While union powerhouse ‘Johnny Doc’ is on trial, the Building Trades are still pulling their weight politically

Philadelphia’s building trades unions made plenty of headlines Tuesday — some triumphant, others troubled.

At the top of the general election ballot, former City Councilmember Cherelle Parker swept to an anticipated Democratic victory for mayor with the backing of a coalition that included the politically powerful Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council.

At the same time, John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty — for three decades the most prominent face in the building trades — was on trial, as he and others are accused of embezzling more than $600,000 while he led Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Dougherty is displaced, having already been convicted in a separate trial for bribing former City Councilmember Bobby Henon.

But his replacement, Ryan Boyer, scored a big win with Parker — along with a pair of high-profile losses in City Council races.

His efforts to elect Republican Jim Hasher and Gary Masino, a Democrat and leader of the local Sheet Metal Workers union, fell short.

Despite those losses, the building trades are likely to continue to hold and exert significant influence in City Hall next year when Parker takes office. They will also have an ally in the City Council president’s office, as Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson is likely to become the chamber’s next leader.

And this year’s election proved that Dougherty’s legal trouble is not damaging the trades’ political power.

Boyer, who also leads the Laborers District Council, still has nothing but praise for Dougherty and his work across three decades in unions and politics in the city. That work goes on, he said, no matter who is in charge.

“The Philadelphia building trades are bigger than any individual,” Boyer said.

Boyer was talking up Parker for mayor more than two years ago, before he replaced Dougherty as building trades leader.

The unions coalesced behind Parker before this year’s primary but, unlike past elections, that came together in a staggered series of endorsements that took six weeks from late February to early April.

First, the Building & Construction Trades Council endorsed her on Feb. 22 — a key milestone for her primary campaign, which had trailed other strong contenders in fundraising.

But that endorsement did not reflect immediate unanimity among the 29 unions in that Council. Local 98, long the central player in the political power for the building trades, initially abstained from that endorsement.

The Eastern States Council of Carpenters, which represents carpenters in the city, followed up with an endorsement on March 21. The carpenters unions, which had initially hedged its bets by backing other candidates along with Parker, still wields some political power in the city but is no longer a member of the Building Trades Council.

Local 98 came on board with Parker on April 5, touting itself as “one of Pennsylvania’s more powerful political forces at all levels of government” while endorsing her.

The process was fractured, but the end result was a sustained series of wins for Parker in a crowded primary.

Parker on Thursday named Boyer as chair of her incoming administration’s transition team.

While the building trades’ efforts in politics tend to lean Democratic — in a city where Republicans are outnumbered 7-to-1 — the unions have backed Republicans in the past.

That set up a conflict this year as they backed Jim Hasher, a Northeast Philadelphia bar owner who was seeking a Council at-large seat. Hasher supported a proposal from the 76ers to build a Center City arena, a project the unions back for the construction jobs it will create.

The city’s charter sets aside two of the seven at-large seats for candidates not registered with the political party in the majority in the city. For seven decades, that meant two Republicans held those seats. That ended in 2019 when Kendra Brooks won a set-aside seat for the Working Families Party, a progressive group that draws support from Democrats.

Boyer’s Laborers District Council supported Brooks with a $10,000 donation in August but opposed her WFP running mate, Nicolas O’Rourke, in favor of Hasher.

O’Rourke won the seat as Brooks was elected to a second term.

A political action committee funded by the Laborers gave $25,000 in late October to Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth, a political action committee opposing Brooks and O’Rourke, painting them in sharply critical television ads as soft on crime.

Boyer, in a pragmatic display of political flexibility, left Parker’s election night party after standing on stage during her speech Tuesday evening and headed to the victory party for Brooks and O’Rourke.

“We believe we can work with Nicolas O’Rourke,” Boyer said. “What we saw in Hasher was an opportunity to have on Council a business person’s perspective.”

The second set-back for the building trades came as Masino attempted to unseat Republican Brian O’Neill in Northeast Philadelphia’s 10th District. O’Neill won an unprecedented 12th term with 61% of the vote, despite an outpouring of union campaign donations for Masino.

“That was a hard blow to lose Gary,” Boyer said. “I’m not going to lie. He was fighting a 44-year incumbent.”

Ten of the 29 unions in the council gave Masino’s campaign the maximum allowed donation, $12,600, last December and again in 2023.

“I’m proud that we wrapped around him and gave him the resources to run,” Boyer said.

That race showed some internal friction in the building trades, where Masino also serves as the council’s vice president.

Wayne Miller, who heads Local 692 of the Sprinkler Fitters union, is the council’s president. His union backed O’Neill.

That prompted a dispute last month during a Council meeting, as members of Masino’s union called for Miller to resign as president.

Boyer downplayed that episode as a “minor disagreement” at the time, while emphasizing the council’s broad support for Masino.