Legislation would let City Council members stay in office while running for Congress 

City Council members are trying once again to modify Philadelphia’s resign-to-run rule, which requires city elected officials and employees to quit their jobs when they launch a bid for public office.

Voters have twice rejected repeals, in 2007 and 2014, but the council member sponsoring the new effort said he hopes to win more support this time, in part by substantially narrowing the scope of the change.

Rather than completely ending the 74-year-old rule, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas said he wants to eliminate it only for city officeholders who run for state and federal positions. 

The requirement to quit would remain for city workers, and for officeholders running for municipal jobs like mayor, council member, District Attorney and City Commissioner.

Thomas pointed to the current race for a rare open seat in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District as an example of why the change is needed. While that U.S. House race has a packed roster of 11 declared candidates, including three state legislators, none of them are city officials.

“When you’re talking about representing Philadelphia, whether it’s on a state or federal level, we should always put ourselves in a position to be able to have the best and the brightest,” he said Wednesday.

“I’m not saying the people that are running in the 3rd District aren’t good. There are definitely some very good candidates in that race, but I also have some amazing colleagues on City Council, as well as in row offices, who have the potential and skillset to represent Philadelphia and do so at a very, very high level if given the opportunity to run,” he said.

Changing the rule will require voters to approve an amendment to the city’s Home Rule Charter during a future election. Council’s Committee on Law and Government is scheduled to discuss two bills to start the process next week.

Falls short of full reform?

Thomas’s proposal immediately came in for criticism, both from those who say it would harm the integrity of elections and others who argue it doesn’t go far enough.

The latter include the good-government group Committee of Seventy. In the past it has supported the repeal of resign-to-run, and its president and CEO Lauren Cristella said Wednesday that the group continues to believe the policy has a number of drawbacks, “including depriving voters of representation during special elections and weakening institutional knowledge when multiple officials resign at once.”

However, the organization does not support Thomas’s proposal because it is not a full reform package with term limits for elected officials, she said. Currently the only term limit in Philadelphia is a maximum of two four-year terms for the mayor. 

“Changing [the rule] just for non-municipal races serves political interests, not the public interest. Philadelphians deserve comprehensive, not piecemeal, reform,” Cristella said. Any change in the law “should strengthen, not weaken, public trust in city government.”

Matt Wolfe, an election lawyer and Republican ward leader in West Philly, also criticized Thomas’s proposal, saying it had been diluted “to preserve the cabal that runs Philadelphia.”

“They don’t want to be fighting civil wars,” for example if too many Democratic council members ran for mayor simultaneously, he said.

Cristella also noted that the rule was created in the 1950s to prevent incumbents from using public resources to advance their political ambitions, and said modern ethics and campaign-finance rules have already addressed many of those concerns.

Combating the culture of pay-for-play

Wolfe, who ran for City Council in 2019, said there are a number of good reasons to keep resign-to-run as it is. One is that it remains an important way to prevent officials and workers from earning municipal salaries while they spend much of their time trying to get another position.

“You should not be accepting taxpayer dollars to not do your job, to stop being a public servant and focusing your time and effort and energy on that,” he said. “Being a candidate for a different public office shouldn’t be on our dime.”

Supporters of the existing rule also note that candidates for state office can accept unlimited campaign contributions, unlike candidates for local office in Philadelphia.

Those contributions could be used to influence a candidate who holds a powerful municipal job — the mayor, for example — and undermine the city’s efforts to prevent pay-to-play corruption, they say.

“If you have asked for the public’s trust to hold public office, you should be focused on that. You should not use that as a stepping stone,” Wolfe said. “An officeholder in Philadelphia who can raise unlimited amounts of money to run for something else can use that to increase name recognition and other things to enhance their chances of local office down the road.”

He said he advocates extending resign-to-run to cover state elected officials as well, and to subjecting more officials to term limits.

A high price to run for mayor

The Home Rule Charter was adopted in 1951 in an effort to curtail deep-seated political corruption that had been the norm in Philadelphia for much of the city’s history. It included the new resign-to-run rule, which applies to all city employees and elected officials, except for those running for reelection to their current office.

“This requirement is imposed because an officer or employee who is a candidate for elective office is in a position to influence unduly and to intimidate employees under his supervision and because he may neglect his official duties in the interest of his candidacy,” the charter reads.

The rule tends to have a major impact when a mayor approaches the end of their second term and is barred from running again, creating an open race. 

In 2023, for example, councilmembers Allan Domb, Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker and Derek Green, and city treasurer Rebecca Rhynhart all resigned to run for mayor, which appears to have effectively ended all of their political careers other than that of Parker, the winner of the race. 

Critics of the rule cite several reasons why it should be repealed or modified. Some, like Thomas, say it compromises Philadelphia’s political clout, because it makes it harder for locals to win higher office, compared to elected officials from elsewhere in Pennsylvania who don’t have to give up one job to try for another.

In a city where incumbents rarely lose reelection bids and upset victories are rare, the rule encourages politicians to stay put for multiple terms instead of trying to move on, with the knock-on effect of discouraging political newcomers from seeking local office, critics say.

By forcing elected officials and workers to quit their jobs, resign-to-run also creates a major financial disincentive to seek higher office and discriminates against less-affluent would-be candidates, such as women officials who are sole breadwinners for their families, according to some of those who favor its elimination.

Figuring out what voters want

Thomas originally wanted to repeal the rule entirely when he introduced his bills a year ago, but on Wednesday he said he will amend them only to affect elected officials running for non-municipal offices.

He made the change in part to address concerns that a total repeal would allow someone to appear on the ballot twice — for example, if a council member simultaneously ran for reelection and for mayor.

“You open the potential for somebody to run for City Council At-Large as well as run for a district seat, and for somebody to, I don’t know, run for City Commissioner and Register of Wills,” Thomas said. “We don’t want to allow things to get to the point where it becomes confusing for the voters — and too much of an advantage for candidates with a lot of money.”

Ballot measures to amend the city charter almost always win voter approval, but opposition to repealing resign-to-run has been strong enough to repeatedly buck that trend. In 2007, 55% of voters opposed repealing the rule, and in 2014 the figure was 54%. 

“Philadelphians have made clear that eliminating resign-to-run is not the kind of reform they want; voters have rejected it twice,” Cristella said. “If City Council is serious about revisiting this issue, it should do so alongside real accountability measures, such as term limits, as former Council President [Darrell] Clarke proposed in 2020.”

However, by declining to change the rule on running for high-profile positions like mayor and District Attorney, Thomas’ new proposal could avoid stoking voter opposition. The tangible example of the 3rd District race could also motivate them to support the change, he said.

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