I was still working as a DJ known as “Mix Master Mike” and assistant manager at the Impulse—two full-time jobs. Xerox had a wonderful training program, but after twenty-one months I was shocked that they didn’t see the wisdom of catapulting me to a senior vice president position already, and I resigned—but not before I wrote an epic, five-page resignation letter, circulated to all the managers, that detailed all of my thoughts on Xerox’s shortcomings. As a result of this letter I was invited out to regional headquarters to talk about my concerns, and was offered a raise and a promotion to a job three grades higher, but my response was to be shocked that they thought I was only after money, and I rejected their offer. For someone with all of twenty-one months of work experience I had a great deal of confidence and hubris—or, I just didn’t know any better!
I continued my work at the disco instead, and there I was absorbing politics by osmosis, and eavesdropping on the workings and conversations of the emerging black political establishment in Philadelphia. I was curious, and intrigued by what I heard and saw. Eventually, by 1981, Robert and I, who had been initiated into politics informally day in and day out at the Impulse disco, found our way down to city hall, and started going to City Council meetings.
These meetings are free and open to the public, and I had my daytime hours free after my Xerox protest resignation. The most immediate inspiration for going to a City Council meeting was that Robert and I fancied ourselves future real estate moguls, and we had a plan to buy properties at sheriff’s sales, rehab them, and sell them, to develop a portfolio. We thought the council meetings might provide additional useful information about how the city government worked. The sheriff’s sales seemed like a sketchy process, however, so we decided it wasn’t the business for us. But interesting things were happening at the council meetings, nonetheless. I would recommend that citizens try to attend a City Council meeting or two, if they can. In our case, Robert and I recognized a lot of council members from the Impulse club, where they were having fundraisers and parties.
One day I walked into the office of one of the elected officials that I met at the disco, Councilman John White Jr. His father, John White Sr., was a leader of the Black Political Forum.
“This political thing is kind of interesting,” I said, “but I don’t really know that much about it. How would I get involved?”
After we talked for a while he asked me, “Where do you live?”
“The Wynnefield section of Philadelphia,” I responded.
“Oh! Right next door is one of my best friends who lives in Wynnefield and he’s looking to recruit some folks to get involved in his political organization. Go next door, tell him I sent you, and you guys should talk.”
I didn’t know who he was talking about. His name was John C. Anderson, and he was a member at-large in his first term on the City Council. Anderson had a long family history in Philadelphia. His father was a prominent African American Episcopalian priest, and his mother was the matriarch of the family. There were three boys in the family: his younger brother, Louis, had died and his other brother, Jesse, was also a pastor. John C. Anderson was a very articulate, smart, and tremendously handsome man. He was also gay, which was unknown to many at this time in the early 1980s. As progressive as our values are in 2017, that same spirit was not the norm in Philadelphia in the early 1980s. A few people knew about Anderson’s identity but most people did not, and as I started working with him, I would see the strain of holding that secret. From time to time, he was also threatened with outing and blackmail that would have damaged if not ruined his career in that era, so I saw the effects of that coercion, too.
I was a stranger to Anderson, but in December 1981, I knocked on his office door. Others have said that I don’t lack for confidence, but I’m sure I was a bit nervous. Although I didn’t even know what Anderson looked like, I was used to meeting new people and political figures all the time, from my work at the club. Anderson was in; I explained who I was to his staff, and he actually saw me. We chatted and he asked me exactly where I lived. At the time I was living in these wonderful apartments down on Conshohocken Avenue in the Wynnefield Heights neighborhood of Philadelphia. The bilevel apartment was all the rage at the time, and Robert and I lived in one on top of a Chinese restaurant right by a Pathmark supermarket and the ABC Channel 6 TV station. Our building housed a young, up-and-coming crowd, while the other two apartment buildings in the area were largely senior citizens.
After this conversation I started volunteering in Anderson’s office. Anderson was running for ward leader, which is a neighborhood position, and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party each have leaders who comprise the local party leadership. The ward leader is responsible for helping to get out the vote on election day, distributing literature, shuffling a candidate’s volunteers and resources from one location to another as needed, and being a liaison. When it’s not election season, they might do things such as organize neighborhood events or cleanups, or put residents with problems in touch with their City Council member. Philadelphia is divided into sixty-nine wards, and each one has a ward leader. I lived in the Fifty-Second Ward, and Anderson needed ward committee people who were pledged to his candidacy and would support him. The committee person is the lowest elected office in the city. The ward committee is mostly responsible for voter registration and turnout in the ward, and choosing the ward leader. I happened to live in a division where they were looking for someone. So I ran for committee person to help my new friend, the councilman, become ward leader.
At this point, Marian Tasco became something of a “political mother” to me, as she has to so many other aspiring political candidates. I can think of no stronger, more politically astute and enjoyable political figure. Marian supported me early on when I was starting out as a committee person, and played a major role in my subsequent campaigns, including my candidacy for City Council in 1987 and beyond. No single person in Philadelphia, perhaps with the exception of Congressman Bill Gray, has helped, supported, encouraged, advised, and more forcefully supported more candidates for office than Marian Tasco.
I ran against an older woman, Lillian Levinski, who had been in office for probably about twenty years, in a division where many of the people on the voter registration records had dates of birth such as February 3, 1898, or March 20, 1901. In other words, it was a slightly older population—and I was just about to turn twenty-five in 1982, about a month after the election. I figured I had some challenges. But I worked hard and I campaigned.
Ms. Levinski beat me by 282 to 48, or somewhere in that neighborhood. But this was a first run. I ran again, and I did a little better. And then I deployed some of my Penn training and knowledge: I created this complex chart and regression analysis and figured out that if I kept running, I could beat her in about forty years at the pace I was going.
So I made maybe my first important political decision: I moved.
I had been watching Councilman John Anderson’s public service from the time we met in 1981, through the 1982 ward leader race, and into his reelection campaign of 1983 (ward elections at the time were held every two years in Philadelphia). Anderson asked if I would be his campaign manager, and at first I declined, because I think it’s really important in life that you know what you don’t know—and I knew nothing about managing a political campaign. But Anderson and his team, Obra Kernodle III and Saul Shorr, persuaded me. I wanted to be helpful, I wanted to be involved, and I came to realize, of course, that I had a lot of free time and they would not have to pay me very much because I didn’t know very much. But mostly, I agreed because I was interested in politics, and I wanted to support him.
I’ve
