Despite being one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the country, Philadelphia has never had an openly LGBTQ person elected to City Council. In the second part of this series on local LGBTQ candidates, PGN looked at the campaigns of LGBTQ candidates running for Council and for City Controller.
Rue Landau, running for City Council at large
Landau is a lawyer with a deep history of activism in Philadelphia. After kicking off her career fighting for affordable housing and social services in the early years of the HIV epidemic, she spent over a decade as an attorney at Community Legal Services.
As director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and the Fair Housing Commission, Landau played a key role in rolling out a comprehensive ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Philadelphia. Most recently, she worked as director of law and policy for the Philadelphia Bar Association and was on the faculty of Temple University School of Law.
Landau is focusing her campaign on addressing what she considers the most urgent issues: public safety, long-term disinvestment in Philly’s neighborhoods, and the housing crisis.
Similar to her peers running for judge, Landau is seeking endorsements from a variety of organizations and individuals, from the Democratic Party to progressive groups and labor unions. She also hopes to gain the support of LGBTQ leaders and organizations with whom she has worked over the years.
“I want to bring a diverse group of supporters together so that I can win and enter City Hall with a mandate to solve problems for the whole city — not just one interest group or section of the city,” Landau said in an email.
In terms of outreach, Landau and her campaign team plan to do face to face canvassing, run Election Day street operations, launch paid digital ads, and send campaign information in the mail.
“Everything we do will be targeted and intentional,” Landau said. “My campaign team has modeled targeted divisions and wards where we believe we can pull the most votes, and our outreach efforts will, in part, follow those models. That said, I intend to represent all Philadelphians and will work hard to do outreach to the entire City.”
She also plans to use her campaign to establish a diverse coalition of stakeholders that will be employed for policy issues if she gets elected. At the moment, Landau and her team are “laser-focused on building coalitions of support and securing funds so that we will be able to communicate with voters across the city closer to the May 16th Primary.”
More info about Landau’s campaign can be found at rueforphilly.com/.
Daniel Orsino, running for City Council at large
Orsino currently works for Congreso de Latinos in North Philly as a housing counselor for people living with HIV/AIDS, sits on the advisory council for William Way’s LGBT Elder Initiative, and has contributed to The Reunion Project, a local forum on HIV and aging. He created Project NorCi, a program that links LGBTQ elders in North Philly to social, medical and community services.
One of the biggest issues that Orsino is focusing on is the need to take care of aging LGBTQ people by way of expanding social services and providing true social security. Many LGBTQ elders don’t have family who can help them get by financially.
“We are trying to fix the holes in the social safety net,” Orsino said. “It’s a concept where we take a look, and our social safety net is still the same model we’ve been operating under since the early 1900s, where a lot of it is dependent on charity, on the kindness of strangers, or a nonprofit. Social Security pays out sometimes 700 something dollars a month, so it’s ridiculous that this is how people have to live. It’s really important that we’re doing this on a municipal level because all politics are local, as the saying goes.”
The structure of Orsino’s campaign is unique in that he and his team are gaining support across Pennsylvania as well as Philadelphia. Jason Bolton, Orsino’s campaign manager, runs Orsino’s campaign out of Allegheny county.
“What we’re building is something multicultural, multigenerational, cross-state,” Bolton said. “The issues are big, sometimes it can be bigger than Philadelphia, and we have to come together. This is about Philadelphia, but this is about the people too.”
While Orsino is looking for a variety of endorsements, he’s not making them the centerpiece of his campaign.
“The endorsements really are the cherry on the sundae,” Orsino said. “We just want to have a big reach in the community. We want endorsements that kind of validate what we’re doing, that complement what we’re doing. When we have endorsements that are relevant to what we’re doing, it’s actually very meaningful.”
Right now, Orsino’s campaign resources are being allocated to community outreach in the form of meet and greets with the public. “It’s all about getting the public’s ideas and their own views on what they think should be addressed by Mr. Orsino,” said Omar Shaw, Orsino’s Philadelphia rep and treasurer.
To learn more about Orsino’s campaign, visit orsino4philly.com/.
Gregg Kravitz, running for City Controller
Kravitz was initially running for a City Council seat but recently announced his run for City Controller instead. He has a diverse political background, having worked on Democratic campaigns in Philadelphia for several years. He ran for Pennsylvania state rep in 2010 but lost to former Rep. Babette Josephs; he worked as deputy commissioner for Republican City Commissioner Al Schmidt, now secretary of the Commonwealth; and most recently entered the world of local real estate, where he became well acquainted with the real estate financing process.
“I think one of my skills as a realtor is taking what’s often complicated and intimidating financial data and putting [it] into simple and digestible terminology,” Kravitz said. “I think that’s a really important role for whoever winds up leading the City Controller’s office,” Kravitz said.
According to Kravitz, the Controller’s main responsibilities are three fold: they carry out financial audits of the city and school district; they do performance audits; and they sit on the Pension Board. Kravitz plans to bring his integrity, even temperament, and good judgment to the role as City Controller.
“The person who’s actually leading this department needs to have sound judgment and good political judgment to have a good understanding of the most pressing issues of the day,” Kravitz said. “[This person also has to] conduct audits that are going to allow us to define actionable data that our council people and the mayor can [use to ] then craft meaningful legislation to improve the city.”
Endorsement-wise, Kravitz is of the mindset of some of the other LGBTQ municipal candidates — he will be seeking support from all avenues. He has the same approach to winning over voter blocs because if he wins, he will be working for all Philadelphians.
Kravitz plans to allocate a substantial part of his campaign resources toward a targeted digital media strategy. But he also plans to use his resources to reach out to a variety of labor unions and political action committees (PACs), and to form strategic alliances with other campaigns in Philadelphia. More info about Kravitz can be found at kravitzforyou.com/.
