Larry Farnese's victory is a major win for progressives.

That’s true for three reasons.

1. Larry is a real progressive, totally committed to open and transparent government and determined to use government to make lives better for everyone, including those who are outside the mainstream of economic life.

2.Farnese’s victory moves forward the transition to a new kind of politics. Larry has been attacked for his alliance with Senator Fumo’s team. But what the people making those attacks fail to understand is that Larry made that alliance without giving up his ideals. He is someone who understands that Philadelphia politics is not just going to be about factions jockeying for patronage, contracts, and power in the future. Ideas and innovative public policy are going to play a larger role. Farnese may now be a Fumocrat, but he is a new breed of Fumocrat.

I know I am not the first to break this story, but in case you have not heard, Sen. Vince Fumo is expected to formally withdraw his bid for re-election in the 1st state Senatorial district today.

This leaves Anne Dicker, John Dougherty, and Larry Farnese to duke it out on their own.

Woa. Read more here.

Love him or hate him, there's no denying that Fumo brought a lot of money home from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. And perhaps of even more use, he has showed us that local members of the state legislative delegation can wield a tremendous amount of power (definitely not the norm in the Philly delegation).

Now if only we could find someone to use that power for good...

I got an interesting email from Sheila Ballen today. She has heard about the draft-Sheila "movement" and asked if I could post this on her behalf:

Dear friends,

I recently got wind about these posts. I am humbled that there are people who want to draft me into running against Senator Fumo. It is a great responsibility to be asked and while I am flattered this is something I never really considered and the time is not right so I will not be running for the senate seat. Please allow me to thank the folks who have dedicated their time and effort in trying to draft me into running. I am incredibly gratified by your grassroots effort. I feel fortunate that right now I am able to devote my energies to ensuring that every child receives a quality education in Pennsylvania.

Thank you again,
Sheila Ballen

There is an article in the Daily News today about a bill that Vince Fumo and Tony Williams are pushing to end Philly's judicial elections. This is a topic we have covered extensively at YPP, including our YPP/City Paper project, which lead to this article.

Pre-election, I believed that we needed to get rid of judicial elections in the City. Post-election, I feel even stronger about it. The system is, in my opinion, currently so broken, that we either need a good merit selection process, or a radically different way of electing judges (like public funding, with ward leaders not allowed to accept payments, etc). What became very clear to me after May, was not just that we have sold our offices to the highest bidders (Ceisler, Dubow and Erdos), but that the party uses the sale of judicial offices as the way in which it funds its street machine. The amount of money that was on the the street in the 8th district, as an example, was stunning. Funnelled through the Dwight Evans machine, Donna Miller paid for her election day army with judicial donations. (And some other direct ones to her that seemed to be blatantly illegal, but that is a story for another time.)

That said, the proposal that Fumo and Williams put together absolutely stinks:

His proposed 19-member commission would include four appointees of the governor, three from the Philadelphia Bar Association, three each from the city's Republican and Democratic party chairmen, four from party leaders in the state Senate, and one each from the district attorney and public defender's offices.

First, the whole point of getting rid of this system is to get the proposal out of the hands of the party machines, right, so that we get some better (and maybe less politically connected) judges? And, how in the world does this proposal address that?

Lets assume that, like many years in Pennsylvania, we have a GOP Governor. He gets 4 appointments. Then, for some reason, the GOP party chair, known to maybe 1 percent of Philadelphia, gets three appointments. Then, the GOP in Harrisburg gets another two. So, right off of the bat, we could potentially have 9! GOP appointments, in a City that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Does that make sense?

But, beyond that actual breakdown of the Republican-Democratic lines, again, why would we make 14 out of 19 seats 100 percent political (and because the power is in the hands of party chairs, basically untouchable and more machine oriented than ever)? How in the world will that help?

What about a distinctly un-political field, and if legislators did not like it, they could scrap it?

So, lets start again: 19 Members... How about this: 3 people from the bar. 2 from the DA. 2 from the Defender. 2 from CLS. 2 from the Mayor. 1 from the President of City Council. 1 each from Temple and Penn Law Schools. 1 from each party in Harrisburg. And then three from a rotating number of community groups.

The Governor gets to actually pick the people the panel recommends, so, he does not need appointments himself.

Anyway, you get the point: Why, if we are trying to de-hack the judicial election system, would we want a system that does nothing except further entrench it?