This story starts long before Manny Morales was endorsed by the Democratic Party, in fact before Maria Quinones-Sanchez was elected to City Council. We could probably continue another decade or so into the past for relevant material, but to sufficiently understand the situation we are currently in with the 7th District Council primary, we’ll start almost 20 years ago, with the controversial 1998 election that unseated a state representative and resulted in a bribery trial for his successor. The political tale of the 7th District is not pretty and heroes are hard to find.

Last week we told you about the drama over Facebook posts attributed by Councilwoman Quiñones-Sanchez to her challenger, Emanuel ‘Manny’ Morales, and the greater dysfunction it represented within the local iteration of the Democratic Party. The Facebook posts, which all fall somewhere on a spectrum between, we’ll say, ‘social conservatism’ and explicit racism, have cost Morales the official party endorsement, though he maintains that he was not responsible for nor does he agree with the content of those posts.

The incumbent Councilwoman has never been endorsed by the Democratic Party, but she has been supported in her two previous victories by influential Ward leaders. This year the leadership voted unanimously to back Morales, with one abstention. Carlos Matos, 13th Ward leader, told The Spirit that he and his colleagues withdrew their support this year, betrayed for the last time by Quiñones-Sanchez, he says. Both Matos and another important figure in the District, State Representative Angel Cruz, said they had put the Councilwoman in her seat in Chambers, and that she had turned her back on the people who put her in office.

Representative Cruz said that party leaders “have no working relationship” with the 7th District Councilwoman. What he told The Spirit, that Maria Quiñones-Sanchez is simply unwilling to work with the party, was the common sentiment shared by her current detractors.

“She ran her husband and her staff against all of us,” Rep. Cruz told The Spirit on Monday. “I haven’t spoken to the Councilwoman in seven years. I helped her with the party when nobody wanted her, I stuck by her, and I made her, I literally made her the Councilwoman.”

Representative Cruz has been the target of investigations and accusations for allegedly influencing elections. His 2001 trial for bribery related to the June 1998 primary ended with the jury deadlocked on two of several co-defendants, Cruz, and Carlos Matos, current 13th Ward leader, and prosecutors opted not to retry either man. Cruz was eventually cleared of accusations of polling-place intimidation during a 2010 election, and since not many people can brag about being recorded turning down money during a corruption sting, it’s only fair to note that Representative did just that in 2014.

Although the 2001 trial ended in dismissed charges against Cruz and Matos, the latter was convicted in a Camden Federal court in 2007 for bribing three Atlantic City officials. Matos became 19th Ward leader as soon he was released until a judge supervising his probation ordered him to give up the position, which he reclaimed it shortly after his probation ended. The Spirit asked Matos about that conviction, and whether voters should worry about his political activities given his criminal record.

“Nobody can say that I’ve ever taken money from anybody….what I have I earned, nobody gave me, and I certainly haven’t stolen anything. And if people felt that way I don’t think they would have kept me as a Ward leader,” said Matos.

He asked why it was important.

“Why would Maria use me four years ago to help elect her….if you talk to people like Angel Cruz, they’ll tell you that it was I that kept her in office.”

Loudly, he said that Ward leaders staked the communities’ trust in them “to give her the opportunity to do the right thing, and she failed to that!”

Politics always leaves some people holding broken promises, both the kind of promise made explicitly by candidates to potential voters, and a kind of promise unspoken, more an expectation on the part of a community or constituency, that their wishes will be understood and acted upon. Sometimes those expectations are reasonable and sometimes perhaps not, but the hurt feelings are real nonetheless, and the 7th District Council race is under the influence of powerful people who really are angry.

In an interview via telephone, Quiñones-Sanchez told The Spirit she believes the endorsement of Morales is part of Rep. Angel Cruz’s personal vendetta against her. She says that a coalition, headed up by Rep. Cruz, involving Rep. Leslie Acosta of the 197th legislative district, Carlos Matos, and others, has put aside differences to unseat her in the 2015 primary. Rep. Acosta could not be reached for comment.

“I think this is Representative Cruz, throwing the tantrums that he throws, being the one to want to say ‘it’s my candidate.’” Quiñones-Sanchez says Morales is a “literal and figurative” “bottom-of-the-barrel candidate,” endorsed by the party after the first pick, backed by State Senator Christine Tartaglione, declined to run, as did a second choice originally boosted by Cruz.

“Cruz was the one that led Bob Brady and the party to embarrass themselves. Cruz has to own this,” said the Councilwoman. She also said that the Representative knew of Morales’s controversial Facebook postings before he backed his endorsement. When interviewed by The Spirit, Cruz explicitly denied he had such knowledge.

This much personal baggage and imported drama makes teasing issue-focused criticism out of either candidate’s camp difficult for reporters. One can only imagine how things sound to most voters, once everyone’s word regarding every accusation made by everyone with a political stake in the geographic region of the 7th (which also intersects with the political maps of ten Wards, seven State House legislative districts, and the 2nd State Senate District) makes its way to homes in Kensington. But the feeling of betrayal is a common theme in conversation going door-to-door in the District, and in extensive interviews with past and current political leadership. Also not new are the real issues of governance, and life-or-death, underpinning all of the emotion—maintenance of political power for a core group, and control of the land.

Aaron Kase reported in the 2010 Philly Weekly article “A Divided District” on conflict between the Councilwoman and the Eastern North Philadelphia Coalition (ENPC), a group of churches, community groups and civic associations concerned with gentrification in Philly. The ENPC wanted a community land trust, where property would be controlled at local level and leased based on neighborhood needs for organizational use, green space, housing, and development. Quiñones-Sanchez has been a driving force behind the Land Bank Ordinance in Philadelphia, but the law gives control of the land to a City agency, and applications to develop it are still decided based upon Councilmanic prerogative, which local political watchdog Committee of Seventy says “in a nutshell…refers to the near-absolute powers wielded by City Council members over land development projects in their districts.”

Whether you believe it was entirely voluntary or prompted by Brady, Morales has given up the official party endorsement. Yet key Ward leaders still support him, such as former Quiñones-Sanchez ally and 33rd Ward leader Donna Aument. Aument says she backed Quiñones-Sanchez with other Ward leaders in her first election, and then again in 2011, when the Ward leader said the incumbent had lost the support of everyone else.

“When Maria came along I thought, wow, we have a woman, we’re going to be taken care of very well,” Aument said. “And I supported her a second time, I was the only ward leader to support her a second time, because, you know, I thought we had to give her a second chance.”

The party seemed to mean business with the announcement of Morales’ endorsement and candidacy, and primed to take advantage of a mid-five-figure cash-on-hand sum in the Quiñones-Sanchez’s 2014 campaign finance filing. The party endorsement is no longer a campaign issue, as it seems very unlikely that Ward leaders will vote it to Quiñones-Sanchez. Morales also has the weight of at least two legislators behind him, though observers have expressed doubt that Cruz and Acosta can raise money in the party and from labor unions during a hotly contested mayoral primary.

Morales’ gave a press conference last week to make it clear that he was not leaving the race and is attempting to put “Facebook-gate,” as it has somewhat irritatingly become known, behind him. His media relations director, D. Michael Blackie, spoke to The Spirit about dealing with the fallout from the social media fiasco and his candidate’s plans for, and chances in, the May primary.

Blackie says he was contacted by Rep. Leslie Acosta to be Morales’ spokesperson, and agreed to take him on as a candidate after interviewing and assuring himself that the man he would potentially put in office had views that were compatible with his own.

Mr. Blackie is in a frustrating position: he must now fight to get attention for campaign-level municipal service issues over the noise of an early scandal. His spokesman said that Morales is also very concerned with vacant land issues and likes the idea of Land Bank. But like the ECNP in 2010, the disillusioned constituency reported by Donna Aument, and the block captain next to the Land Bank’s first project, who we reported on last week, he does not wish to see a new city agency controlling the land. Blackie says Morales wants a community land trust with local management. One can only assume that means, at least in part, involvement of the Ward leaders in granting land to organizations and developers.

“At some point ended up with me calling him a name, and he unfriended me,” Quinones-Sanchez of her prior interaction with Morales, on Facebook, years ago.

Three names the Morales campaign said during their press conference had been given to the District Attorney, accusing the Councilwoman of fraud, claiming the three names on Quiñones-Sanchez ballot petitions were of deceased persons. The Spirit can verify, despite limited Spanish skills, that at least two of these persons are indeed alive, and a third reportedly died the day of Morales’ press conference. But, no, this isn’t over. Quite sadly it seems unlikely for the long-suffering people of the 7th District that this protracted feud will ever calm. Even before his embarrassment, Morales was considered the underdog against the incumbent.

The Spirit will continue to investigate and cover developments in the 7th District race, with the goal in mind of giving voters the information they need.

Stay tuned for more election coverage in The Spirit as the primary nears. The Declaration is an alternative news source for Philadelphia, seeking to highlight city politics, art, culture and activism.

Read more from Kenneth lipp and dustin slaughter at www.Phillydeclaration.org