The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 39

Thursday, November 4, 1999 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Katz supporters say they were attacked at polls They said members of the electrical worke'rs' union who backed John F. Street assaulted them. One was arrested. 1 AV with brochures and instructed him on how to help voters in the rain: "Now, walk them out of the car with an umbrella all the way to the polling place." The confrontations Tuesday centered on a sample election ballot put out by the Katz campaign. Its design mimicked the official sample ballot of the Democratic organization, but it urged people to vote for Republican Katz along with various Democratic candidates.

A city election judge late Tuesday called the Katz ballot "fraudulent" and deemed it illegal. But Frederick Voigt, executive director of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan group that monitors city elections, said his group was flooded with complaints about what he called "goon squads" seizing those Katz brochures hours before the judge had ruled. "Any time anyone yanks literature from a voter or a representative of a campaign, that's reprehensible," Voigt said yesterday. "People have a constitutional right to express their views and to do so in a fashion that is free from intimidation and violence. Our disagreements get settled at the ballot box.

They don't get settled threats and intimidation. That's bar-' baric." On Tuesday night, Ken Snyder, a spokesman for the Street campaign, said it had no "involvement with any violence during the ielec-v Council District in lower Northeast Philadelphia. In a bitter primary fight in April, union members stood in a line outside a ward meeting in a way that some voters said discouraged them from entering. Other men videotaped people coming and going. The union was backing City Councilman Richard Mariano, a Local 98 member, who was facing a primary challenge from John Sabatina, leader of the 56th Ward in the district.

"It's the kind of stuff that if we saw it going on in a Third World country, we'd say it was fundamentally undemocratic," said former City Councilman Daniel McElhat-ton, who attended that ward meeting. "To have it go on here is an abomination of the democratic process." Political analysts said yesterday that they thought the 39th and 56th Wards had been targeted for union activity because both were potentially vote-rich for Katz. Katz ran strongly in both, capturing more than 75 percent of the vote in each. Despite those numbers, at least one elderly committeewoman and Katz supporter said she was so shaken after union volunteers snatched her pro-Katz pamphlets that she's decided to quit politics. "All they did was grab my pamphlets, but it was they way they did ft the attitude and the nastiness, "the woman said yesterday.

She By Craig R. McCoy and Jennifer Lin INQUIRER STAFF WRITER In two stronghold wards for losing mayoral candidate Sam Katz on Tuesday, his supporters were left with bruised feelings and, at times, real bruises. The Katz supporters said young men from the city's electrical workers' union, who supported victorious Democratic mayoral nominee John F. Street, had roughed up and intimidated Katz backers in the 39th Ward in South Philadelphia and the 56th Ward in the Northeast. Lowell Grimaud, 62, said he was jumped while working at a polling station at Front and Snyder in South Philadelphia.

"I was talking to voting people on the front steps of the building," Grimaud said. "They snuck up behind me and reached around me, pulled me around, and we struggled for the sample ballots and literature." Grimaud lost the struggle on Election Day. The men stripped him of sample ballots reading "Democrats for Katz" and took off. Police on Tuesday detained several members of the union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and then charged one, Richard Owens, 23, with an alleged attack on a 38-year-old Katz supporter in Ward 39. "One man tried to pull the literature out of my hands," said Theresa Ciarrocchi, whom police identified as the victim in the attack.

"I tried to resist, and he continued to pull, and another man held my arms and pushed me against the wall as the fellow continued to pull the litera-' ture out of my hands." In the First Ward, just north of the 39th Ward, John Morley Jr. said that at his polling place, eight men wearing Local 98 jackets stood and blocked the doorway to the polls for a period. "You had to beg them to get out of the way so a voter could enter," Morley said. "They were not interested in offering verbal support of a candidate; they were interested in intimidation." Critics of the union, whose leader also serves as treasurer of the Democratic City Committee, say it too often practices the bare-knuckles politics of outright intimidation. Supporters of the union say it campaigns fairly.

"I know the guys I had out there would not be doing anything like that," said John Moke, manager of Hugh O'Kane Electric Co. in Northern Liberties. He said Owens, accused in the South Philadelphia attack, was among several union members from the firm who took the day off to campaign for Street. Their task, he said, was to use four company vehicles to shuttle pretzels and water to Democratic volunteers. Local 98 business manager John Dougherty, leader of the local, did not reply yesterday to a request for an interview.

On Election Day, he told a Daily News reporter that he had dispatched union members to confront Katz workers about a controversial pro-Katz ballot, but had instructed them not to use force. Upon learning that one polling place had no Democratic backers outside, the Daily News reported, Dougherty loaded a union worker asked hot to be identified for fear oY reprisal." It was really horrible. fhi is America. "I didn't know these things happened. You hear about it but when it happens to you, it's not nice." unnamed source cq marietta.

Inquirer staff writer Linda Loyd contributed to this article. LAURENCE KESTERSON Inquirer Staff Photographer Crews work on lines on West Pleasant Grove Road in West Chester. A Peco Energy Co. spokesman said the wind reached 50 m.p.h. Tuesday.

Peco restoring power that was lost in storm K. i Of the county's 272,804 voters, 62,510 voted, Cummings said. Delaware County's vote counts were delayed at least a day because a power outage in Media apparently knocked out a computer that county employees were using to tabulate results. Outages in Chester County affected about 4,000 people in East White-land, West Whiteland and West Pike-land; 2,000 in West Chester; 1,500 in Coatesville; and 1,500 in Phoenix-ville, Armstrong said. Officials said outages were brought on by fierce winds, which contribute to tree branches' falling on the power lines.

Lines begin to snap from the poles when winds exceed 40 m.p.h. Armstrong said Peco's weather center in Center City measured the storm's wind velocity at 50 m.p.h. several times Tuesday. "We are noticing that a lot of trees and branches are coming down on the wires, not only bringing down the wires but also bringing down the entire pole," Armstrong said. 4, "If it's indeed jSnyfesf referring to allegations 0 'stW33f arm tactics, "it's horre4d6us.

It's not tolerated, not condoned, and; ift. fact, it's ,3 1 In recent elections, crftic.slay, to-i cal 98 members have acted in idating ways. The skirmishes dfteri 1 seem to take place in the Seventh NOVEMBER 1, 1999 SALE ENDS SUNDAY, ZM)(Mf TT1U.l Li I 7S MVP PRINTS TiirdbarSan'ril II Z. .11 II "We've made good progress "a utility spokesman said. The winds complicated voting.

By Michelle M. Martinez INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF Peco Energy Co. employees worked last night to restore electricity to thousands of customers who were still without power after Tuesday's storm. "We've made good progress throughout the day," Ben Armstrong, a Peco spokesman, said last night. He said work would continue through the night.

Power outages began at 4 p.m. on Election Day, causing some vote-tallying problems and eventually leaving about 135,000 customers in the region without electricity. Power had been restored to 120,000 customers by 11 a.m. yesterday, Armstrong said. In Chester County, the hardest-hit by outages, 64,000 customers had lost power.

Late yesterday, only 6,500 customers in the county were still without power. About 1,000 customers in Delaware County remained without power last night. Power failures affected voting precincts throughout the region, including about 30 in Chester County, said Linda Cummings, director of the county's Voter Services. "I don't think that it really had a major effect on voting," she said. "The precincts came in as they normally come in.

Turnout is about what we expected." Philadelphia Row Offices CKy Commissioners (Electing three) (96.1 of voting districts) Joseph J. Duda (R) 91,862 Joseph F. Lombardo (R) 80,160 Alexander 2. Talmadge Jr. (D) 206,905 Margaret M.

Tartaglione (D) 236,485 Clerk of Courts (96. 1 of voting districts) Stuart London (R) 77,300 Vivian T. Miller (D) 214,955 Register of Wills (96.1 of voting districts) Ronald R. Donatucci (D) 227,954 Michael Q. Floyd (R) 77,725 Sheriff (96.1 of voting districts) Reginald Anty (R) 73,867 John D.

Green (D) 232,472 'Incumbent D-Democratic; R-Republican 1 jL2 C.ili for convenient Inquirer home delivery: 665-1234 in Philadelphia 800-222-2765 In suburban PA 800-523-9068 in South Jersey 1 80 MVP POINTS -i', I IMiFMfl pH 0 laiBJJWII mewl I Everydai low Pncsl I N8WI A fr $VT 3D MVP POINTS fl-v 10 MVP POINT! fK 28 A Mzl "Vrti VULCArNwl I DOMINO 1 G0 Men's Sport Boot Men's Sport Hiker s.m' Sport Oxford bw' (i Wttvm 1 I 30MVPPulNT? 45 MVP POINTS k.J; 3. raMMjI NOW! A ll 1 kv. rv RENEGADE WvwJ ill Mintir, I Philadelphia Judicial Races Court of Common Pleas Retention election (96. 1 of voting districts) Yes No Norman Ackerman 77,585 19,885 Ida Chen 80,072 19,245 Gene D. Cohen 79,124 19,815 Mary Collins 77,538 17,576 Nicholas M.

D'Alessandro 82,153 17,858 Pamela Pryor Dembe 74,407 19,141 James J. Fitzgerald 78,328 16,713 Jane Cutler 77,168 19,602 Sheldon C. Jelin 76,373 23,152 Kathryn Streeter Lewis 75,084 19,609 Edward E. Russell 70,436 21,846 Petrese B. Tucker 73,087 20,218 Regular Section (Electing nine) (96.

1 of voting districts) Sandy L.V. Byrd (D) 208,439 Leslie Fleisher (R) 77,630 Joseph A. Gembala 3d (R) 76,542 Richard J. Gordon 284,016 Glynnis D. Hill (D) 202,473 Benjamin Lerner 283,425 Robert J.

Matthews 282,374 John O'Grady Jr. 286,811 Annette Rizzo 301,915 John J. Scott Jr. (R) 78,056 Karen Shreeves (D) 207,451 Sheila Woods-Skipper 281,472 Municipal Court Retention election (96. 1 of voting districts) Yes No James M.

DeLeon 78,050 20,397 Searnus P. McCatfery 81,840 22,219 William A. Meehan Jr. 77,252 19,337 Harvey W. Robbins 72,128 20,625 Alan K.

Silberstein 73,086 21,400 Felice Rowley Stack 73,175 21,791 Regular Election (Electing four) (96.1 of voting districts) Linda F. Anderson (D) 213,787 Thomas F. Gehret 275,378 Jimmie Moore (R.D) 275,742 Frank Palumbo 290,740 Harry Schwartz (R) 87,828 Traffic Court of voting districts) Bill Adams 286,622 Vncwbent D-Deniocratic; R-Republican Men's Sport Hiker Diic. Style 'Earn 1 MVP Point For Every Dollar Spent XawtediiMiiMw rMMMMtK HIZi DirrPOKO HALL OHMAMTOWM NEIHAMtNY MALL PLLZA AT OfUMKN AVK D.port Road. in ctmm b.

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