A meeting of the Northeast Ward Leaders has been scheduled for The Ashburner at Ashburner & Torresdale Avenue for Jan. 20 where the guest of honor is CONGRESSMAN BOB BRADY.

Most of the Northeast ward leaders are expected to be in attendance.

SEAN MCALEER is expected to announce shortly he is a Democratic candidate for City Council in the 10th District. Sean is the son of likable MIKE McALEER, the ward leader in the 66th Ward. He has extensive experience with City government, having worked in the office of Councilman at Large JAMES KENNEY where he is community planning liaison.

SHARIF STREET had a fundraiser at Galdo’s. Sharif is a candidate for Council at Large. Talking about Council at Large, and assuming the Democratic City Committee will not endorse anybody for Mayor but rather leave it open, does this mean each of the Mayoral candidates will have his own slate of candidates? Thus, you would have the City Committee slate which would have all of the incumbents; but how about CHAKA FATTAH or DWIGHT EVANS or MIKE NUTTER or TOM KNOX — are they going to have a slate of candidates? Thus the interest of Sharif Street in running for City Council. If the Mayoral candidates do not have slates, it would seem BOB BRADY would perform his usual role in putting together the City Committee slate — which would thereby end up being the “Brady slate”. However, if there were incumbents who are not supporting Brady, would Bob have a slate of candidates from the City Committee slate? That gives rise to another question: will any Mayoral candidate other than Bob Brady be contemplating partial slates? Again, if an incumbent is not supporting the Mayoral candidate, will he feel the need to have his own slate?

In light of these potential problems, it seems the Mayoral candidates will become more and more popular with incumbents and with people who are deciding to run for the first time. There is already one candidate who has declared to run against incumbent SHERIFF JOHN D. GREEN. Among the Council Members at Large, of the five Democrats who were endorsed in the last election JUAN RAMOS was the fifth out of five to be elected. Seems he would be the most vulnerable, or perhaps WILLIAM GREENLEE, who is the newest Councilman at Large.

MIKE STACK’S Saint Patrick’s Party will be a buffet that includes garden salad, Irish soda bread, gammon steaks (ham) with whiskey sauce, corned beef and cabbage, roasted salmon with creamed leeks and onions, colcannon (hearty Irish dish containing potatoes, cabbage and bacon), Irish macaroni and cheese with Guinness, and for dessert Irish cream chocolate mousse cake.