Larry Farnese's victory and the progressive movement

I think Larry Farnese’s victory is good 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.

Interestingly enough, at some level John Dougherty understands that this transition to a new kind of politics has to be made as well. Over the last few years, Doc has met with progressives and talked about energizing the party apparatus and building a new progressive movement in politics. He has, from time to time, focused on important issues that others have overlooked, such as the need for massive investment in the city’s infrastructure. He has in private talked about himself as an Al Smith figure. Like Smith, who rose above his origins in Tammany Hall politics, Doc portrayed himself as someone who would move from a union leader / party boss to a visionary political leader. And at least the public face of his campaign was positive and, to an extent forward looking.

But old habits die hard and Doc the boss keeps fighting with Doc the reformer. His opposition to campaign finance reform made a mockery of his reformist pretentions. His reluctance to put his union behind progressive candidates and his support of Rick Santorum and other Republicans made it clear that the narrow interests of his union was more important than the broader interests of the labor movement as a whole let alone the progressive movement.

And, in the meantime, it was easier for progressives to ally with Fumocrats because, for the most part, the Fumocrats are, if not progressives, then often times proponents of progressive causes. Guns and casinos aside, Senator Fumo has been the leading champion of good public policy in Harrisburg. Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney have long  two members who could be counted on to put forward innovative public policy ideas some of which are included on the progressive agenda.

3. This may be the election in which at least part of the progressive movement embraced a strategy that can bring us some power sooner rather than later. It has for some time been split between two tendencies, in ways that are not always obvious to outsiders. One tendency—the movement tendency—consists of some but not all of the leaders of PFC, Neighborhood Networks, and ADA. Their leader is Anne Dicker. They have long believed that progressive will win by creating a mass movement of idealists that will overturn the existing order of politics in Philadelphia. The second tendency, which is looser grouping of more pragmatic political activists and young progressive operatives that sometimes includes people in PFC or NN such as Ray Murphy—and me, most of the time—have recognized that creating a mass movement is a long and difficult process; that white upper middle class progressives cannot and should not take over a majority working class and black city; and that small victories along the way are critical. As a result, these folks have argued and acted on the assumption that progressives need to constitute themselves as a faction, focus on building up a field organization and raising money in certain parts of the city, and make strategic alliances with other factions. The NN and PFC group on the other hand eschews strategic alliances (although, Dicker herself has in desperation formed opportunistic alliances with Knox and Dougherty).

These are, as I said, two tendencies not two distinct groups. Some of us progressives find ourselves straddling the two tendencies or shifting from one to the other as circumstances change. And the difference between these two groups of progressives are not just process but about the intersection of process and policy. The more pragmatic progressive are willing to support public policies that bring good results even if they are not ideal while the movement types support ideals that are sometimes politically impossible to realize. Here are three examples: Anne Dicker criticized Fumo’s plan to raise tolls in order to fund public transit and instead called for a constitutional amendment that would allow using gas taxes for public transit. The Pennsylvania Transit Coalition with the active support of progressives such as Tom Cronin, Lance Haver recognized that such a constitutional amendment was highly unlikely and so were enthusiastic about Fumo’s plan. On healthcare, Dicker endorsed a single payer bill that would require a doubling of the state income tax while Haver and John Dodds and Brady Russell of PUP are working for a version of Rendell’s RxPA that has already passed the House and has a decent chance of passing the Senate. On Casinos, Dicker has called for a ban while Farnese (and many others) has focused on the politically more attainable goal of getting them off the waterfront.

The looming failure of Dicker’s campaign–following on the foolish strategic decision on the part of NN and PFC to encourage five (or more) progressives to run for City Council at Large last year–lead many progressives to recognize that the progressive movement is not going to take power with a massive people’s uprising. So a lot of them, including many people who post here as well as long time progressives such as Angel Ortiz supported Larry Farnese. Perhaps this means that at least some folks in the progressive movement are growing up and taking stock of how best to make progressive change in this city as it really exists, not as they imagine it in their dreams. That can be a very good thing especially if the more pragmatic progressives manage to make themselves felt in progressive organizations in the future.

Larry Farnese could play a major role in helping bring that about as can other progressive electeds. Some folks here have said that Larry is open to progressive ideas. That is certainly true. I hope progressives are also open to some leadership and direction on the part of Larry (and Tony Payton and Maria Quinones-Sanchez).