8th District Remains Williams Dynasty
By Bob Small
Anthony Hardy Williams won handily on May 17 in the Democratic primary race for the 8th Pennsylvania state Senate District, with 75 percent of the vote.
The district consists of parts of southwest Philadelphia; and townships of Darby and Tinicum and the boroughs of Collingdale, Colwyn, Darby, Folcroft, Norwood, Sharon Hill and Yeadon, all in Delaware County.
Williams has been a tireless advocate for charter schools and the legislation enabling them, including tax credit programs. He also worked to include Holocaust education in the public high-school curriculum, to prevent public school employees with sexual misconduct issues from transferring from one school to another, and to create a Diversity Apprenticeship Program in the labor movement.
But let’s put this in context.
Williams has held the 8th District seat since 1999 winning it after his father, Hardy Williams, stepped down. Dad had held the seat since 1983.
Maybe it’s understandable the 65-year-old politician thinks the seat is his birthright. He viewed his first real challenge from Paul Prescod, 31-year-old Philadelphia school teacher whose father immigrated from Barbados, as “insulting“.
Good citizens should find it insulting that a politicians would think a challenge is insulting.
Williams supporters are also problematic. Jeffrey Yass for instance is “a Montgomery County billionaire charter-school advocate who generally supports Republicans”.
Usually, campaign donors favor one party only, but we may be entering a new era of cross-over political supporters.
Prescod has been supported by groups like Reclaim Philadelphia –which helped select one of my former union compatriots, G. Roni Green, as a candidate for state representative; the Philly chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), known most recently for supporting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and the Working Families Party, a Democratic Party support group masquerading as a separate party.
Based on the separate negatives of support for each candidate,, the 27th Ward Democrats declined to make an endorsement.
It turns out the Pennsylvania GOP was too busy to field a candidate, so Anthony Hardy Williams will be running against a real nobody. That is, unless a Constitution Party, Green Party, Independent Party or Libertarian Party candidate can attain ballot status by November.