Clout: No official tweets yet from Street

SHOCKING NEWS from the city's political scene - the mayoral campaign of T. Milton Street seems to be in a bit of disarray.

It's been eight days since Street stood in the bed of a rented pickup truck in West Philly to declare his run in the May 17 Democratic primary election, using cell-phone texting and social media like

Facebook and Twitter for his campaign rather than big political contributions.

How's that working out?

The only Facebook page we found describes Street as a "hot dog vendor and entrepreneur and a former politician" and brother of former Mayor John Street. We were pretty sure the page is not authentic. The picture, with Milton making a goofy face, looks as if it was lifted from his Wikipedia page.

It gets worse on Twitter.

Someone using the name "MyrMiltonStreet" set up a Twitter account as a parody of Street's campaign one day before his West Philly announcement. The picture on that page is even goofier.

A sample tweet from last Friday: "Taxes are due exactly 2 months from today. Don't forget to file them. Trust me."

Street spent 26 months in federal prison and a halfway house for failure to pay $413,000 in taxes on $3 million in income. He was released in November.

John Patterson, Street's campaign manager, didn't know about the parody pages but promised that the real campaign Facebook and Twitter pages would be up and running soon.

Street last week also said he filed registration papers with the City Commission to run for mayor. But the commission this week said it had nothing on file for him as a candidate.

That stumped Patterson, who said he thought that the paperwork had been filed by now. He promised it would be "forthcoming."

Ft. Knox closes doors on TV

Mayor Nutter's critics may have company in their sorrow after millionaire businessman Tom Knox dropped his plans this week to run again for mayor.

Think of the bottom lines for the local television stations.

Knox, who spent about $12 million of his own money - including $10.8 million on television commercials - to finish second behind Nutter in the 2007 Democratic primary, had vowed to keep up with the mayor dollar-for-dollar this year in a rematch.

Neil Oxman, the man behind Nutter's campaign commercials, said local television sales staffs are "flipping out" about the lost revenue now that Knox has ruled out another run for mayor.