page_title: 1963 Philadelphia municipal election
section_title: City Council
hierarchical_section_title: 1963 Philadelphia municipal election / City Council
caption_attribution_description: English: Most votes for council at-large candidate by ward, 1963
context_page_description: Philadelphia's municipal election of November 5, 1963, involved contests for mayor, all seventeen city council seats, and several other executive and judicial offices. The Democrats lost vote share citywide and the Republicans gained one seat in City Council, but the Democratic acting mayor, James Hugh Joseph Tate, was elected to a full term and his party maintained their hold on the city government. The election was the first decline in the Democrats' share of the vote since they took control of the city government in the 1951 elections, and showed the growing tension between the reformers and ward bosses within their party.
context_section_description: Philadelphians elected a seventeen-member city council in 1963, with ten members representing districts of the city, and the remaining seven being elected at-large. For the at-large seats, each political party could nominate five candidates, and voters could only vote for five, with the result being that the majority party could only take five of the seven seats, leaving two for the minority party.
  As in the mayor's race, a group of ADA-endorsed Democrats tried for nominations to City Council. In the at-large races, all five incumbents—Paul D'Ortona, Leon Kolankiewicz, Walter S. Pytko, Marshall L. Shepard, and Mary Varallo—were endorsed by the party's ward leaders, while liberals led by Clark pushed the candidacies of Lynwood F. Blount, Gordon Cavanaugh, Edmund B. Spaeth Jr., and Joy B. Takiff. Eight Democrats affiliated with neither of those factions also entered the race. The incumbents won easily, with vote totals ranging from 105,382 for Shepard to 71,852 for Pytko. The highest vote total for the insurgents was Takiff's 32,665. Incumbent Democrats in the 2nd, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 10th districts also fended off primary challenges easily. The Republicans nominated five for the at-large seats without opposition, including incumbents Thomas M. Foglietta and Virginia Knauer. After the primary, Sheriff William M. Lennox denounced the challengers, calling the ADA "utterly repugnant to the people of this great historic city" and saying that "this self-proclaimed reform group should answer the questions on its 'Red China' allegiance which it evaded throughout the campaign."
  In the at-large seats during the general election, as in the mayor's race, the Democratic share of the vote decreased but they still reelected all five of their candidates. Republicans reelected incumbents Thomas Foglietta and Virginia Knauer to their two at-large seats. In the district races, there was more change. Republicans defeated incumbent Democrats in the two seats representing Northeast Philadelphia in races that The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Joseph C. Goulden said turned on City Hall corruption and civil rights issues. The Democrats gained one seat back in the northwestern part of the city when Isadore H. Bellis narrowly defeated incumbent Stanley B. Smullen in a recently reconfigured 8th district. Democrats retained their hold on the remaining seven district seats, though with reduced majorities.
caption: Most votes for council at-large candidate by ward, 1963
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