The Liberty City Democratic Club, which seeks to promote political candidates that are allies to the LGBT community, decided last week upon its list of endorsements for next month’s Municipal Primary.
Liberty City members voted April 16 to endorse: Seth Williams for district attorney; Alan Butkovitz for city controller; Anne Lazarus, John Younge and Robert Colville for Superior Court judges; Stephen Pollack and Linda Judson for Commonwealth Court judges; openly gay Dan Anders, Angeles Roca, Joyce Eubanks, Donna Woelpper, Diane Thompson, Sharon Williams-Losier and Jonathan Irvine for Court of Common Pleas judges; and openly gay Dawn Segal, Joe Waters, Charles Hayden and Christine Adair for Municipal Court judges.
Ray Murphy, Liberty City co-chair, said the organization’s endorsement committee made recommendations to the voting members — who had to have attended at least two Liberty City events in the past year and been up to date with their dues — who then voted to either approve or reject those candidates.
Each candidate eligible for endorsement must have completed a Liberty City questionnaire, which Murphy said the organization expanded this year to include more questions about the transgender community and other civil-rights issues.
Murphy noted that the district attorney and city controller races generated the most debate among those in attendance at last week’s meeting.
“Those were the more contentious ones where we did see some differing opinions,” he said. “There really wasn’t a huge amount of actual debate on the judicial candidates, although we did have a long discussion about the process because it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around the fact that we have to endorse as many as seven candidates for one race.”
About 40 members voted on the endorsements, which Murphy said is about 30 fewer than took part in last spring’s endorsement process, which included the presidential endorsement.
He added the last local race, which took place in spring 2005, drew only an 11-percent turnout from Philadelphia voters, compared to the 67 percent of voters who went to the polls in the presidential election.
He urged LGBT and ally Philadelphians to pay special attention to next month’s race.
“The people who we select in the local races have a much greater personal impact on the lives of all Philadelphians. And for LGBT Philadelphians, they could be deciding things such as second-parent adoptions or working to improve safety as we walk around on the streets,” he said. “The district attorney and judges have a huge impact on our community and the city controller is someone who’s monitoring city funding; if budget cuts could affect places like The Attic [Youth Center] or the Mazzoni Center, it’s important to have someone in that office who’s a watchdog.”
Murphy’s organization posted questionnaires for the candidates who completed them — both those Liberty City endorsed and those it didn’t endorse — on its Web site.
“All of us have a responsibility to help the entire community decide who to vote for, and I think we’ve come up with a good group of people. But everyone can still definitely check out all of the questionnaires and make up their own minds,” he said. “I’m pretty happy with this slate of candidates and I’m even happier with the democratic process that we have that allows us to make these decisions.”
To read the candidates’ questionnaires, visit www.libertycity.org.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].