With 50-some-odd days left in this race to the primary, there are probably another 40 or so forums all over town. On Friday evening, I went to the Friends Center to hear the candidates address energy conservation. Three of the democratic hopefuls showed up and so did Al Taubenberger.
Andy Toy was in the house meeting voters. Andy is running for City Council At-Large. He would be the first Asian City Councilman this city has ever seen and I think he'd make a fine City Councilman. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll be volunteering as much of my time as possible to help out his campaign. Also there meeting people were two more At-Large candidates: Marc Stier and Matt Ruben. I've been a fan of Marc's for sometime now and would love to see him on the Council - he'd bring a healthy dose of enthusiasm in working to do something about the SEPTA crisis. He's been working with PenTrans Pennsylvania Transit Coalition for a good long while in regards to the transit problems we have in Philly. I know next to nothing about Ruben other than he's been an organizer in Northern Liberties, but I'll be looking into him and his campaign as well. All three of these At-Large candidates have been endorsed by Neighborhood Networks.
I once again didn't take any notes during the evening, but I did stay through the entire forum. Hopefully my tired from work brain retained some of the stuff they said…
Former City Councilman Michael Nutter was the first of the speakers to arrive (Taubenberger was the first candidate to arrive, but he wasn't a part of the panel). He had a few staffers/volunteers milling around with signs and handing out literature to people coming into the building. He seems to do well in front of this type of crowd.
The Committee of 70's Zach Stalberg was the moderator for the evening, that's him above with a handful of questions from the audience.
With no other speaking candidates present, Stalberg and Nutter entertained the crowd. Stalberg informed everyone that Nutter's impersonation skills would be on display for the evening. I immediately envisioned him in some kind of Sean Connery-esque impersonations. By that I'm alluding to Connery's amazing vocal range in his portrayals of Russian sub commander, English secret agent and Chicago Irish cop to name a few. Nutter was quick on his feet and had the crowd of 200+ gathered in the large meeting room laughing easily. He noted that if he were to be the only candidate there for the entire two hours, he'd have an easy time talking the whole way as he's always been a talker and claimed he could out talk any of his former colleagues at City Council or he could sit in silence with the rest of us until someone felt moved to talk in traditional Friends' fashion.
US House Representative Chakka Fattah showed up about twenty minutes into the program. Earlier in the day he casted a vote to set a date to get out of Iraq on a bill which passed in the House 218 to 212. US House Representative Bob Brady, who, I was told, was also in DC for the vote did not make it to the forum. Fattah had some serious looking guys as part of his advance team.
PA House Representative Dwight Evans walked in shortly after Fattah arrived and took a seat up front while Nutter was still finishing an answer to an audience member's question.
Once everyone was there, Stalberg let the two late arrivals take the mic with an opening statement. They both sort of jumped into whatever Nutter was talking about in his answer to a question. It's annoying when candidates arrive late. Yes they have other commitments if they have a job, but resigning from a job to dedicate 100% of your energy towards a campaign sends a message to voters that you really want this job.
This was the best I've seen of Fattah to date. I've heard not so hot things about him from friends who have seen him at various other events around town during this hectic campaign schedule. Surely, the travel from Philadelphia to DC and back for votes and forums is taking a toll, but this is the bed he made and if he shows up tired and his staff doesn't fully wake him up and make sure he's properly briefed on the forum he's going into, that's his own damn fault. But he was pretty good on Friday night. I still think he should stay down in DC and bring back some serious money to Philadelphia with his seniority on the Appropriations Committee. He lost some points on his passing acceptance of the casinos coming to Philadelphia. He brought up the 'benefit' of the wage tax breaks Philadelphians would receive with the casinos: it would be a WHOPPING $100. Woohoo! In exchange for that $100 we'd get stuck with shit along our valuable riverfront.
There's the lone Republican in the race, Al Taubenberger. He sat, without protest, to the right of the candidates a couple of rows into the audience with a campaign sticker.
And here's a smiling Stalberg.
After they were done, I raced up to the front to get a shot of the three candidates. I didn't correctly re-adjust my settings from my non-flash shots. I was at ISO-400 with the flash on and incorrectly angled forward at 75° but the shot was saved as I was shooting in raw format for the evening. Fattah's face is a little washed out, but not bad. It was fun just running up to them and ordering them to stand together and they listened! Hey, you walk up to candidates with a big camera and a flash barking like you know what you're doing and candidates get all Pavlovian and follow the person behind the camera's direction I guess.
I think Nutter fared the best, once again, out of the group. I'd like to see all of the candidates in front of a nice big crowd again and I'm sure it'll happen at some point.
I really enjoy taking photos like this. I think I'm getting pretty good at it too. Oh how I'd love a career in photojournalism. Who's hiring?! Bueller? Bueller… I primarily used my Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 for the evening taking about 2/3 of the shots with the flash, 1/3 without. I switched to my Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 for the group shot. I was three rows back, left of center of the candidates, shooting at or around 200mm for most of the night.
