Fattah Rationalizes Mayoral Bid As If He Just Noticed Philly Existed
When asked why he wants to trade a comfortable seat in the new House Democratic majority for the challenging job of mayor of Philadelphia, seven-term Rep. Chaka Fattah relates a story written by the founder of his hometown’s Temple University.The tale is about a man who leaves his simple rural life and his family to travel the world searching for diamonds and wealth. While the man scours the earth alone, the man to whom he sold his farm discovers a diamond floating in a stream on the property.
The moral is that you can fulfill your fondest dreams in your backyard — a thought Fattah is applying to his bid in this year’s contest to succeed retiring Democratic Philadelphia Mayor John Street.
Oh, the largesse! Every time this dude speaks, it’s like his mouth is shitting out votes for Nutter.
NYTimes: And Yay, I Shall Grace You With My Presence
January 19th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
You know, you could also paraphrase all that diamonds and wealth stuff as, “I’ve been in D.C. trying to make the big score; but we got all this ethics reform going on so it’s hard now. Philly’s got like this entrenched pay to play culture which even the FBI couldn’t really get inside. I mean. look at what Street’s pulled off. I want some of that. Nutter talks about murder, that’s sad. If you annoint me, I’ll just sit and watch the money train roll in.”
In other words, someone better shake up his communications staff before people really start to pay attention.
January 19th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I think Fattah’s statement was partly in response to Dwight Evans’ invocation of his alma mater’s founder, Jean Baptise de la Salle, in explaining why he is so committed to education reform:
“God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning.”