A short campaign season is about to come to an end.
Voters in the city's northwestern neighborhoods - Roxborough,
Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy - will go to the polls tomorrow to fill
a state House seat that was vacated in June.
Not a lot of voters are expected to make the trek, but those who
do have a choice among three candidates: Democrat Cherrelle Parker,
Republican Robert Rossman, and Green Party candidate Marlene
Santoyo.
If Santoyo wins, she would become the first Green Party candidate
elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly.
Like the Republican candidate in this special election in the
200th Legislative District, Santoyo promotes herself as the
anti-Democratic establishment candidate.
"This race is about the fact that the Democratic Party machine,
and Democrats specifically on a citywide and statewide level, are
letting down the voters," Santoyo, 67, said Friday.
A former public school teacher and long a political activist, she
talked about the pay-to-play corruption trials, as well as
legislators' decision to raise their salaries in the face of the
state's $5.15-an-hour minimum wage.
Santoyo is a registered Democrat and Democratic committeewoman,
but she said she hoped that positioning herself in this way would
strip votes from Parker, a longtime aide to City Councilwoman Marian
Tasco.
Parker, who resigned her Council job July 8, is also backed by
U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.),
and labor leaders Herman Wooten and Sam Staten Sr.
"I was not the handpicked candidate. I'm the homegrown
candidate," said Parker, 32, who began working for Tasco at age 17
and, most recently, worked on ways to stop predatory lending and to
shutter nuisance bars.
"It is not a negative that Democratic elected officials in
Northwest Philadelphia are supporting me," she said. "It's a
testament to my ability to work and get things done."
A message left for Rossman - a retired computer programmer who
has said he would donate his legislative salary to local community
organizations - was not immediately returned.
The 200th district seat opened after Democratic State Rep. LeAnna
Washington was sworn into the state Senate in June. Whoever fills
the rest of her term, which expires next year, will have to endure a
May primary, and face the general election in November 2006.
Like in the five other special elections already held this year,
election watchers predict that far less than 10 percent of eligible
voters will cast ballots. Some who are even less optimistic said
they'd be surprised if voter turnout exceeded 5,000 people.
The district is significantly Democratic in registration. But it
is also home to liberal activists who pride themselves on not
missing any opportunity to vote - circumstances that make for
uncertain results in this election.
"Some folks, particularly in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, are
disgusted with both Republicans and Democrats, and particularly
don't want to support the Democratic Party because of their concerns
about corruption and good government, and so they are looking at the
Green candidate," said Marc Stier, a Temple University professor who
organized the political group Neighborhood Networks.
"But there are those of us" - including Stier, a Parker supporter
- "who believe the best way to reform the Democratic Party is to
look at good progressive candidates."
He and Parker said they didn't think a Green Party candidate
could gain the trust of Harrisburg leaders, and ultimately bring
money back to the district.
Santoyo, who was briefly jailed for upholding her beliefs, said
she was hardly one to sit and take it. "I'm an activist who puts my
body where my mouth is. The Democratic opponent, I've heard, is a
very nice person. However, nice doesn't make it."
