City Democratic party officials are considering removing a ward leader for the first time in 25 years, citing offensive remarks he was recorded making about gay people and gender reassignment surgery.
Separately, they’re also mulling whether to reinstate several local ward committeepeople who were ousted for supporting Working Families Party candidates in last year’s elections.
Party chairman Bob Brady has condemned the comments made by the ward leader, Rev. Lewis Nash, as “totally disgraceful.” After a hearing with Nash and party officials Tuesday night, Brady said they have not yet decided whether to sanction him.
“We’ve got to figure out what to do with him,” Brady said.
As leader of the 47th Ward near Temple University, Nash oversees his ward committee and serves on the influential Democratic City Committee, which endorses candidates and organizes get-out-the-vote activities. He’s also running for a state House seat against Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who is gay.
Nash declined to comment as he left his hearing at the party headquarters on Spring Garden Street.
The activist who reported Nash was reinstated
The party last ousted a ward leader in 1999. John Sabatina Sr. was removed as Democratic leader of the 56th Ward after he supported Republican Sam Katz for mayor over incumbent John Street. Sabatina’s wife took over the ward, and he later became its leader again, the Inquirer reported.
Nash’s troubles stem from his remarks during a meeting of the 47th Ward committee last August. He told committeepeople that they should consider voting for the Republican nominee for mayor, that some elected officials are encouraging children to seek gender reassignment surgery, and that members should not “vote for a president that’s going to [support] the mutilation of kids,” the Inquirer reported.
He expressed concern about teachers telling children “they got two mommies,” and said elected officials should not tell his child that “she can go have an abortion without my permission,” according to the paper.
His remarks received national attention from LGBTQ publications after they were reported last month. Nash responded that he supports President Joe Biden and doesn’t discriminate against LGBTQ people, and he alleged that Kenyatta was involved in the publicizing of the comments. Kenyatta condemned Nash’s remarks but said he played no role in their release.
Ward leader Robert Dellavella, who presided over last night’s hearings, said afterward that the Organizing Committee had a “lengthy discussion” of Nash and he expected the party would take some kind of action in response.
The committee also heard from Dan Laufer, the 47th Ward secretary, who made an audio recording of Nash’s remarks and provided them to the Inquirer. Nash ordered him off the ward committee, but Laufer appealed and was reinstated during last night’s meeting.
“They said I’m still a committeeperson,” Laufer said after his hearing. He said he took the party officials’ comments during his hearing as “a good sign” that they might remove Nash from his position.
Councilmember pushed for expulsions
After Nash and Laufer’s hearing, three ward committeepeople from Northwest Philadelphia had what they described as a heated discussion with the officials, who constitute the party’s Organizing Committee.
The three are among about 16 elected committee members, most of them in the 22nd Ward, who were removed from their positions in January because they supported two Working Families Party candidates for City Council ahead of last November’s election.
The hearing ended without a resolution of their appeals. Brady said the full Democratic City Committee will make a decision at a later date.
However, the discussion provided some clarity on Councilmember Cindy Bass’ role in the removals.
Bass is the 22nd Ward leader and several of the expelled members are longtime critics of hers who supported her challenger in last May’s Democratic primary for City Council. Bass has previously declined to describe her role in the expulsions, and she left last night’s meeting without talking to the press.
Brady noted that most of the 100-plus ward committeepeople around the city who endorsed WFP candidates were not expelled, because their ward leaders were satisfied that they had recanted and ultimately worked to elect the party’s officially endorsed Democratic candidates. He said he had deferred to Bass on whether to expel the 22nd Ward committeepeople.
“The ward leaders will make the decision,” he said. “I go through ward leaders.”
A hostile exchange
The three 22nd Ward committeepeople who appealed their expulsions yesterday were Cynthia Albrecht, Nate Holt, and Alex Reusing.
They were among a number of rank-and-file Democratic activists from around the city who endorsed two candidates from the progressive Working Families Party, incumbent councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Nicholas O’Rourke, for two at-large City Council seats reserved for non-majority parties.
Albrecht and Holt are also members of the 22nd Ward Open Caucus, an independent group that endorsed the WFP candidates and that has fought with Bass for years. For a time, Bass excluded caucus members from ward meetings, until they sued and a court ordered her to allow them to participate.
Because each voter could pick only five of nine at-large candidates at the polls last November, the WFP could in theory have taken enough votes that a lagging Democratic candidate could lose to a Republican. However, that was virtually impossible given the Democratic party’s 7-1 voter registration advantage in the city.
Committeemembers who supported the WFP have thus argued that they should not be punished for endorsing non-Democrats, despite a party rule barring such support. By enforcing the rule, Brady was essentially favoring Republicans over Working Families Party candidates who are close allies of Democrats, they say.
The Democratic City Committee “would rather punch down on volunteer turnout organizers than accept what Democratic voters and leaders know — that WFP’s presence on council is better for a Democratic agenda than a Republican presence,” said Holt, who said he’s been a committeeperson for six years.
Albrecht, Holt and Reusing described their joint hearing as a hostile exchange during which Bass and other party officials disparaged open wards — where endorsements are voted on by committeepeople, rather than decided by the ward leader alone — and accused them of disloyalty to the party.
“The room was loaded with power brokers and ward leaders,” Holt said. “They shouted at us, they insulted us personally. They bullied us.”
He and Reusing described the dispute as part of an ongoing struggle between the party’s old guard and newer, more progressive members.
Reusing said one committee member told them “‘the problem with the Democratic Party is that there’s people like you talking to people about having choices and issues. And if you just tell people vote Democrat, vote Democrat, vote Democrat, then there wouldn’t be a problem.’”
“People don’t like that,” Holt added. “I don’t think any voters like that, and definitely, my constituents don’t like that.”
“We can’t let that happen”
Brady said the party has tolerated Democratic activists supporting Working Families Party candidates for years, but drew the line when some independent groups told people to vote for only three of the five Democratic at-large candidates, in addition to Brooks and O’Rourke.
Some Democrats “panicked” over the potential for the two excluded, party-endorsed candidates — incumbent Jim Harrity and newcomer Nina Ahmad — to lose their races, and they demanded action, he said.
The committeepeople “put out literature and they put out emails and all that. They put out names,” he said. “Most of them said, vote for these two [WFP candidates] first and vote for [any] three Democrats, but then [some] also said, cut Jimmy Harrity and cut Nina Ahmad. What am I supposed to do? Just let that happen? We just can’t kind of let that happen. That ain’t right.”
Harrity and Ahmed both won and now serve on City Council.
Albrecht, Holt and Reusing also complained about a lack of a proper process for appealing their expulsions. For example, they said they were never officially notified about the hearing date, and only happened to hear about it because Reusing was in touch with a state Democratic party official who works out of the Spring Garden Street office.
Some other expelled committeemembers did not show up for the meeting last night, perhaps because they were unaware it was taking place.
Brady and Dellavella said they believed everyone had been properly notified, but said they would contact the missing committeemembers again and schedule another hearing date.
Among those who were absent was David Rodriguez, a committeemember who previously chaired the Pennsylvania Democratic Latino Caucus. He faces expulsion over vocally supporting Republican mayoral candidate David Oh, rather than the Democrats’ endorsed candidate, Cherelle Parker, and for his membership in a group called Democrats for David Oh.
The spelling of Cynthia Albrecht’s name has been corrected.
