Marc Stier

At-large City Council candidate, Democrat

by Brian Hickey

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Published: Mar 28, 2007

So I'm sitting at the bar in McMenamin's Tavern, the Mount Airy mainstay to which you can take your ladyfriend without worrying that she'll think you're all low-class. (Much more than a taproom; much less than a Rittenhouse Square doucheteria.) Gazing at one of several flat-screen TVs while nursing the first Jaeger's Harp chaser, I get to thinking about the start of tomorrow's NCAA hoops tourney. Specifically, I'm kicking myself in the ass for picking UCLA to win it all, already envisioning the amusement-only prize drift away.

Then, the cellie starts vibrating, breaking me from this mental torture. The man I was here to meet, the affable Marc Stier, who will be on the cover of the next morning's CP for being one of a gaggle of "Re-Formers," is running late. Seems he's sick. Feverish. Run-down. Not all there. As I nod to the bartendress for another chaser, one thought fills my head: If dude gets me sick mere hours before vacation, dude won't be all happy to read about this interview. No. Dude will be subject to a borderline-unprofessional vendetta the likes of which haven't been seen since Nutter went all smoking-ban.

Well, dude showed up 15 minutes later, nattily decked out in the shirt and tie he'd sport to a ward-leader meeting he had scheduled later in the evening. And, despite shaking what I considered a potentially-germ-laden, Vegas-decimating hand, dude's in the clear. For one, he didn't saddle me with any hypothetical desert malady. And for two, he struck me as a unique specimen in the puppy pile known as the at-large City Council field.

While many newcomers are too bright-eyed to stand a chance once the vote's gotten out, this 51-year-old Temple University professor has nary a windmill at which to tilt. Sure, over an iced tea, Stier can spout reformer-ese with the best of 'em. Like when he says, "What's different today is that people are hopeful," or that Philadelphia needs "to move into the 21st century."

But when we delve deeper into his outsider bona fides, the label clearly doesn't properly fit. He talks about advertising money, and garnering the necessary support from inside the existing system that he needs to realistically win.

Stier is much less a purebred reformer than a regular challenger who, in battling big-name incumbents like Jim Kenney, has reform on his campaign platform. In fact, says the man who, in a losing state-rep race in 1998 claims he foretold the two subsequent transit crises, the Neighborhood Networks organization he helped empower was based on the city's much-maligned ward structure.

"I know that you can't win without money," he concedes when asked about his daily hours-long donation-call ritual. Then, he notes, that if elected, which I suspect he will be, "I'm going to do stuff that nobody else has done, working with the activist community. People respond to my message everywhere I go."

He concludes by slipping back into campaign-speak. About how people need more of a say. That the zoning fight over riverfront casinos needs to continue. And how we need to better recruit teachers. "The old system broke down," he says. "People want to know what they can do to help the city reach its potential." Tonight, ironically, that means trying to rally some of the old guard to support a campaign that's trying to assist the new guard in curing what ails Philadelphia.

 

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