In a crowded field, alum runs for City Council

Toy, a graduate of both the College of Arts and Sciences and what is now the Fels Institute of Government, is looking to break into the Council next fall as he runs for one of the five at-large spots on Philadelphia's governing body.

Since leaving Penn in 1981, Toy has worked successfully in the public sector, with a dizzying list of charitable associations under his belt.

His positions have ranged from a post on the Governor's Commission on Asian American Affairs to his role running the city's Brownfields program under Mayors Wilson Goode and Ed Rendell.

"Through my years of experience on the public sector, … I've seen there's a need for new leadership," Toy said in an interview.

Toy may still face a huge hurdle, however, with a crowded field of 20 other Democrats and five Republicans also vying for the five at-large positions.

A third-gerneration Chinese-American, Toy hopes that the contacts he's made both in his work with non-profits and due to his ethnic background will give him enough support to navigate the field.

"I bring … the ability to connect to people that are not connected to the city now," he said.

And his connections were on full display Friday, when, at the Jack's Firehouse meet-and-greet, most of the 40 or so people there seemed to be friends of Toy.

As campaign manager Anthony Ingargiola joked, "It's like six degrees of Andy Toy."

While Toy's reformist instincts are what made the Philadelphia City Paper characterize him as "Councilman Nutter-esque," he may also have picked up some of the former councilman's foibles.

Toy is hardly a natural orator and doesn't speak in the nice, crisp soundbites that can be easily digested by supporters and the media. It took some prodding for him to open up about what his experience was like as a Penn undergraduate, and later as a graduate student.

"In the beginning, [college] was a fair amount of partying, but then I got more serious as time went on," Toy said, adding that, because he submatriculated into a master's program, "my senior year was not a coast. I was working as a first-year grad student."

And as a native Philadelphian, Toy said he was able to break out of the Penn scene and spent a lot of time off campus, especially because he moved into West Philadelphia after living in the Quadrangle his freshman year.

But for Toy, it looks like personal charisma is a lot less important than his experience as a social activist who, while never holding political office, knows the ins and outs of government.

Toy may thus appeal to an audience like the one found here at Penn: educated and tired of corruption and government inefficiency.

And he already has at least one Penn faculty member on board.

Jean Knight, a Spanish lecturer, was at the event Friday night after circulating Toy's nominating petition among her friends on the fifth floor of Williams Hall. She calls Toy "new blood for the city administration" while admiring what she terms his boundless optimism.

Democratic political consultant Larry Ceisler agreed, saying in a telephone interview that "Andy is very well respected and very well liked."

Ceisler noted that Toy's connections to city politicos - Ceisler himself worked with Toy at the Commerce Department - have enabled him to build up a large base of support.

Now, according to Ceisler, Toy should court the Asian-American vote, despite the fact that he has "never played the ethnic card."

And to win, Ceisler said, Toy will have to make sure he's "at the top of people's minds" going into the voting booth.