Endorsements, Endorsements, Endorsements! Also unscientific exit polling

By Kenneth Lipp

IBEW 98 members with Kevin Dougherty and Jim Kenney heads outside of the Famous 4th Street Deli this morning. Photo by Kenneth Lipp

If you happen to be on the press email list this mayoral season and haven’t relegated them to the spam folder by now, you’re getting lots of emails announcing that another coalition, union, PAC, or handful of politicians has endorsed Jim Kenney.

The snowball really got rolling with two upset endorsements mid-campaign – Dwight Evans’ coalition of African American leaders inNortheast Philly, which most thought would go to Anthony Williams; and LUPE PAC (Latinos United for Political Empowerment) also gave Kenney it’s seal, much to Judge Nelson Diaz’s chagrin, who understood that LUPE would be endorsing him.

These emails have been more frequent in the past two weeks, and you can believe this indicates Kenney’s winning hearts and minds or you can believe that people love to join a winning team. Your call.

We started our exit polling and election coverage in South Philly with a ride up the Broad Street Line to City Hall – where it was surprisingly quiet at 15-20 minutes before polls were set to open.

At Hunter Elementary at York and Front Streets we met a majority Williams voters, a few for Kenney, and a proud Milton Street voter, Steve Miller-Miller.

Kenney and Representative Brian Sims met together to vote at a new polling location at William Way, at 13th and Spruce. They were both voting for Kenney, they said (Sims is not up this term), though Kenney joked he’d “thought about voting for Oliver.”

Lynne Abraham was voting at the recreation center on Lombard, and didn’t want to talk with NA Poe about marijuana arrests.

At 4th Street Deli, Johnny Docs Union Boys had giant Kenney and Kevin Dougherty (brother of John and Supreme Court candidate) heads. There were more Dougherty heads than Jim heads, and the former’s signs were bigger.