PHILADELPHIA — At 6 p.m. on a temperate Tuesday last September, a group of wealthy donors sat down for dinner at Philadelphia's swanky Steak 48, known for its aged cuts and high-grade Australian and Japanese wagyu beef.
Each attendee had been asked to pledge at least $100,000 to an organization called For A Better Philadelphia, a political group that has raised more than $3 million to try to elect Jeff Brown as mayor of Philadelphia.
Brown, a longtime ShopRite proprietor who had not yet entered the mayor's race, had been intimately involved in inviting the donors and planning the event, which was billed as a "Roundtable Dinner & Discussion with Jeff Brown."
