The 5th Square's main mission as an organization is to bring about safer, cleaner streets, well-maintained parks, more and better transportation choices, and smarter land use as means to a more livable Philadelphia. As a means to achieve these policy goals, we will be supporting political candidates for city and state office who share our values and sign on to our platform. Our city has made a lot of progress during the Nutter administration, but we need to elect many more smart, progressive, urban leaders to public office to achieve our full potential.

To help guide voters to the leaders with the right values and the right credentials to lead on these issues we're highlighting in this election, we've released a candidate questionnaire that we are asking all candidates for Mayor and City Council to answer. 

In the next few weeks, we will be endorsing candidates for Mayor and city Council primarily based on their responses to our questions, which are based off of our platform, though incumbent members of City Council will also be judged in part based on our review of their legislative records.

The questions included in the candidate questionnaire attempt to drill down to the hard conflicts at the center of many of the issues we're focused on, while also offering candidates the opportunity to contribute their own original thoughts and approaches to the problems we want to solve.

Realizing it is often difficult for candidates to cut through the noise of an election cycle, we're also offering the opportunity for Mayoral and City Council candidates to communicate directly to our voters, by writing blog posts for the 5th Square on a number of pre-approved topics. Click the link below to view the questionnaire, and check back soon because we will be posting the candidates' responses as they roll in.

The 5th Square Candidate Questionnaire (PDF)