Philly Republicans seek to remove Kendra Brooks and her City Council running mate from ballot

A small detail portends a serious political and legal battle between the progressive Working Families Party and the city’s Republican Party over Philadelphia City Council at-large seats.

Republicans on Tuesday filed twin legal challenges to end a bid for a second term by Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks and to remove from November’s ballot her Working Families Party Council at-large running mate, Nicolas O’Rourke.

The Working Families Party is seeking to oust Republicans from city office, and the race between them for two at-large Council seats is expected to be the most closely watched in November’s municipal election. But removing the Working Families Party from the ballot would effectively end that race before it heats up.

The legal reason Republicans provided for their challenge: Brooks and O’Rourke filled out and signed their candidate statements of financial interests electronically before submitting them to the city’s Department of Records last week.

In identical legal cases, Republicans argue that state law requires candidates to fill out those forms with a “wet signature” — an indelible pencil or ink from a pen.

The challenges came as a political action committee funded primarily by Jeff Yass, a Main Line conservative billionaire and Pennsylvania’s richest man, said it was fundraising to defeat Working Families Party candidates in the city.

Brooks and O’Rourke, in a joint statement Tuesday, called Yass “an extremist billionaire” and said Republicans feared the momentum of “two Black working-class progressives” in the Council races.

“It’s no coincidence that their frivolous challenge comes the same day a super PAC funded by a right-wing billionaire pledged to smear us this fall,” they wrote. “Our opponents can try to knock us off the ballot or flood the airwaves with dark money, but they can’t stop our grassroots momentum.”

The challenge was filed by two Republican ward leaders who are also members of Pennsylvania Republican Party’s State Committee.

“The motive here for the Republican City Committee is to have fair and honest elections and make sure the Working Families Party candidates are held to the highest standards when filing their nomination petitions,” said Vince Fenerty, chair of the city’s Republican Party.

The challenge cites a 2020 case, when Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party successfully petitioned to have the Green Party’s candidate for president removed from the ballot for a similar issue.

The Democrats in 2020 were leery of the Green Party sapping Democratic votes from Joe Biden in a close election with then-President Donald Trump, in a repeat of what they suspected helped Hillary Clinton lose the state in 2016.

Brooks in 2019 became the first Working Families Party candidate to win a Council at-large seat while O’Rourke fell short in his bid that year.

Her victory shocked the political order, and the presence of two party candidates on the ballot threaten the Republican Party with exile from Council at-large seats this year.

Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter requires that two of seven City Council at-large seats be reserved for members not in the majority political party, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1.

Republicans won those two set-aside seats for seven decades until 2019.

Former City Councilmember David Oh, a Republican, kept the second set-aside seat in 2019. He resigned in February to run for mayor and his now his party’s nominee in November. That Council seat is now vacant.

The local Republican Party has five nominees who won the May primary for Council at-large seats but is focusing its support on just two of the candidates, Drew Murray and Jim Hasher.

A judge is scheduled to hear the arguments about the challenge against Brooks and O’Rourke on Friday morning.