Features: Who Really Runs This Town?

11.Brian Roberts
 chairman and CEO, Comcast.
Rank in 2000: 9

Consider the numbers. Actually, consider one number: 23 million. That’s how many cable subscribers Comcast will have if the feds approve its bid for a chunk of Adelphia Communications. And the nation’s biggest cable company (nobody else is even close) continues to get bigger. Along with television subscribers, Comcast now has more high-speed Internet subscribers than anyone else in the country, which gives it the potential to become like Microsoft in Seattle or Coke in Atlanta: a locally based mega company with huge sway — in this case, through executive VP David L. Cohen — in myriad local projects.

Strength: If it’s possible to fly under the radar while controlling more cable boxes than anyone else in the country, being tagged “America’s newest media emperor” and getting your mug in Vanity Fair, Roberts, 46, does so.

Weakness: Has a limited presence in the civic life of the city. his low profile is mitigated somewhat by Cohen’s (#5) involvement in the United way and other causes.

12.Hugh Long
CEO, Wachovia Bank.
Rank in 2000: Not on list

Georgia-born Hugh Long arrived in Philadelphia as the CEO of Wachovia Bank’s mid-Atlantic division less than three years ago and started asking pointed questions: Why wasn’t the business community more of a community? Why didn’t the Greater Philadelphia region feel like a region? And why did embarrassments like the federal probe fit so neatly into everyone’s pre-shrunk expectations for the city? Long, 54, prodded local business leaders by flying them to meet peers of their Southern competitor cities and leading tours of foreign investors interested in locating businesses in the region. His most enthusiastic vote of confidence in the city came this summer, when he agreed to help spearhead Philly’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

Strength: His newcomer’s spirit. one local real estate magnate compares Long’s idealism to Robert Kennedy’s.

Weakness: since he’s a regional head, his oomph (and staying power) is ultimately in the hands of corporate Headquarters.

13.John Dougherty
 business manager, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98.
Rank in 2000: 67

Union boss. Delaware River Port Authority commissioner. Chairman of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. Treasurer of the Philadelphia Democratic Party. Mayoral aspirant. Take your pick: Each has a place in the many lives of Johnny Doc, 45. But the best description these days may be “generous.” Between 2003 and 2004, Dougherty’s union spent almost $3 million on political activities. That level of giving, in addition to the army of IBEW members at Doc’s command, has made him a player, to the point that the GOP has made tentative overtures to get him to run for mayor as a Republican in 2007.

strength: A formidable ground operation, personal charm, and a source of political money that makes an ATM seem inefficient.

Weakness: Inspires more dread than devotion among city’s players, and his refined approach probably won’t make people forget the strong-arm tactics his boys have employed in the past, such as Local 98 members heckling Sam Katz’s wife at public events during the last mayoral campaign — or to obscure his union’s lily-white membership rolls.

14.Vince Fumo
 Democratic State Senator.
Rank in 2000: 8

Sure, the feds are sniffing around Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, the nonprofit with which he’s closely tied. His long-simmering antagonism with the Inquirer has boiled over into a full-scale pissing match, and he isn’t exactly chummy with either the Governor or the Mayor. But it would be a mistake to consider any of this fatal to Fumo’s career. He is, save David L. Cohen (#5), the smartest man in Philadelphia politics, freakishly adept at surviving political storms — and wildly successful at bringing home the bounty. He still has signature moves: In recently offering to help the Inquirer save jobs, Fumo made himself look good (constituents are constituents, even if they work at the Inky) and the PNI brass look like imperious, money-grubbing bastards.

Strength: The only way he loses his seat is if he’s caught smoking crack, with hookers, on Kim Jong Il’s yacht while getting a foot massage from Osama bin Laden — All of it paid for by the Independence Seaport Museum.* On second thought, probably not even then.
*Note to Richard Sprague: This is a joke.

Weakness: How much time you got? Backed neither Street nor Rendell in their respective runs for mayor and governor. The state’s dominant newspaper has practically painted a target on his forehead. And at 62, though he may not believe it, Fumo only has so many more races left in him.