On the evening of Monday, June 8, across Philadelphia, Democratic Party ward organization meetings convened to select ward leaders from among committee people, who were just elected in a May 19 primary. The “open wards” movement flipped several wards around the city, but in a controversial meeting, Ward 22 leadership refused to allow a person-by-person vote.
In the heated meeting, Cindy Bass, the previous term’s ward leader and city council member, quickly held a voice vote, declared herself once again the chair, and closed the meeting within a few minutes, a recording obtained by Unicorn Riot showed. People spilled out of the Germantown Seventh-Day Adventist Church, many frustrated that they had been denied any attempt to get their votes individually counted.
Minutes later, tension outside mounted as the committee people present had noticed the event’s official sign-in sheets had a printed total showing a specific vote count for Bass and were making photos of these documents. There was briefly a scuffle, and committee member Gabriel Kuriloff got pushed into the back side of a car as the sergeant-at-arms and one of Bass’ supporters retrieved the sheets and walked off. Another Bass opponent attempted to get the sheets from him unsuccessfully.
During the scuffle, UR did not see the sheets up close. We obtained photos showing the first page of the sign up sheet, which had pen signatures and phone numbers on it, also included a vote total at the top. Bass opponent Octavius Price said they’d brought 26 people to try to vote against her, which was a plurality of committee delegates.
Three elected committee people were blocked from participating in the voice vote. Two of these blocks were attributed to allegedly supporting Working Families Party candidates in 2022, while another was attributed to being on a Bass “hot list” according to an attendee at the event.
