Takeaways from the Latest Philly Campaign Finance Filings

The most recent cycle of local campaign finance filings came in a few weeks ago. These filings were the first to include some of the independent and third party candidates who are running for City Council in the general election this fall. We’ve updated our Philly Campaign Finance Data Explorer and in this post will discuss a few of our takeaways from going through the latest data. Highlights include the split between service sector unions and building trades in who they are supporting for City Council, strong fundraising by Working Families Party candidates, and out-of-state wealthy capitalists backing the Libertarian candidate’s campaign.

Strong Fundraising by Working Families Candidates

Excluding Allan Domb’s $100,000 donated to himself, the City Council candidate who raised the most money during Cycle 4 (6/11/19 - 9/16/19) [1] was surprisingly neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but instead Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks, who raised $104,135. The next highest fundraisers during this cycle were Republican David Oh with $73,310 and another Working Families Party candidate, Nicolas O’Rourke, with $71,984.

General election results from the 2015 Philadelphia City Council At-Large race

Brooks and O’Rourke are running for At-Large City Council seats. Philly has 7 At-Large (citywide) Council seats, in addition to its 10 District City Council seats. In the general election this fall, each voter can vote for up to 5 candidates for the 7 At-Large seats, and each political party can nominate up to 5 candidates. Due to Philly’s voter demographics, 5 of these seats are essentially locked in for the 5 Democrats who won their party’s primary, while the last 2 have historically gone to Republicans.

In order for an independent or third party candidate to get elected, they would potentially need around 35,000-40,000 votes in order to beat at least 4 Republican candidates, based on previous election results. In order to achieve this, they would most likely need to convince thousands of Democratic voters to not vote a straight Democratic ticket.

By running on the Working Families Party line, Brooks and O’Rourke are seeking to pull City Council to the left while creating a progressive faction that is more independent of the Democratic Party establishment. They are putting forward a platform that emphasizes affordable accessible housing, healthy funded schools, workers’ rights, and a Philadelphia Green New Deal.

Brooks in particular has raised a very large amount of money from small donors - $15,236.19 as of 9/16/19. This is the third largest amount raised from small donors (giving $50 or less per cycle) of any City Council candidate since the beginning of 2018, trailing only Jamie Gauthier (Democratic District 3 nominee) and Helen Gym (Democratic At-Large Councilmember).

This chart shows the 15 Philadelphia City Council candidates who raised the most money from small donors (donors who gave $50 or less per filing cycle) for 2018 and 2019 through 9/16/19. Note that since some candidates (e.g. Brooks, O’Rourke, Toure) filed for 1/1/19 to 9/16/19 in Cycle 4, whereas other candidates’ Cycle 4 filings only included contributions from 6/11/19 to 9/16/19, the former candidates’ numbers may be slightly under-calculated compared to if they had submitted separate filings for each filing cycle of 2019.

Brooks and O’Rourke also received large sums from two service unions - SEIU 32BJ (representing service workers) and PASNAP (representing nurses and health professionals) - totaling $31,000 combined. These unions’ decisions to back third party candidates is a departure from unions’ typical support for only major party candidates (and especially incumbents). Meanwhile, building trades unions have donated over $250,000 combined to Republican candidates in the Council At-Large race this year. While building trades have historically played a larger role in contributing money to local political campaigns, service sector unions have larger member bases living within Philly city limits.

Brooks also received contributions from Gym ($500), Gauthier ($200 + $500 from her campaign), NFL player and Frankford HS grad Jahri Evans ($2,000), and Tonya Bah’s City Council campaign ($12,450, much of which was in turn raised from small donors, prior to Bah being kicked off the ballot last spring).

Brooks and O’Rourke also received substantial support from the Working Families Party, both through direct contributions to their campaigns from the national and state party organizations ($36,640 combined), as well as $50,796‬ in independent expenditures from the Working Families Party National Independent Expenditure Committee. The donors funding the independent expenditures have not yet been disclosed.

Possible Shifts in Republican Race

Republican fundraising breakdown during filing Cycle 4 (6/11/19 - 9/16/19)

Over the past few months, conventional wisdom has been that the leading Republican Council At-Large candidates are incumbent Al Taubenberger and Steamfitters union member Dan Tinney, who has benefited from strong union support and has name recognition from having run in 2015.

It’s possible that these candidates are still the Republican frontrunners, however the most recent filings show strong fundraising from both incumbent David Oh and Bill Heeney as well, suggesting that these candidates should not be underestimated. Oh was the leading Republican fundraiser in Cycle 4, raising $75,360, including $1,350 from small donors. Heeney raised $48,040, including $4,760 from small donors. Most union support for Republican candidates has gone to Taubenberger and Tinney, although Heeney also received several union contributions during Cycle 4.

A Facebook ad that Republican City Council At-Large candidate Bill Heeney has run

Oh has been attacked for sometimes working against the interests of the Republican Party. He introduced legislation to audit the PPA, which has given jobs to Republicans since 2001. He also opposed a bill to withhold funding to Philadelphia for its "sanctuary city" status, although he continues to oppose Philadelphia being a sanctuary city. In this year’s Republican primary, Oh barely won a nomination with a fifth place finish. However, in the past he has benefited from crossover Democrat and independent support, so it seems likely that he may do at least a little better in the general election than he did in the primary.

Bill Heeney, on the other hand, has been getting some exposure by running xenophobic Facebook ads attacking Philadelphia's sanctuary city status. It remains to be seen whether the internal divisions within the Republican Party may create greater opportunities for independent and third party candidates to break through this year.

William (Bill) Perkins III

Libertarian Maj Toure Receiving Most of His Support from Outside Philly

Libertarian candidate Maj Toure has also raised a substantial amount of money, totaling $44,822 so far this year, including $11,496 from small donors. He is an outlier in that over 95% of his funds have come from outside of Philadelphia and 82% outside of Pennsylvania. He has received about ¼ of his money from two $6,000 donations (the maximum allowed), one from Daniel Hassan, CEO of Physician’s Seal pharmaceutical company in Boca Raton, FL, and the other from William Perkins III, an energy hedge fund manager, film producer, and amateur poker player who lives in the Virgin Islands.

Hassan’s family has ties with “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who became famous for raising the price on Daraprim, a medication used in HIV/AIDS treatment, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Perkins has been described as “the last cowboy” for his high-risk trading in natural gas and other commodity markets in this Wall Street Journal feature.

Toure’s campaign appears to be closely connected to the “Black Guns Matter” movement that Toure founded in 2015, which has also received at least $25,000 from someone named “William Perkins” on their GoFundMe page.

Toure's out-of-state libertarian, hyper-capitalist donor base may indicate ulterior motives. The low cost-of-entry into Philly politics could represent a relatively affordable political investment for their extreme free market ideologies.

District 10 Race - Long-Term Incumbent vs. Philadelphia 3.0 Redux

The Council seat for District 10, representing Far Northeast Philadelphia, has been held by Republican Brian O’Neill for nearly 40 years. In this year’s general election, he is running against Democrat Judy Moore, an Executive Vice President for the Garces Group food and hospitality company. While unseating a 40-year incumbent might seem very challenging, Moore may have Trump-related anti-Republican sentiment on her side, and she will be receiving support from Super PAC Philadelphia 3.0.

Philadelphia 3.0 recently claimed victory over another incumbent, supporting Gauthier’s defeat of 27-year Councilmember Jannie Blackwell in West Philly District 3’s Democratic primary last spring. The demographics of Council Districts 3 and 10 are very different, so it will be interesting to see how successful Philadelphia 3.0 is in a very different electoral context. Josh and Rena Kopelman (Josh was a major donor to Philadelphia 3.0 this year) both maxed out with $3,000 donations to Moore during Cycle 4. Philadelphia 3.0 PAC has not submitted a filing for Cycle 4.

So far this year, Moore has raised about ⅔ as much money as O’Neill, however O’Neill had about 16 times as much cash on hand at the end of the most recent cycle - the result of years of accumulated political contributions and little political opposition.

In this race, there has been a roughly even split among unions in who they are backing. Carpenters Legislative Program of Greater PA, SEIU 32BJ (service workers), IAFF Local 22 (firefighters), Plumbers Local 690, Transport Workers Union Local 234, and Communication Workers of America Local 13000 have donated at least $1,000 each to Moore, while IUPAT DC 21 (painters), Sprinkler Fitters Local 692, Steamfitters Local 420, IUOE Local 542 (operating engineers), Bricklayers Local 1, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, Gas Works Employees Local 686, and Iron Workers Local 401 have done the same for O’Neill.

Post-Primary Giving to Safe-Seat Democrats

One final thing from the most recent filings which we found interesting was looking at who was continuing to give money to candidates who won their primary and are essentially assured victory in the general election. This includes all of the Democratic City Council candidates other than Judy Moore in District 10.

In these situations, clearly the money being donated is less about helping a favored candidate win, and more about buying influence in policy making.

The major sectors that we see giving to these sure-win candidates during the most recent cycle include unions (about 33% after excluding Domb’s self-funding), real estate/building industry (20%), law firms and lobbyists (10%), and a few individual large donors.

A Keystone Outdoor Advertising billboard

The one single largest individual donor since the start of 2018 for all City Council candidates combined has been Dominick Cipollini, who has donated $75,000 to City Council candidates, plus $6,000 to Mayor Jim Kenney. During the most recent cycle, he donated $11,000 to City Council candidates, with the most going to likely new Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier, Isaiah Thomas, and Katherine Gilmore Richardson.

Cipollini owns Keystone Outdoor Advertising Company, which has often been dependent on Council decisions regarding zoning and building regulations to protect and expand the billboards that they own across the metro area.

Among the candidates in non-competitive races, Curtis Jones (District 4), Thomas (At-Large), and Gauthier (District 3) brought in the largest sums of money during the most recent filing cycle 4. Jones received $57,700 during this cycle, with at least 36% coming from real estate/building industry interests. Gauthier received $51,385 during Cycle 4, with the majority coming from unions who had either backed her opponent Blackwell in the primary or had backed neither candidate previously. Thomas received $48,835 during Cycle 4, with 13% coming from real estate/building industry, a notable increase from the 6% he received from these industries prior to June 11. He also received 11% of his money during Cycle 4 from soda industry donors, whereas he previously had not received any money from these donors.

And finally, Councilmember At-Large and real estate developer Allan Domb continued his usual dumping of more money than most of us make in a year into his campaign coffers, adding $100,000 during the most recent filing cycle. He has now given his own campaigns $2,132,336 since the start of 2014.

To explore the data in more detail on your own, check out our Philly Campaign Finance Data Explorer.

[1] For these numbers, we’re not including unitemized contributions of $50 or less, since we don’t know how many of these occurred during this timeframe for some candidates, and we’re also excluding in-kind contributions.