But the alliance didn't exist. In fact, the ad's funder was the mayoral campaign committee of Tom Knox, Nutter's key rival and a likely candidate for Pennsylvania governor next year.
Yesterday, the Philadelphia Board of Ethics announced it had reached a settlement with Knox in which the millionaire businessman admitted violating campaign-finance rules and intentionally misleading the public.
Specifically, the board accused Knox of funneling money to a second political committee. City campaign law restricts candidates to one political committee and one checking account.
A taxpayer-funded but independent agency, the ethics board spent $20,000 on its investigation. In addition to paying $5,500 for five separate violations, Knox agreed to cover half the $20,000 cost.
Knox could not be reached for comment yesterday, said Josh Morrow, his campaign manager. He added that Knox had known nothing about the ad.
Morrow also said Knox had agreed to pay the $10,000 because "why should the taxpayers have to fund this investigation? It shows you we clearly cooperated with the Board of Ethics."
In addition, Knox's mayoral committee released a statement saying that while the Knox for Philly committee "disagrees with several of the board's allegations, it believes it is in the public interest to defer to the board's judgment and accept its conclusions in this settlement."
The board's executive director, Shane Creamer, said it had "stumbled" onto the Knox investigation in March 2008 during a separate inquiry in which Local 98 of the electricians union acknowledged distributing thousands of anonymous fliers attacking Nutter in the final days of the primary campaign.
According to the settlement, which was signed Monday, the Knox campaign hired local radio personality Thera Martin Connelly to write several ads to run on stations with primarily African American audiences.
