Warren Bloom wants people to know he thinks the only thing more foul smelling than the results of last month’s race for city commissioner, in which he was a candidate, is Philadelphia politics as a whole.

For the past two weeks, Bloom has watched the race develop into the strangest, saddest and funniest story to emerge from the primary-election cycle, mostly due to the pitiful turn of comic woe that befell one of his opponents, North Philly ward leader Anthony Clark. A day before the election, Clark signed away his spot on the ballot. Nobody will say definitively why Clark made such a boneheaded move, but legal papers filed by his attorney allude to discussions Clark may have had with Democratic Party operatives about dropping out in exchange for getting reimbursed for campaign expenses. (Clark's attorney, Gregory Harvey, says his client never formally agreed to those terms.)

Anyway, when he woke up the Wednesday after ballots were counted, he learned he'd actually won the second of two available democratic seats.

With longtime incumbent Marge Tartaglione taking first place; Edgar Howard, ward leader and aide to state Rep. Dwight Evans, came in third. Popular Democratic Party player Sandra Mills took fourth followed by Bloom -- he's an entrepreneur and insurance man -- and former ward leader Donna Aument, who brought up the rear.

Quickly realizing the gravity of his screw up, Clark immediately took the matter to court where he demanded a mulligan. He claimed he hadn't read the withdrawal petition before he signed it and said he thought he was actually signing papers to certify his poll watchers. So he wanted the court to void his withdrawal and declare him the second-place finisher.

To his chagrin, Common Pleas Court Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson shot him down by dismissing his motion before testimony could be heard. She said the law requires evidence that Clark was duped or somehow coerced into deciding to withdraw, a burden Clark failed to meet in the judge's mind. Had the case gone further, attorneys for next-in-line candidate Howard had already assembled a parade of witnesses who they claim were ready to testify Clark knew perfectly well what he was signing and that he made no secret of his intent to withdraw from the race. Those witnesses were never called and Howard won the race with 2,000 fewer votes than Clark.

With a close perspective on the whole mess, not to mention the fact that he knows he was too far behind to be in real contention, Bloom says his efforts are not sour grapes from a sore loser.

"Obviously, I lost the race either way, but the fact is that there is corruption at all levels of city government and this race was a prime example," Bloom says. "What happened was unfair to the candidates and more importantly, it was unfair to the 30,000 people who voted for Clark and then saw those votes discounted." Bloom says that even as a layman, he'll actively support legislation to prohibit candidates from dropping out of races within 72 hours of the polls' opening. He says he's also looking into ways that he, as a private citizen, can prompt an investigation into the shenanigans that he says tainted the race.

"I am outraged that no public officials have stepped up to the plate and defended the 30,000 voters who had no idea they were voting for a candidate who was no longer on the official ballot," says Bloom, seething with anger. "And the fact that it was the race for city commissioner, whose job it is to oversee the fairness of elections, makes this mess all the more disgusting. If there's corruption in the race for the office that is responsible for rooting out election corruption, then what hope is there for the voter? I want to see this matter thoroughly investigated by the city, state and federal election officials and I'll be happy to participate in that investigation."

One of the things Bloom wants to discuss with investigators is the fact that he was also approached with the idea of dropping out of the race, but opted to hang in there. According to Bloom, he bumped into Clark last fall on Spring Garden Street and, after a bit of small talk, Clark sent out a feeler.

"He [Clark] asked who my sponsor was, and I said, ŒGod,'" the deeply religious Bloom explains. "Then he told me that sometime during the campaign I might be asked to take money to get out of the race, and if I were approached with that proposition, he wanted to know what my answer would be. I just told him that I wouldn't trade away this opportunity for anything and we kind of left it at that."

I tried to get both Clark and his attorney to comment on Bloom's tirade and whether they plan to appeal Massiah-Jackson's ruling. But as of press time, neither had returned numerous phone messages. Bloom says it doesn't matter one bit if Clark or anyone else involved ever says another word about the mess. The damage to the voters is already done.

"The outcome of the election was a mockery of a process that I greatly respected before I decided to run," Bloom laments. "This was my first real taste of citywide politics, and I wanted to run for an office that stands for integrity and honesty in city elections. Now I'm pretty well convinced there's no such thing. And if the process can turn off and disillusion even the candidates, how must it affect the voting public?"

Daryl Gale’s weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.