Dead But Still Running

Perhaps Ozzie Myers thought that a district that once elected a dead man to Congress would support a living one recently expelled by his colleagues in the House for bribery and conspiracy. The district is South Philadelphia's First Congressional, the dead man was the late Rep. William Barrett (D-Pa.), re-elected in 1976 several weeks after his death, and Ozzie Myers is former Rep. Michael J. Myers (D-Pa.), ejected from Congress after his conviction for accepting bribes from bogus Arab businessmen in the first Abscam trial.

Although Myers secured the Democratic nomination in the April primary with 26 per cent of the vote in a 19-man race, Philadelphia's Democratic establishment has deserted Myers since his conviction and subsequent expulsion. Mayor William J. Green, announcing his decision to endorse independent candidate Thomas Foglietta, said, "When the Democratic ticket is crooked, the straight lever is not the answer."

Despite his now that the voters of his home district would realize that he had been the victim of FBI entrapment and would vindicate him at the polls November 4, Myers is running what one veteran Philadelphia political observer has called "your basic invisible campaign." His campaign headquarters lists a phone number with the First Congressional District office, but it goes unanswered. Except for interviews on "Donahue" and a few other television talk shows, Myers' campaign appearances have been nearly non-existent.

David Glancey, chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee, observes that Myers has retained pockets of strength in the over-whelmingly working-class First District. But Glancey also is offering his support to Foglietta. He gives the ex-longshoreman with a tenth-grade education--who prefers to be called by his nickname, "Ozzie"--almost no chance of victory. "Sure, there's some feeling that "he's one of our own and we don't care what he did," Glancey says. "Maybe he'll get that kind of vote."

Glancey supported Myers with the rest of the Democratic machine in the 1978 race. But even then, Glancey recalls, "We always knew he wasn't Congressional caliber--I guess we just hoped he'd rise to the level of the office. We had no inkling he'd be a flat-out crook." He says Myers approached the Democratic leadership for support even after his conviction, but described his assertion that political leaders should not dictate their wishes to the electorate as "as obtuse as his defense in the criminal matter.

Paul Taylor, a political reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer who has followed Ozzie Myers' career, says Democratic leaders may have made less than a strenuous effort to persuade Myers to drop out of the race, because "the others they wanted to beat him with" would have been perceived as invading Myers' "local turf."

Although a former Republican running as an independent, lawyer Foglietta has switched his registration to Democratic and apparently successfully outflanked Republican candidate Robert Burke. Robert Barnett, campaign manager for Foglietta, says that his candidate's 20 years as a city councilman, coupled with surveys showing that 70 per cent of the electorate identifies Myers with Abscam, should overcome voter tendency to pick the straight Democratic ticket. "We're counting on them to exhibit one more level of sophistication," he says, citing polls that give Foglietta 47 per cent of the vote and Myers 19 per cent.

But Barnett and Foglietta are taking no chances. Campaign commercials open with a newspaper clipping of Myers' explusion, then switch to a picture of a ballot. The camera moves down the Democratic ticket, then pans to the right and Foglietta's spot on the independent column--"just to make sure people know," Barnett says.

On the other side, the videotapes the FBI took of Myers' sessions with the phony Arab businessmen should take its toll. The voters have never before been able to observe their congressman in the act of sealing a corrupt deal and the visceral impact should be far more damaging that the second hand accounts from hearings of politicians charged with scandal in the past.

It all adds up to an uncompromising future for the man who claimed he had Philadelphia's underworld under his thumb. Myers' chances of taking this election, according to the Inquirer's political reporter, stand at "a million to one"--a slightly higher figure than Abscam dangled in dollar signs before Myers' eyes.