Heat-stroke fatality ID'd as homeless mayoral candidate

Jesus White won 418 votes and a slice of fame last year as the city's first homeless candidate for mayor, but he died in obscurity last month of heat stroke just as his five-year wait for public housing was about to end.

Jesus White in 2007, while running for mayor. He died awaiting PHA housing. B9.

Jesus White in 2007, while running for mayor. He died awaiting PHA housing. B9.APRIL SAUL / Inquirer Staff Photographer

by By Jeff Shields, Inquirer Staff Writer

Published Aug 8, 2008

Jesus White won 418 votes and a slice of fame last year as the city's first homeless candidate for mayor, but he died in obscurity last month of heat stroke just as his five-year wait for public housing was about to end.

White, 58, was found July 29 in the sweltering, second-story quarters he had rented for the last nine months at 2325 W. Thompson St. in North Philadelphia. His heart had given out days earlier to heat stress in a room without air-conditioning, according to the city medical examiner.

His identity went unverified until his daughter, Felicia Thomas, flew in from Florida and finally tracked him down on Monday. She was advised not to try to see his badly decomposed body.

He had been dead for "nearly a week," a Public Health Department spokesman said.

ADVERTISEMENT

White was last heard from July 24, his daughter said, and uncharacteristically didn't show up two days later for his job as a guard with Scotland Yard Security. Police were called when fellow tenants couldn't take the smell coming from his $250-a-month room.

White had been on the Philadelphia Housing Authority's waiting list for an apartment - 50,000 names strong - since Sept. 17, 2003, and was notified in June that his home had come in, PHA spokesman Kirk Dorn said yesterday.

White came in to PHA for a screening July 10, and PHA made what was to be a final call - to verify his employment as a security guard - this week. Scotland Yard Security responded that he was dead.

His daughter described him as a soft-spoken and neatly dressed man with a master's degree in music from Southern University. He could play the piano, flute and clarinet, she said. He held down his security-guard job while navigating the city's shelter system, deciding last year that he wanted to be mayor.

ADVERTISEMENT

Using $1,000 he had saved - "everything he had," said his daughter - he plunged into the crowded field for last year's Democratic primary. He made up posters of himself in a plaid sports coat and king's crown that read, "Vote White."

He preached "Safety, Solvency and Sobriety for All" and finished dead last - winner Michael Nutter outpolled him by 104,000 votes.

He said time he was running "for the redemption of the less fortunate."

He knew people laughed at him, his daughter said, but he said it didn't matter. "It was about being heard, and being accepted," she said.

ADVERTISEMENT

It was his second shot at office. In the small town of DeRidder, La., where the Army brat moved after spending his early years in Philadelphia, he had also run for mayor in 1989 under his given name, James Bolton.

He moved out of DeRidder in the early 1990s - he and Thomas' mother had divorced years before - and disappeared for about five years before surfacing in Philadelphia, his daughter said. He changed his name and let people know that he preferred the Spanish pronunciation (

hay-SOOS

) of his first name.

Thomas said she never understood why her father, a devout, fastidious man who spent four years in the Army, from 1977 to 1981, lived in shelters. "Why he chose to live homeless, I have no clue," she said.

He would haunt the Free Library, because he loved to learn, and lead prayer services at the Second Pilgrim Baptist Church at 15th and Poplar Streets. Now it will be up to the church to help raise money to get him out of the city morgue and provide him a proper burial.

"He already lived homeless," Thomas said. "I don't want him to die in the same way."

White is survived by his daughter; a stepdaughter, Theresa Bolton; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.