DC33 (the municipal blue collar union) has decided to endorse Sam Katz for Mayor!

Wow, but does anyone think, if Katz wins, he'll be stuck trying to make the unions happy for the next 4 years. Maybe a good thing could come of all this - if Street wins, and many of these unions endorsed Katz, Street will be a little tougher with them at contract-negotiating time.

Sam Katz will work WITH them, not against them like Street has.

Failure is NOT an option; SAM KATZ FOR MAYOR! VOTE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2003!

Rendell was a Democrat and he still managed to get some tough concessions out of them back in the early days of his first administration. I doubt the unions who support Katz have any illusions about where he's coming from - they know he's a businessman and a Republican - and he has already stated he intends to cut 1 percent of the city's budget, which could conceivably mean layoffs of workers from this very union that just endorsed him. Nevertheless, they will support him. I think that speaks volumes about a) how much people of all backgrounds want someone like Katz who can realize a vision of a newly growing and prosperous city; and b) the extent to which Street has alienated himself from at least some of his core constituency. This was, after all, the same group of people in front of whom Street had a bit of a meltdown a few weeks back - "I don't need you to win!" or some such blather. Well, now we'll see if Street was right.

Why is this story not being covered in any of the local media? I can find no story in either the Inky or the online DN, and nothing on WPVI's website. We'll see if it's on broadcast news tonight.

Seems like a pretty significant endorsement to me.

The DC33 announcment of their endorsement of Sam Katz for Mayor was made today at 12pm:

http://www.kyw1060.com/news_story_de...wsitemid=32713

http://kyw.com/Local%20News/local_story_288152640.html

It will be on all the newscasts tonight and in all the newspapers tomorrow morning.

Okay, so not to beat a dead horse on this, but I've now seen the news broadcasts (some of them) and looked at the Inky & the DN online....So where is the coverage of this endorsement??

Both Channel 17 and Action News buried the report of the DC33 endorsement at least 10-15 minutes into the broadcast, behind a whole host of (to me, anyway) less significant stuff.

And you will search in vain for any article in the Inquirer today dedicated to the story. It is buried here, too, towards the end of an article on Katz's alleged embezzlement.

Am I imagining things, or is our local media giving this endorsement a serious soft-pedal? Even if the membership is divided over the idea, the leadership of one of the city's most prominent unions, overwhelmingly Democratic in their voting tendencies, has thrown their weight behind the Republican candidate and directly linked it to the mayor's antagonism in his meeting with them a few weeks ago.

I guess only Katz partisans feel this is a story.

"unions" are a topic i avoid, generally, but someone made a good point at dinner last night: perhaps unions have started to recognize that their costs, specifications/regulations are actually a hinderance to production, unappealing to developers, and therefore self-defeating. i believe sam's got the plan to change this.