Hands Up Who Hates Seth Williams!
Well, voters don’t seem to, as Seth Williams walked away with Democratic primary for Philadelphia District Attorney fairly handily a couple weeks back. But ask around, or look around, and you can find plenty of evidence that Williams is more or less pretty much loathed by his immediate peer group of attorneys and local politics wonks. This PhillyMag article published at the beginning of the primary season detailed the still-raging animosity between Williams and current D.A. Lynne Abraham; Williams, once mentored by Abraham, ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Abraham in ’05, and there’s been (boiling) blood in the water ever since. And not just between Williams and Abraham; one reporter we talked with recently described Williams as being “hated by everyone he works with” in the D.A.’s office. Next comes the news detailing how Dan McCaffery‘s campaign might have worked directly in conjunction with the District Attorney’s Office to do Williams dirty in the press immediately before the primary election. And we’ve heard worse, to the point where some of this malignant scuttlebutt about Williams is unprintable at best and at worst, some of it patently untrue. It’s a mess, to be sure, and our question is this — provided Williams trounces Republican D.A. candidate Michael Untermeyer in November, which is, in this city, a fairly safe bet — what kind of relationship will he have with, well, everyone he’s clearly going to have to work with… who hates his guts? Williams’ website flies the flag of “A New Day, A New D.A.,” echoing Nutter’s progressive campaign. But if anything, it seems to us that a Williams-led D.A.’s office runs a high risk of being acrimonious and highly dysfunctional. You know, just like they used to do it in the old days.
May 27th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Tips: Unless there is some new breaking news, there are some things here that are incorrect, like the fine, like Seth is a director of the BOE, etc. Where is this coming from?
May 27th, 2009 at 11:48 am
We regret the error(s), Dan. As it stands now, the post has been corrected.
May 27th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Cool.
I think what you are implying with some of those “other” rumors should be highlighted, and it basically comes down to the fact that he was running against someone without a compelling reason to be elected, and who was willing to spread a bunch of rumors that were pretty gross, to see what stuck.
I think it is a big jump to take a whisper campaign from McCaffery, Abraham and Dougherty to try to win a campaign, and think that it means say that everyone he will work with “hates his guts.”
May 27th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Now might be a good time disclose that you campaigned for Williams, no?
May 27th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Yo. Your campaign against Seth is hilariously uninformed and misguided. I love your cultural coverage, and most of your political coverage (fully behind ya on the Inqy strike), but when it comes to the DA’s office, I’d say you have a little bit more homework to do.
Clearly, as evidenced by the state of Philly crime, Lynne Abraham is pretty much a lame duck at this point, so who gives a crap if the old hag doesn’t like Seth?
May 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Sorry, guys, but we are just not impressed by this guy. Not to say Abraham/McCaffrey et al made our hearts sing — far from it — but Williams is politics as usual, too. Fail.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Hmm, so can you explain how McElhatton or any of the other candidates were not politics as usual? I mean, come on, Mayor Nutter has turned out to be the KING of politics as usual, despite campaign promises – so his endorsement of McElhatton sent me to the hills on that guy. (like everyone else, I didn’t make my DA decision ’til Election Day, and McElhatton was up there, at first)
If Williams turns out the same way too, we got a deal. But I’ll wait for the first few months of his probable term to make the final decision.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Good points all, philatrash. But what can we say: Life is full of disappointments. If you go back and read our endorsement of McElhatton, you’ll notice that he got it pretty much because he was the only DA candidate who didn’t actively make our collective skin crawl.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
(Yes, I like Seth, and volunteered for him.)
Again, from my certainly biased positioned, whether he is more “politics as usual” is somewhat contradicted by the fact that those “politics as usual” people were the ones trying to take him down.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
As you know, I also volunteered/donated to Seth.
Be careful here: you printed a ton of glaringly factually-incorrect stuff (now pulled down after I pointed it out over email) to support your overall point. You may want to save face a bit with this spinning, but you’d be better served actually thinking critically about what you are writing.
May 27th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I met Seth at the home of one of his former coworkers in the DA’s office who organized a fundraising event for him. I’ve always heard that the people he has worked with like him a lot.