Did ward endorsements make a difference in Philly’s DA race?

When Kathleen Cameron, 73, stepped into the voting booth at Settlement Music School on Clarendon Avenue in Philadelphia’s Far Northeast last month, she had already decided she was going to vote for former Judge Patrick Dugan in the Democratic primary for district attorney.

Her neighborhood had been lined with campaign signs for Dugan in the lead-up to the May 20 election, and Cameron said that was enough to sway her vote.

“I hate to say it,” said Cameron, adding that the people who posted the signs must be “a lot more into what’s going on than I am.”

“I watch the news all the time,” said Cameron, who is retired, “and I think I realize what’s going on, but they have the inside information, I would think.”

The people who posted those signs were, in all likelihood, dispatched by Chris Guest, the Democratic leader of Ward 66-A, which endorsed Dugan.

“We campaigned for him hard up there,” said Guest, who leads one of the three large wards split into “A” and “B” sections for organizational purposes. “We did signs. We did lit drops. We did door-knockers.”

Cameron was one of the 2,102 Democrats in Philadelphia’s Ward 66-A who voted for Dugan, giving the former Municipal Court judge his best showing in the city: 84% percent of the vote, vs. his 36% citywide.

District Attorney Larry Krasner ultimately cruised to victory over Dugan in the primary, but the one-on-one contest offered an opportunity to examine the influence of the city’s 69 Democratic ward leaders.

The ward system is in some ways a relic of a bygone political era, and many operatives now question its relevance in modern campaigning. The Inquirer analyzed results from this year’s district attorney race and found that ward endorsements, while far from determinative, can still give candidates a substantial boost, especially in a low-turnout election where a candidate with a strong ground game has a major advantage.

Both candidates significantly outperformed their citywide results in wards that backed them, with Krasner taking 76% of the vote in his endorsing wards compared with 64% overall. Dugan won 59% of votes in his wards.

Because ward endorsements often align with the preferences of local voters, The Inquirer also examined demographically similar wards that backed different candidates, finding those who had the ward’s endorsement still had an advantage among voters when accounting for factors like age, education, income, or racial makeup. For example, if a candidate was more likely to win wealthier voters, he was even more likely to have their support in wards that endorsed him.

The endorsements also appear to have played a role in the results of neighboring wards. For instance, South Philadelphia’s Ward 39-A endorsed Krasner, who won 65% of the vote in the ward. Adjacent Ward 39-B went for Dugan, and he took 68%.

Philadelphia’s Democratic establishment has been criticized for the party’s lackluster turnout in recent elections, and the district attorney primary race was no exception, with 152,000 votes cast in a city of nearly 1.1 million registered voters.

» READ MORE: Low voter turnout in Tuesday’s primary is a warning sign to some Philly Democrats

But the district attorney race and this year’s judicial elections, where party-endorsed candidates won 11 of 12 open seats on the Philadelphia bench, indicate ward leaders still hold sway.

“I could’ve told you that,” said former U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, who has chaired the Democratic City Committee since 1986, when informed of The Inquirer’s findings.

Brady is elected by the party’s 69 ward leaders, who are in turn elected by the committeepeople in their wards. And the roughly 3,400 Democratic committeepeople are elected by Democratic voters in their divisions.

The ward system still works, Brady said, because neighbors trust the candidates that their local committeepeople recommend.

“They worship with them. They go to school with them. They shop with them,” Brady said. “So when you go to the polls, you see a friendly face.”

Critics of the Philadelphia Democratic establishment contend that the party is more interested in having its favored candidates win in low-turnout elections than in boosting voter turnout overall. And there is little debate that ward endorsements matter in low-information elections like judicial races, in which the party-selected candidates almost always win.

Their relevance in more high-profile races is contested. In the district attorney primary, the Democratic City Committee declined to endorse either candidate, allowing each to vie for the backing of individual ward leaders and providing a fertile ground for analysis.

But analyzing the efficacy of ward endorsements in the race also has limitations. Krasner is a polarizing figure, with significant name recognition in the city, and many voters may have made up their minds about him long ago. And the ideological divide in the race makes it more difficult to sort out whether voters were influenced by their local party representatives.

It may also seem counterintuitive to point to a race won by Krasner, an antagonist of the Philly Democratic establishment and of Brady in particular, as evidence of the party’s influence. But Krasner, who is likely to run uncontested in November, is now well on his way to winning a third term, and despite the lack of party endorsement, large swaths of the party machine were activated on his behalf.

Not that that’s how he sees it.

“Ward leaders, committeepeople, even people who are close to the chairman — those people are insiders who are supposed to serve the [voters], not manipulate them, not trick them, not mislead them, not sell them out for side money," Krasner said. “The power of the ward leaders come form the people who elect their committeepeople. … Let’s not get it twisted.”

He suggested that some ward leaders endorsed him because he was always likely to prevail.

“People who sit on the finish line can see which horse is about to win, pick the horse that’s already gonna win, and then take credit,” he said.

Dugan’s campaign manager did not respond to a request for comment.

Krasner dominated Dugan citywide, taking more than 64% of the vote, so it is no surprise that he won a majority of ballots in nearly three-quarters of the city’s wards.

However, it is revealing that both candidates fared much better than their citywide performance in wards where they were endorsed. Krasner beat his citywide share of the vote in every ward that endorsed him, compared with only two-thirds of wards overall.

Dugan, meanwhile, exceeded his share in nearly 75% of the wards that backed him.

» READ MORE: A precinct-level breakdown of Larry Krasner’s victory — and how it stacks up to his 2021 win

Wards’ demographics were largely predictive of election outcomes. Receiving the endorsement of a ward had the effect of supercharging those patterns.

Generally, Krasner did particularly well in poorer wards, winning a majority of those in the bottom half of median household income. But he beat his citywide share of the vote in every one of those wards in which he received an endorsement.

The pattern extends to education, where Krasner appears to have been popular among the most- and least-educated voters. He again won a majority of wards on the poles of educational attainment — and 100% of the wards where he was endorsed.

There also appears to have been an age gap in the race, with Krasner beating his citywide average in 13 of the 18 youngest wards while Dugan managed to beat his citywide share of the vote in almost half of the 17 oldest wards.

Again, endorsements appeared to have helped boost natural advantages: Krasner beat his average in 100% of the younger wards that endorsed him, while Dugan did the same among the older wards that backed him.

Lastly, Dugan did better in the city’s 20 majority-white wards, outperforming his citywide share of the vote in 11 of them. Dugan won all but one of the majority-white wards that backed him.

Krasner outperformed his overall result in three-quarters of the wards with nonwhite majorities — including all that endorsed him.

Ward endorsements offer candidates a boost to their ground game — the nitty-gritty work of knocking on doors, distributing campaign literature, and rustling voters on election day.

The most visible form of the wards’ get-out-the-vote operation are the so-called sample ballots listing endorsed candidates that get handed to voters entering the polls by the party’s paid election day workers.

But it’s not a one-way street: Campaigns often donate hundreds or several thousand dollars to the party or the wards that back them. The payments are meant to cover the wards’ costs for promoting their chosen candidates, such as printing fliers and paying canvassers. But the arrangement has long been attacked by critics of the ward system as a shakedown scheme.

It’s difficult to determine how much Dugan and Krasner contributed to wards. Campaign finance records show the candidates paid a combined $10,464 to ward committees, with Krasner shelling out $6,302 to 11 committees and Dugan making $4,162 in contributions to 12 committees.

But that is likely a significant undercount because the payments are sometimes directed to consultants employed by wards or other PACs related to them.

In races without a citywide Democratic endorsement, like this year’s district attorney race, wards largely determine their own processes for picking candidates.

In so-called traditional wards, the leaders often wield near-total control. “Open” wards, which have sprung up in more progressive and highly educated neighborhoods, allow committeepeople to vote on all endorsements.

The spread of open wards is often framed as a rebellion against the party’s old guard. But on election day, they largely operate the same way: handing out sample ballots listing their preferred candidates.

Kathleen Melville, leader of the open 1st Ward in South Philadelphia, said her committeepeople have “worked really hard to build trust with our neighbors.“

“Voters look out for our recommendations, especially in low-information races, because they know that we do the research and we vote our values,” said Melville, who is also a staffer for City Councilmember Kendra Brooks.

Brady is the leader of Overbrook’s 34th Ward, which Krasner won. His ward was one of seven that did not back either candidate in the district attorney race, which Brady said is usually his practice in races where the citywide party does not endorse.

Brady said his goal is to empower his committeepeople, who were allowed to hand out literature promoting Krasner or Dugan. But he conceded part of the reason is to avoid the appearance that the chair has unofficially picked a side for the party.

That message doesn’t always get through.

“I even told Krasner that,” Brady said. “He didn’t believe me.”

Staff writers Aliya Schneider and Chris Williams contributed to this article.