A few hours early. -Dan

Today, like I did in May, I will cast a vote for Mike Nutter to become the next Mayor of Philadelphia. I am excited to see new leadership in the City, new ideas, new policies, and what the future entails. For the first time in a while, I feel like there is real hope in the political leadership of our City.

But, this isn’t about me, it is about you. Why? Because I voted for Mike Nutter. You elected him.

Mike Nutter should not be the Mayor of Philadelphia. After all, he is kind of funny looking, has a voice that sounds somewhat like a Muppet, has almost no clearly defined geographical base of power, and is a policy wonk in a sometimes anti-intellectual City.

Mike Nutter was not known to a lot of Philadelphians. He was down in the polls. He had no chance. He did, however, have you guys. And, for one election at least, that really mattered. I have no idea how big the ‘reform’ constituency is in this City, but I do know that while he was struggling along, low in the polls, that constituency is just about all he had. There you were: true, blue believers, talking to your friends, annoying me on the blog, and just refusing to believe he couldn’t win. A lot of other things had to happen too (like Tom Knox spending millions talking about the bums in City Hall), but none of it would have mattered if you weren’t there doing the grunt work..

But, as the line goes in that little read literary classic, Spider Man,

With great power, comes great responsibility.

So my friends, no pressure, but the responsibility is yours. Don’t blow it.

When January comes around, and Mike Nutter is sworn in, each and every one of you should be at City Hall, with seats at the table, advocating for what you believe in. But guess what? Those seats will not be there waiting for your arrival. Instead, like children playing musical chairs, there will always be more people who want the Mayor’s ear than he has time for. There will always be more issues that need attention than he will have the time, desire or ideology to prioritize. And fighting you for those same seats at the table will be big money, entrenched interests, and the status quo. And guess what? They have fat asses, and little desire to get up. Are you ready to do heavy lifting?

Most of us who volunteer for candidates, who knock on doors, who advocate for candidates have a similar problem: we believe. Candidates don’t just become people we want in office; they become us. We put so much into them, that we impute them all of our hope. The knock down fights that were on our site during the primary were not basic policy arguments; they were fights between people defending someone as if they were defending themselves.

Usually, for progressives nationally and locally, the only problem with believing so thoroughly in a candidate is that we don’t win. Instead, we get the gut-wrenching defeats. Lots of defeats. We work so hard, we advocate, we knock on doors, we donate money… and then we lose. But then we commiserate, we drink beer, we start to fight again, and the cycle continues.

Now, however, your guy won, and did so by largely by advocating for policies that you believe in. Get that? Your guy- you- won.. Life, my friends, just grew a little more complicated.

So, look in the mirror this morning. How bad do you want Nutter to succeed? What are you going to do to help him push his agenda? Maybe more importantly, what are you going to do when you disagree with him? If his stop and frisk program doesn’t go right, will you stand up and demand a change in course? If his tax cuts create holes in the budget, will you push back? On a day when you should rightfully be walking around with your chest out triumphantly, how much are you willing to fight?

With great hope, I vote for a new Mayor today. But you elected him, and I hope you take that responsibility seriously. No big deal of course. Just the future of the City, and all that.

Hey fans of Philadelphia issues and politics,

On Thursday, October 25th, at 10 a.m., The Next Mayor project will welcome Michael Nutter and Al Taubenberger to the WHYY studios for the first mayoral forum to be offered live and interactively to a mass audience.

We're still welcoming video questions through YouTube. Just send it to our YouTube account or email us at TheNextMayor@whyy.org. We've gotten some (ok... three) already and they're pretty good questions so feel free to join in the fun.

As for the "interactivity" of Thursday's event. After you take a couple minutes to go through a quick, easy and FREE registration process, you'll get an email confirmation and some simple tests to make sure that your computer is able to access all of the features.

Friday evening, I had the pleasure of joining a Pot Luck at Ebony Staton and John Weidman‘s house in Mount Airy as part of the Inquirer’s Great Expectations/Citizens Voices Forum. Below I relate my interpretation of some of the highlights of the evening with a healthy dose of paraphrasing. To the extent possible, I'm letting participants thoughts speak for themselves and accept all responsibility for any errors or misinterpretations. Comments and feedback are welcome.

According to Chris Satullo, head of the Great Expectations project and former Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Page Editor, soon after his May primary election, Michael Nutter was at a restaurant in Center City and expressed an interest in engaging in a series of low key events where he could personally interact with Philadelphia residents prior to the November election. Great Expectations proposed a series of pot lucks and Al Taubenberger (or Al T., with no disrespect intended), his opponent, was agreeable.

Ms. Staton and Mr. Weidman live in a beautiful medium-sized single family home that they purchased in March of this past year. The pot luck included a variety of excellent food including rellenos de carne and other choice empanada-like pastries provided by attendees from Kensington, cole slaw with cabbage from a Philadelphia community garden and some out-of-this-world Lasagna from Ms. Staton. During the course of the evening, Al T. expressed his opinion that the food was better than the previous pot luck, last Wednesday, to the delight of all who attended.

Prior to starting the listening session, I had the opportunity to talk with a couple of the participants and get to know them.

Mary Ellen Graham is a social worker and professor at the University of the Sciences. She lives in Fairmount. (She contributed the cole slaw to the meal that included cabbage she grew in a community garden somewhere around town.) Ms. Graham's dream, however, is to start an innovative shelter for homeless men to be located in Germantown that provides clients with extensive support services. According to her, such shelters have been started in other places and proved successful. After almost two and a half years of working on the project, she has been told that the ideas are solid and the obstacle that remains is the question of whether the project can be funded. Furthermore, she says that there are folks at the Department of Human Services that love the idea but that funding the project will ultimately be a result of decisions made by the Next Mayor.

Alexis Gonzalez is a 15-year old from Kensington. Alexis came with his pastor, Adan Mairena, who leads a congregation in West Kensington. Alexis is about to start Edison High School in a couple of weeks. He has worked helping fix computers at a shop near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues and wants to study welding. He spoke of one of his cousins who does underwater welding and how difficult it is to work underwater, in what is often claustrophobic environments fixing boats. I asked Alexis what he wanted from the next Mayor. He said that he wanted a Mayor who would do to Philadelphia neighborhoods what politicians had done across the river from New York City in New Jersey. As he understood it, there, the officials had gotten uptight about graffiti and trash. To show they were getting uptight, they had instituted serious fines, like $500 for anyone who was caught defacing buildings or littering. The officials had also told abandoned factory owners they had 30 days to do something with their properties or that those factories would be knocked down. And apparently scores of them were.

Click read more if you like.