Back in October 2003, three days after a FBI bug was found in Mayor John Street’s office, Street had a phone conversation with his friend Ron White in which they discussed using the race card as a tactic in the upcoming mayoral election against Rep candidate Sam Katz. The election was less than a month away, and polls showed it was going to be close.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has obtained a detailed account of the conversation, which was intercepted on White’s cell phone. According to an article published yesterday, Street agreed with White’s suggestion that they cast the FBI’s investigation as a racist plot, as opposed to a bona fide investigation of criminal activity:

Ronald A. White [after complaining that an article about the probe had maligned the mayor]: They’re overstepping the line. That’s going to give us the justification to do what we got to do now.

Mayor Street: Right, right.

White: We got to be sensitive. We didn’t want to get into no race thing. They did this.

Street: Right.

White: So now we got to go with it.

Street: We don’t have much choice but to go with it.

White: We got to go with it, John. We got to go with it. We got to get serious now, man. We got to go at these guys with everything we’ve got.

Street: Right.

A spokesman for Street denies that the mayor ever actually used the tactic that was disussed in the phone call. But not long after the call, numerous big-name Democrats such as Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ed Rendell, Chaka Fattah, Nancy Pelosi, Terry McAuliffe, and James Carvile, insinuated that the FBI investigation was politically motivated and/or racially motivated.

Just so no one forgets, here are some choice quotes gathered by Philadelphia Daily News columnist Michael Smerconish nearly a year ago:

His Honor [Mayor Street] on the “Today” show: “I think there will continue to be a huge amount of speculation and concern that some of this is racially motivated.”

Mme. Hillary in a campaign appearance for Street: “It is a puzzle that we would be close to an election and have these charges being hurled.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi came to Philadelphia and said she had “serious questions” about the Bush administration’s possible role in the investigation.

Ragin’ Cajun Carville: “You decide your future. You don’t turn it over to John Ashcroft.”

DNC head McAuliffe: “You know what they did to get power, imagine what they’ll do to keep it.”

Mayoral spokesman Frank Keel: “Do we believe that it is out of the realm of possibility to have been perpetrated by the national Republican Party to help Katz and Bush? We believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility.”

Then there was the Rev. Robert Shine, president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia. In a sermon he called the investigation a “deliberate effort to smear” the mayor, and it was all about winning Pennsylvania for Bush in ‘04. “That is… the diabolical goal of the opposition party,” Shine was quoted as saying.

State Rep. James Roebuck: “People remember Hoover and Martin Luther King. The kinds of tactics the FBI used during the most heated period of the civil rights period was designed not to investigate the Klan but to undermine the civil rights movement.”

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah: “Now, in the 11th hour of tough campaign, the Republicans here and in Washington have placed a cloud over our mayor with outrageous tactics and shameful leaks.”

The Democrats who attacked the FBI haven’t provided a scintilla of evidence that the White House or John Ashcroft acted improperly or that the FBI was motivated by racial animus or a political vendetta. Here’s Smerconish again:

Here was last week’s big headline:

“27 Charged in Drug Probe that Sparked City Probe.”

In other words, the municipal corruption probe began with a drug investigation in urban America, and NOT on the Grassy Knoll, or Area 51, and certainly not in the Bush White House.

According to the news stories, the feds were wiretapping an alleged drug ring three years ago when they heard the voice of Imam Shamsud-din Ali, who is close to Street. His phones then got tapped. And while listening to those lines for 18 months, the feds allegedly heard something that caused them to launch the probe of municipal corruption.

John Street and his minions portrayed what began as a federal drug probe as a partisan and racially motivated witch-hunt.

Unfortunately, Philadelphia voters decided not to let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. Street won the election by about 20 points.

(Hat tip: reader Richard Davis.)

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