Casino talk gets heated

The sensational journalist in me made sure to show up at the Society Hill Civic Association mayoral forum Wednesday night hoping for a brutal war of words between Tom Knox and Bob Brady. That would have been great.

Instead, with Brady and fellow U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah MIA, the forum became interesting instead for the dialogue about casinos.

Seeing how many in attendance live in or close to the river wards where two casinos could be placed, it's not surprising that the discussion was at times heated when the two 3,000-machine slot parlors were at issue.

Among some of the flare ups:

Two women near the front jumped on Michael Nutter after he declared his support for the anti-casino referendum approved for the May ballot. We called your office, they said you don't have a position. I e-mailed you, didn't get a response back.

"I'm standing right here," Nutter said, a bit testily. "I'm not sure who you talked to."

The crowd didn't like it much when Dwight Evans mentioned that with casino-supporter Ed Rendell in office, it's unlikely that the casinos will be stopped. "We have to repeal Act 71," said a man in the crowd, "we must." Support Paul Clymer's bill. Maybe we should just get rid of the delegation from Philadelphia.

Besides Evans, Nutter, Tom Knox (who dropped the ball on one question by not knowing what Act 71 is), and Republican Al Taubenberger said they'd do whatever was in their power to stop the slot parlors.

Thankfully, Queena Bass was there to bring the love, so that was good. Her response about casinos: "I didn't have casinos when I was a little girl, life was great. We don't need casinos now."

UPDATE: Good pictures from the forum, as opposed to that tripe I put up, over at Dragonballyee.

Comments

[albert]

I'm not sure it was that Knox didn't know what Act 71 was, but that as he was approaching the mic (after it was handed to him from Evans I believe) someone started to say something and he didn't hear it. And then the moderator took the mic back to ask the audience to submit questions on index cards and not shout out comments.

[FTP]

It was a really interesting forum. What stood out for me is that each candidate had moments where their ideas were applauded despite Mr. Nutter and Rep. Evans receiving some more critical feedback than the others. (I googled Act 71 on my phone to fill in the blank for myself... maybe one of Mr. Knox's 5 campaign staffers could have done that for him). I personally felt Mr. Taubenberger was the least challenged and best received there - he said all the "safe" things.