The municipal primary is just days away and this week PGN released our list of endorsements. Let’s take a closer look at the candidates.
Mayor: Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club and a great number of LGBT community leaders are backing Jim Kenney for mayor, while Anthony Williams has garnered the support of community members like Malcolm Lazin and Mel Heifetz. But this race is not about popularity, it’s about facts.
Both candidates for mayor support LGBT equality. And they both do so honestly and out of a sense of passion. Kenney supported LGBT equality in his first race more than two decades ago. I know this personally since it was part of a strategy to defeat Fran Rafferty, and replace him with Kenney. It was one of our local LGBT community’s first major political victories. Kenney has gone on to support every LGBT political initiative, sometimes putting his own career in peril to do so.
With Kenney’s support so high in the LGBT community, Williams could have shied away from the issue and won some votes from more conservatives in his community, but he stood tall in his support of this community. Williams has defended this community in the state Senate against antigay-marriage battles, and is the proud sponsor of the anti-conversion-therapy legislation to protect youth.
Both Kenney and Williams were early supporters of our community’s pride, the John C. Anderson Apartments, the LGBT-friendly affordable senior-living building. As the developer of that project, I can attest to how each helped to make it a reality.
The simple fact is that, while Williams is a true ally of the LGBT community, Kenney has become family, or I’d go as far as saying, an LGBT activist. Not a single LGBT bill in Council has gone to the floor without his name in 23 years. When he realized that trans issues were not covered in our original LGBT nondiscrimination measure, he rewrote it to the point that it is the best LGBT nondiscrimination legislation in the nation.
Many activists will tell you about the days when our community didn’t want visibility. Kenney understood that 23 years ago, but that invisibility or darkness has led to sunshine — and Philadelphia becoming the most LGBT-friendly city in America. It’s simple: Jim Kenney for mayor.
Sherrie, Paul and other at-Large candidates
Sherrie Cohen has the potential of becoming the highest-level LGBT representative in our city, and it’s about time that a representative from our community be a woman. And Sherrie has a proven track record: scores of years on the front-line battle for LGBT equality, fighting to keep libraries open, winning housing issues and fighting for small businesses. And during that time, she found out the success of winning: working with people, all kinds of people.
So she set herself a goal of meeting Philadelphia citizens in all their neighborhoods, and she met them as an out lesbian. The result was that she won the most coveted election prize of them all: the endorsement of the Democratic City Committee, and went on to win endorsements in almost every part of the city, including neighborhoods, unions, family organizations and a host of elected officials like Congressman Bob Brady, former Gov. Ed Rendell and state Reps. Brian Sims and Curtis Thomas. In fact, it would take two columns to just list the endorsements she has. Sherrie is poised to win, and in a race with this many candidates, that’s proof of what a strong presence she will be on behalf of our community.
We are lucky to have another out LGBT candidate in the race this year: Paul Steinke. For a first campaign, he has run a fine one, but he has fallen short of breaking out of certain city districts; you can’t run a citywide campaign falling short from winning rank-and-file labor and the Democratic party or even neighborhood organizations. These are essential to winning elections. He is worthy of your vote to encourage him to run again in the future and, like many of you, I note there are two out candidates for City Council’s five seats. So if you are a proud LGBT person, you should be voting for both, as I will be.
So that leaves us with three. It’s an easy choice: Blondell Reynolds Brown, Bill Greenlee and Ed Neilson.
Remember, this is going to be a close election. Please vote!
Mark Segal, PGN publisher, is the nation’s most-award-winning commentator in LGBT media. You can follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MarkSegalPGN or Twitter at https://twitter.com/PhilaGayNews.