The contest to succeed Congressman Dwight Evans is wide open, according to a recent poll, and Philadelphia voters are interested in a potential candidate who has never run for office and has yet to enter the race.
After being given biographical information about the candidates, 18% of voters surveyed said they would vote for Dr. Ala Stanford, according to the poll conducted in early August for the group Black Leadership Pennsylvania (BLPA).
Stanford is a pediatric surgeon and Penn professor who won acclaim for bringing COVID testing to Black residents during the pandemic. She has not declared her candidacy but is actively preparing to run, according to media reports and people involved in the local political scene. She did not respond to a request for comment.
State Sen. Sharif Street and state Rep. Chris Rabb each received 17% in the poll and state Rep. Morgan Cephas got 9% after voters heard the biographies, the poll found. One-fourth of those surveyed remained undecided.
The results underline the openness of the 3rd Congressional District race, and the ample opportunities for candidates to shape their public personas ahead of the Democratic primary next spring, BLPA executive director Kyle Anderson said.
“While it appears that there are some initial frontrunners, it’s still really early. Whoever can tell their story in a compelling way, and can talk about the issues that folks have indicated they care about in compelling ways, has a shot,” he said.
Priorities at odds
Cephas, Rabb and Street have officially declared their candidacies, as have Temple University professor Karl Morris, Jefferson Health physician David Oxman, and two others.
All of the candidates are Democrats. Evans’ district is considered the most Democratic-leaning House district in the country, and the Democratic primary next May is expected to effectively decide the winner of the race.
When voters were initially asked who they supported, before the biographies were mentioned, Street led with 15% of voters, followed by Stanford and Councilmember Isaiah Thomas at 7%, Rabb at 6% and Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson at 5%. Just over half of those surveyed were undecided.
Looking just at decided voters, Street did the best with Black residents, getting 22% of their support versus 4% among whites. In general, Street’s supporters tended to be older, Black, long-term Philadelphia residents who prioritize affordable housing, according to BLPA’s summary of the findings.
Rabb appealed to younger, white, college-educated liberals focused on education issues, and Stanford drew support across demographic lines but particularly from men, LGBTQ+ voters, and Black homeowners who prioritize opposition to President Donald Trump.
The poll delved into the question of whether Democrats should be spending their time and campaign resources attacking Trump or focusing on pocketbook matters or other issues, a contentious issue among activists on the left, political operatives and elected officials.
Some 31% of voters said the next 3rd district congressperson’s priority should be “standing up to Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda.” Other popular choices were protecting Social Security and Medicare (23%), reducing crime and violence (23%), creating affordable housing (21%) and improving public schools (20%).
Discontent, apathy among Black voters
Anderson said BLPA’s interest in commissioning the poll was less about the House race and more about identifying the concerns of Black voters, in order to inform future get-out-the-vote efforts, improve the city’s abysmal voter turnout, and influence the priorities of candidates running for office.
Last November, Democrats did worse and Trump did better in most of the city’s majority-Black precincts than in 2020, and Black neighborhoods had some of the lowest voter turnout rates, the Inquirer reported.
“We found in 2024 that much of the messaging coming out of many of the campaigns was not necessarily tailored to or focused on what Black voters care about, and I think we saw that in lower turnout numbers, certainly in Philadelphia,” Anderson said.
“It is probably smart for anyone who is developing policy or platforms to look at this data as an example of the kinds of things that perhaps they want to focus on,” he said.
In large part, Black voters are focused on the same issues that voters broadly care about, like the future of Social Security, he said.
In addition to national issues, the survey asked about the state of the city. The share of voters who said they were dissatisfied with Philadelphia’s direction increased to 58% from 55% a year earlier. Only 36% said they were satisfied in the most recent poll.
The top reasons they gave for their dissatisfaction were crime (25%), poor leadership from public officials (14%) and budget concerns (12%). Dissatisfaction increased more among Black voters than white, and particularly among Black residents under 50, BLPA said.
Asked about city services, 44% of voters said they have stayed the same over the past two years, with 35% saying they have worsened and 16% seeing improvement. Anderson noted that the poll was conducted a few weeks after an eight-day strike by sanitation workers and other city employees that led to trash piling up in the streets.
The pollsters talked to 584 likely registered voters in Philadelphia from August 6 to 12.
Pouring money into elections
Black Leadership Pennsylvania is a 501(c)4, a type of nonprofit organization sometimes called a dark money group because it is not required to disclose its funders. Anderson said the contributors are “largely Pennsylvania-based.”
He said the group was founded last year by labor leader Ryan Boyer, lobbyist Joseph Hill, and other people from the business and labor communities. Boyer is a close ally of Mayor Cherelle Parker and the politically powerful head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, while Hill served on Parker’s transition team and previously worked for former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey.
The organization appears to have close ties to the Black Leadership PAC, a political action committee based in Philadelphia. As a super PAC, it can raise unlimited donations from corporations, unions and other contributors, and is not permitted to coordinate with candidates and campaigns.
The super PAC received $1.2 million in contributions last year, almost all of it from Black Leadership Pennsylvania, according to federal campaign finance records. It spent the funds on voter canvassing, get-out-the-vote phone calls, advertising and other expenditures, mainly to support Kamala Harris’s presidential run.
Anderson said he is not involved with the PAC. He’s focused on establishing BLPA’s continuous presence in Black communities, first in Philadelphia and eventually other Pennsylvania cities, on the theory that “there is no off-cycle for elections,” Anderson said.
The group’s members have attended community events and will have a grand opening for their office in Germantown next month, he said. The space will be available for community use, and will provide residents with information on both elections and non-election-related programs.
“When it’s time for folks to start knocking on doors, to get people to come out and vote, it’s not going to be folks that they’re just seeing for the first time. It’ll be folks they’ve engaged with in their communities,” he said. “And our hope is to duplicate that across the state.”
