1951 Philadelphia municipal election
Philadelphia’s municipal election held on November 6, 1951, was the first under the city’s new charter. The positions contested were those of mayor and district attorney, and all seventeen city council seats. Citywide, the Democrats took majorities of over 100,000 votes, breaking a 67-year Republican hold on city government. The election marked the beginning of Democratic dominance of Philadelphia city politics, which continues today.
About 1951 Philadelphia municipal election in brief
Philadelphia’s municipal election held on November 6, 1951, was the first under the city’s new charter, which had been approved by the voters in April. The positions contested were those of mayor and district attorney, and all seventeen city council seats. There was also a referendum on whether to consolidate the city and county governments. Citywide, the Democrats took majorities of over 100,000 votes, breaking a 67-year Republican hold on city government. Joseph S. Clark Jr. and Richardson Dilworth, two of the main movers for the charter reform, were elected mayor andDistrict attorney, respectively. The election marked the beginning of Democratic dominance of Philadelphia city politics, which continues today. In the 1940s, Philadelphia was the last major city in the United States to have nearly all of its political offices occupied by Republicans. In 1947, city voters had elected Republicans to the mayor’s office and to every seat on the city council. In 1950, a bipartisan commission of reformers proposed a new city charter in 1950. The new scheme would shift power away from city council to a strong mayor, something they believed would produce a system that would be more efficient and less susceptible to corruption. The higher-ranking executive branch positions in city government would almost all be filled by the mayor directly without council approval, which was intended to encourage the appointment of independent experts instead of distributing jobs as reward for political service. Some in the Democratic coalition objected to making common cause with the reformers, but Democratic City Committee chairman James A.
Finnegan saw it as a chance to revitalize his moribund party, saying “good government is good politics.’ ” In the July primary election, he triumphed easily over former City Solicitor Joseph Sharfsin by an eight-to-one margin. The Republican nominee, Daniel A. Poling, was a Baptist preacher with a reputation for integrity who GOP leaders hoped would help deflect the corruption charges leveled against the machine. His son, Four Chaplains Vain, was one of the four lost aboard the SS Dorchester in World War II, and served as pastor at the chapel erected in their memory. As in 1947 and 1949, Clark focused his campaign on the corruption of the Republican organization, calling it “the most corrupt political machine in the U.S.” The ward leaders swung their support to Poling who won by a six-to one margin, who had the backing of independent Republicans. He won the support of party Democrats in part by announcing his intention to run whether they backed him or not. He campaigned for mayor with the promise of a “clean sweep of City Hall”; he won the election by a wide margin. He was elected city controller two years earlier in 1949 on a platform of cleaning up corruption in the city. Despite being slandered as a communist for his membership in the Americans for Democratic Action, a left-wing group, Clark was victorious. In those two years, Clark probed graft and theft in the Samuel administration and reported his findings to the voters.
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