Wolfe at City Council’s door

It doesn’t make sense to announce you’re running for city council outside of a closed office building, but that was exactly Matt Wolfe’s point on Wednesday.

As he yanked on the locked doors of the Philadelphia Gas Works offices in Center City, a crowd of about 50 supporters and a few curious passers-by on their lunch break cheered the Republican primary candidate.

“It’s ridiculous to have a consumer office where the hours are at the convenience of the employer and then irrationally, they’re closed on Wednesdays,” Wolfe cried out, calling PGW ”emblematic” of the ills of the current city council.

“Time and time again, they do things to chase jobs out of our city,” Wolfe said. “We need to come together and move forward together.”

Wolfe, 58, of University City, is a former deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania. He served as chief counsel of the Department of Labor and Industry under former Gov. Tom Ridge.

Wolfe ran unsuccessfully against Councilman Ed Neilson in a special election last year.

Joseph DeFelice, executive director of the Philadelphia Republican Party, said there’s a pretty good chance Wolfe will serve only one term.

“He’s not going in there to make friends,” DeFelice said. “He’s going in there to do the people’s business.”

Married to local GOP activist Denise Furey, Wolfe, a Penn and Villanova Law grad, maintains his own law practice in West Philadelphia.

Republican Councilmen David Oh and Dennis O’Brien are the incumbents seeking reelection.