This week in Philly history: The Republican political machine loses control of the city after a nearly century-long reign
On Nov. 6, 1951, Democratic candidates were elected as mayor and district attorney, ending the reign of the GOP political machine.
For nearly a century, Republicans ruled Philadelphia.
Power was controlled by the pay-to-play GOP political machine in the years after the Civil War. The party’s grip can be traced back to 1884, when Republican William B. Smith took the mayoral oath of office, and symbolically kicked off the city’s new and fraught political and economic era.
Between the 1880s and the early 1950s, the donkey’s party served as a mere appendage to the elephant’s organization. The kings of the Republican machine took turns picking mayors, and election “tickets” were ceremonial at best.
Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s New Deal arrived in the 1930s amid the Great Depression, and as the city’s Republican leaders were unwilling to accept aid from a Democratic White House. And it’s when the machine would start leaking oil.
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The “New Deal Democrats” and their zeal for national reform helped fan the local flames of political revolution, and spurred a movement to bring about profound changes to the framework of Philadelphia’s ineffective government.
The movement was spearheaded by two lawyers: University of Pennsylvania-educated Joseph S. Clark Jr., from Germantown, and Yale-educated Richardson Dilworth, from Pittsburgh.
The duo helped craft a modern Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, a constitution-like document that established new ground rules for how the city should operate and be led. Among the changes: It put more power in the hands of the mayor, and required civil service exams for patronage jobs.
Voters approved the charter in April 1951.
Seven months later, on Nov. 6, 1951, Democratic candidates Clark and Dilworth were elected as mayor and district attorney, respectively.
These victories represented the first true Democratic wins in the city in 67 years.
The Inquirer ran an editorial on the front page the next day with the headline, “The People Win!”
“The people had made up their minds to get rid of the unsavory gang of grafters and incompetents that had controlled the local government for so many years,” the editorial said, “and they have done just that in unmistakable fashion.”
Seventy-two years later: The charter, despite a few amendments and calls for overhaul, is still in use today. Meanwhile, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the city, 7-1. And since that 1951 election, no Republican since has taken the mayoral oath.