Street, Nutter showdown as ballot challenge fails

Milton Street is officially a candidate for mayor.

A Common Pleas judge rejected a challenge filed by Mayor Michael Nutter’s campaign to toss Street off the May primary ballot yesterday. Since questions about the validity of signatures on Street’s nominating petitions were withdrawn, the battle hinged on whether Street met residency requirements.

Nutter’s camp said Street signed off on documents stating he lived in Moorestown, N.J., prior to serving 26 months in federal prison on a failure-to-file-tax-returns misdemeanor conviction. Street retorted that he lived in Wissinoming and used the South Jersey home of “a love interest” as a secondary address.

The decision followed 20 minutes of actual arguments, which came after three hours of waiting for Judge James Lynn to review a seven-page brief from Nutter’s attorneys. Awaiting the decision, Street said, “When you have $1.8 million [in campaign donations] and the power of the mayor’s office, you ignore the guy who just got out of prison unless you’re not too politically bright.”

Street later declared that the challenge wasn’t about him. It was about preventing “the little people, the people labeled the ‘don’t counts’” from having a choice, and said, “Oh, I want to debate [Nutter] so bad.”