Schmidt is one of four candidates for city commissioner, the office that oversees elections. He's one of two - the other is Stephanie Singer - who would help pump fresh blood into Philadelphia politics. The incumbents, Democrat Anthony Clark and Republican Joseph J. Duda, are also in the race. The top three vote-getters take office in January.
Neither Schmidt nor Singer has ever held elected office, but their professional backgrounds have more than prepared them for the commissioner job. Schmidt was an auditor with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and Singer is a former math professor who figured out how to post city election results online while the old regime acted like that was something only Harry Potter could conjure up.
It will require a rare bit of Philly ticket-splitting for the newcomers to win, though. Schmidt is a Republican and Singer's a Democrat. But that's just one more good reason for those who give a damn to elect these two and shake up City Hall.
Clark and Duda, along with chairwoman Marge Tartaglione, who lost her bid for reelection in the May primary, represent the "speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil" of Philadelphia elections.
As Schmidt said in an interview: "If you attend the city commissioners' meetings, especially the ones immediately following elections . . . it's a parade of people coming forward with complaints about what went on at their polling place. And having attended these for the last couple of years, the most shocking thing about it is it's the same people, doing the same things, in the same places, every year. . . .
"Complaints go to the city commissioners to die."
For example, he predicts the return next month of a perennial problem at a polling place at Fourth and York:
