Philly Ward Leaders

Metrics from Ward Leader Baseball Cards informed a philly.com analysis on mayoral candidate endorsements:

Here’s an example: Supporters of State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams’ campaign for mayor were more than a little peeved when a group of ward leaders and elected officials known as the Northwest Coalition endorsed Kenney for mayor. Williams and the Northwest Coalition members are African American. Kenney is white.

Here’s a key difference: a group of computer whizzes known as Code for Philly this month ranked the city’s Democratic ward leaders based on their history of turning out voters.

The Northwest Coalition ward leaders were in the top five for turnout. The LUPE ward leaders were in the bottom five.

The wonderful people at Code for Philly have created a fun new website about Philadelphia’s ward leaders. You may have thought, quite reasonably, that such a feat was impossible. Ward leaders are many things, but “fun” is not usually one of them.

Do you know who your ward leader is? Do you even know what a ward leader is?

Code for Philly wants to help. The civic hacking group built baseball cards to get you acquainted with these local political leaders. The project came out of last month’s Apps for Philly Democracy Hackathon, just in time for baseball’s opening day.