphia Mayor and current Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton in her bid for the U.S. Presidency back in January.

But few may have guessed how much time and energy he would devote to her presidency. I can’t help but think how this effects politics in Philadelphia, particularly as Mayor Michael Nutter joins Rendell and Clinton’s competitor Sen. Barack Obama continues to roll up other city government endorsements in Philadelphia.

Whether this further split the city’s Democratic Party that already has lines along reform and machine, or simply assure some foothold for  Philadelphia no matter which Democratic candidate gets the nomination when and if it comes to urban funding and legislation. The Clintons have been friends to Philadelphia before, largely though Rendell, would Obama be the same?

See an interesting interview of Rendell by Bill Maher on his Real Time program, during which Rendell speaks on his support for Clinton.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYMWowWACvU]

Photo courtesy of CBS News.

The complications of a student journalist

For the next month, at least, I am a student journalist.

I have been a proud staffer at The Temple News serving the community of Temple University in Philadelphia for four years. While I have reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Business Journal and elsewhere, there are few places I’ve learned more than in Room 243, the newsroom of The Temple News, and otherwise in my functions as a student journalist.

There are so many complications to it all.

Particular to working at a big university in a big city, I am inevitably competing with professional journalists, without seeming reactionary or amateurish. Competing with the very people whom I hope will want to hire me. At a school like Temple a great deal of our coverage is high profile enough to merit attention from the faces that make Philadelphia the fourth largest media market in the country.

Continue reading The complications of a student journalist

Barack Obama clashes with Philly-style machine politics

In a story missed by Philadelphia media, Sen. Barack Obama is clashing with Philadelphia’s old style politics, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up.

The dispute centers on the dispensing of “street money,” a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city’s Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.

Continue reading Barack Obama clashes with Philly-style machine politics

Q&A with Joseph P. Campbell, CEO of Royal Bancshares

An interview transcribed last week for yesterday’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Name:campbell-joe.png Joseph P. Campbell
Title: President and CEO
Company: Royal Bancshares of Pennsylvania Inc.
Education: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Institute, associoate’s degree, 1966; University of Florida BA and BS in corporate finance, law and secondary education, 1970
Career History: Royal Bancshares general manager of real estate division in Chester County (1970-1981); Royal Bancshares board of directors (1982-1991); Royal Bancshares managing director (1991-1999)

1. The bank has been owned largely by the Tabas family since 1980, when the name changed from Bank of King of Prussia to Royal Bank. How has that affected its development?

It was the smaller of two banks owned by two brothers… we were looking for a vehicle to get into the banking industry and wanted something that, as I like to say, already had the cash register ringing. We walked in the door and applied our management style to it. It was positive from day one… We gave it a larger regional scope, in moving branches from King of Prussia to Philadelphia. We wanted to make it a larger bank… we took our business model, our biggest asset that we knew what the other side thinks. We are not bankers by training, we came into it another way. We’ve stayed with what we knew, real estate, and grew in new ways.

2. You started as a bus boy at Tabas family hotel in Downingtown 40 years ago and became president and CEO. How has that experience affected your view of business today?

Dan Tabas was really my mentor, and there’s no greater ladder to success than having a great mentor… We’ve always looked at our business on a family basis. Every shareholder meeting I go to, I say… your employees are your greatest asset. Everything in life is a people business. Success or failure can be tied to how you treat people in business. The teller downstairs has a more important job than I do. I can be out of the office on a Wednesday… and no one would know. If that teller was out, she’d be missed.

3. Why did the company decide to add Royal Asian Bank in 2004? What has it brought to the company?

Continue reading Q&A with Joseph P. Campbell, CEO of Royal Bancshares

Smerconish has a take on those new Democratic Philly suburbs

Michael Smerconish has lots of opinions.

As posted here last week, Montgomery County, a suburban county just northwest of Philadelphia, now has more registered Democrats than Republicans for the first time since the 1970s.

He has an opinion about that.

Smerconish took issue with the argument that the suburbs going bluer has to do with Democratic Philadelphians moving and “taking their registrations with them.”

That was a partial explanation for some shifting patterns from the end of World War II until the 1970s, but not now.”

Instead, it has to with national politics, Smerconish wrote.

It’s not that the party isn’t conservative enough to win the suburbs; it is that the party is too conservative and has lost touch with a suburban constituency.

Fault for that lies in the party’s national image. Impressions of political parties are established nationally. People don’t usually join a political organization based on their sense of the county commissioners, the competence of the row officers, or the performance of the borough council. They choose the party whose platform, they believe, most closely resembles their general views. And those platforms flow from the federal level. They are personified by national players.

Of course, this is another vote in a debate that will have to find its place in my paper, which is growing, but needs to be finished in the next two to three weeks: how large a role do national politics play in local elections?

Photo from America’s Voice in Israel.

Stephanie Reyer: meeting old things for the first time, like Philadelphia and the Constitution

As filed last week for today’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.reyer-stephanie.jpg

If only Stephanie Reyer could find a good dry cleaner.

The new director of exhibits at the National Constitution Center left a lifetime in New York and a career at the American Museum of Natural History in the city.

“I’m the new kid on the block again,” she said. “It’s both challenging and invigorating.”

She had a long tenure as the associate director of exhibition graphic design for the American Museum of Natural History during which it transitioned from a dusty after-thought to a first-date spot, but thought it a time to move on.

“After nine years, what we did was established,” she said. “You start looking for new adventures.”

So, she moved to Center City.

“The lifestyle here is fantastic, an amazingly walkable city, amazing beautiful,” she said. “It has everything New York does, on a scale that’s more human.”

She started Feb. 25, just enough time to get some homework done, part of her professional move from a science museum to one focused on American history.

“I’m doing a lot of reading,” she said. “I wish i had the way to keep it all in my head.”

Continue reading Stephanie Reyer: meeting old things for the first time, like Philadelphia and the Constitution

Temple University Research Forum

This afternoon from 2:40 p.m. to 4 p.m. I served on a panel (that sure looked like what is depicted above, though I was on it) at the Temple University Research Forum, during which I presented some of my findings from this research project on the Republican Party in Philadelphia.

The panel was entitled “The Politics of Diversity” and I presented under the title of “The Republican Politics of Party and Race in Philadelphia.” (See conference PDF here.)

My abstract was as follows:

Presentation Abstract: Philadelphia hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in 1952, a Democratic record that has few equals in urban politics. Can a Republican be elected mayor of Philadelphia? Through more than 20 interviews with the city’s journalists, academics and politicians, book research and my own discovery, this paper will investigate the failings of Philadelphia’s GOP.

We were given just ten minutes, so I had to drastically reduce what of my findings I presented. Still, I thought it went well. I will post my Power Point slides and even, it seems, get to present video of my presenting in the coming week.

Bowling Remington & Vernick: bowling for charity, economy be damned

good-works-44.jpg

As filed last week for tomorrow’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Bowlers just might be the real test of the economy.

Organizers of the 14th annual charity bowling tournament sponsored Remington & Vernick Engineers and Affiliates, a consulting agency in Haddonfield, N.J., were worried if they could top their total last year, roughly $69,000, with some fearing a sluggish U.S. economy.

Maybe things aren’t as bad as others think because last month’s event raised more than $80,000 to benefit the Mommy’s Light Lives On Fund, the Canuso Foundation, Sensory Playhouse, the Alicia Rose “Victorious” Foundation and the Little Rock Foundation.

“We were pleasantly surprised, with the way the economy has been,” said Chip Adamson, a senior associate at Remington & Vernick who also serves as its charity committee corporate liaison.

Since its establishment in 1990, the committee has raised more than $250,000. Bowlers paid $10 for two-and-a-half hours of bowling at Baker Lanes on Cuthbert Boulevard in Cherry Hill, N.J., which included live entertainment, shoe rental, food and drink, and trophies for the day’s top bowlers.

In 14 years, the bowling event has grown, from its first year when just $440 was raised to this year’s $80,000.

See other examples of my reporting here.