Convicted State Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown lands job with Register of Wills Tracey Gordon

A new year brings a new job for former State Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown, the West Philly Democrat forced to resign from office in 2018 after being convicted of taking bribes from a lobbyist.

Brown started working last week for Philadelphia Register of Wills Tracey Gordon as a community outreach coordinator with an annual salary of $65,000.

Gordon, who first won office in 2019 and is up for reelection this year, apparently didn’t want to discuss her new aide. She and Brown did not respond to Clout’s requests for comment.

Gordon parted ways less than two months ago with a top aide, political consultant Rasheen Crews, after he was accused by the state Attorney General’s Office of forging thousands of signatures on petitions for judicial candidates seeking spots on the 2019 Democratic primary ballot.

Gordon’s own political history has been a bumpy road with the city’s Board of Ethics, which twice found serious fault with her behavior as an appointed deputy city commissioner. She was fired from that job in 2014.

Brown was sentenced in 2018 to 23 months of probation for taking $4,000 in bribes. The jurors who convicted her heard during the trial an audiotape of one incident of bribery, as Brown glanced at $2,000 in cash and proclaimed: “Ooh, good looking! … Thank you twice.”

Gordon faces at least two challengers in the May 16 Democratic primary.

John Sabatina Sr., an attorney and longtime Northeast Philly ward leader, told Clout he plans to challenge Gordon. He complained that Gordon, after defeating 40-year incumbent Ron Donatucci four years ago, fired several longtime employees.

“She’s managed to tick off a lot of people,” he said. “She fired some key people who really knew the job.”

Elizabeth Lowe, who handles compliance issues at the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, told Clout she is announcing her campaign next week. Lowe said she has the backing of a majority of the Democratic ward leaders in Northeast Philly, along with several in West Philly.

Having dealt with the Register of Wills office on behalf of her grandmother and some neighborhood friends, Lowe said she feels confident “that I can help bring that office into the 21st century.”

A telephone poll that circulated just before Christmas drew some interest from Clout fans because it mentioned the nine known Democratic candidates for mayor in Philadelphia and then asked about West Philly State Sen. Vincent Hughes three times.

Who paid for it? we were asked. And what are they trying to accomplish? readers wondered. The conventional wisdom — wrong, as it turns out — was that someone was trying to nudge Hughes into joining the race.

Clout hears Hughes paid for the poll himself, trying to gauge voter interest in a potential mayoral bid after hearing from some supporters who want him in the race.

We also hear the response was strong enough to push Hughes into contention with other front-runners in the crowded primary, maybe thanks to significant name recognition. Hughes has served in the Senate for nearly three decades, representing a district that also includes parts of Montgomery County. He served four terms in the state House before that.

Hughes isn’t talking about it, for now. But we hear he’ll make a call on the race within a week or so.

Here at Clout when a big race ends, we celebrate with a couple of strong drinks and a lot of sleep.

Some staffers who helped John Fetterman win a U.S. Senate seat wanted something more permanent.

Five dye-hards went over to Philadelphia Eddie’s tattoo shop in Queen Village and got tattoos with the outline of the keystone state.

Joe Calvello, communications director for the campaign — and now communications director for Fetterman in the Senate — got the tattoo on his thigh along with the phrase “All Killer No Filler.”

It was his mantra in the waning days of the campaign, he said.

Philadelphia organizer Jordan Rogers got the keystone with “67″ in the middle on his ankle to represent the state’s 67 counties and Fetterman’s “every county, every vote” slogan. He also got a cannabis leaf inside of a broken chain after the primary.

Three other people involved with the campaign, including one who begged not to be named in this article because “my mom will kill me,” also got inked.

Getting tattoos to commemorate Fetterman’s win makes some sense given that Fetterman is likely the most inked member of the chamber — at least based on visible tattoos.

Calvello said the list of interested staffers was originally longer.

“A lot of people talked a big game, but ultimately not a lot of us went to the tattoo parlor,” he said.

“Michael Rashid has been a friend and a valued community and business leader for many years. I judge people by the totality of their positive impact.”

— Democratic mayoral candidate Jeff Brown, who is holding a Feb. 1 campaign fund-raiser with Black business leaders, including former city Commerce Director Michael Rashid. Brown, who is Jewish, is standing by Rashid, who resigned in December 2021 after being accused of making antisemitic comments at work, posting controversial claims on social media, and verbally abusing staffers.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.