Brudderly Love? Try Telling It to Santa

Republicans aren’t the only ones trying to spruce up their image as the GOP convention gets underway here. So is the City of Brotherly Love.

Frumpy Philadelphia has a PR problem--that videotape of the boys in blue beating a suspect senseless didn’t help--and with 16,000 journalists in town this week for a political pageant, this is the city’s big chance to fix it. A good many residents seem especially conscious of this, from the grizzled policemen smiling until their cheeks hurt to the city officials who hustled to get 33,000 abandoned cars off the streets in four weeks.

But tension over this mission simmers not very far beneath the surface. Two local guys got into a tiff Sunday morning over precisely how a stadium full of Eagles football fans abused Santa Claus 22 years ago.

The subject arose shortly after Sen. John McCain of Arizona tried to plug George W. Bush at the shadow convention--the alternative forum for disgruntleds and malcontents--and practically got booed off the stage.

Someone asks whether this sort of exuberance is typical of Philadelphians.

“Yes!” said one local man. “They booed Santa and they threw snowballs at him at the Eagles game in 1968.”

“They did not throw snowballs at Santa,” another man protested for the benefit of any out-of-town reporter in earshot. “They booed him but they did not throw snowballs.”

Republicans Come Groovin’ Up Slowly

Speaking of reinvented images, the hipper, with-it, un-Bob Dole GOP is declaring its new self not only from the convention podium but the bandstand with hits from the “RNC 2000” songbook.

These include such rock ‘n’ roll chart-toppers as “Love Train” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” But not all classic rock is equally politic. Somehow wiggling its way onto the approved list was the Beatles’ “Come Together.” (Radical John Lennon, who must be spinning in his grave, may have the last laugh, however. The Republican National Committee apparently missed what Lennon is said to have meant as a double-entendre.)

Say ‘Cheese,’ Senator

The pervasive theme of the 2000 Republican convention is harmony, but McCain can’t seem to stay away from hot spots.

After nearly getting kicked out of the shadow convention, the senator decided he needed a good cheese steak and headed straight to the landmark corner in the gritty South end where two competing stands have held a long and bitter feud.

Philadelphians divide themselves according to whether they buy their cheese steaks at Geno’s or Pat’s. McCain promptly chose Pat’s, and sat down to one with onions and hot roasted peppers. No one knows what Geno’s disciples thought of this, but the Pat’s loyalists were clearly impressed.

“If he can eat that steak sandwich without getting any of that cheese stuff on him, he’s a real good politician,” said Trent LeDoux, a delegate from Kansas.

But Did They Eat Rats?

In a twist on the popular TV show “Survivor,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz on Sunday presided over a game of political endurance where 36 undecided voters cast ballots on which political figures--including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Al Gore and Jesse Ventura--should be booted out of politics until one survivor was left.

The winner: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’m shocked,” said Luntz.

Electricians Shock Brethren

Republicans not known for their love of labor unions are holding their convention in a tough union town. The Democrats, on the other hand, are holding theirs in labor-unfriendly Los Angeles, forcing some attendees to go to the outer reaches of Long Beach to find union accommodations. Go figure.

But workers here were more than gracious as they toiled away--at high union scale--for the benefit of a party that would like to wipe labor’s agenda off the face of the Earth. One electricians’ local went as far as to declare itself “Republican . . . for a week.”

Liberals raised their voices in protest, but few so succinctly as the left-leaning Philadelphia Weekly, which offered the GOP hordes this welcome: “GO HOME! Hide the Women and Children! The Republicans Are Coming!”

*

Reporters Geraldine Baum, Dana Calvo, Jeff Leeds, T. Christian Miller, Massie Ritsch, Rich Simon and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.