As a second strategy for civic reform, Seventy employed an unusual measure for a nonpartisan organization: it established and financed its own independent political party in 1905. The “City Party’s” formation played a major role in harnessing the reform insurgency that hit Philadelphia following Durham ’s proposal to lease the city’s gas works to UGI. Seventy's "City Party" financed and managed candidates in six elections and succeeded in electing reform-minded citizens to municipal office. Despite the success of this endeavor, Seventy disbanded the party after 1907, when it learned that such direct participation in electoral politics jeopardized its non-partisan status.
Seventy also sought to improve elections and government in Philadelphia by drafting and lobbying for reform legislation in Harrisburg (the City's laws were in the hands of State legislators until 1949). Seventy's efforts were instrumental in winning key election and civil service reforms, and in the creation of a municipal court for Philadelphia . After several years of lobbying for a revised form of government in Philadelphia , Seventy won a major victory with the passage of a new charter for the City in 1919. This charter incorporated many of Seventy's proposals for reform. The centralization of power in the hands of a much smaller City Council and the increase in the City's ability to operate its own public works was a step forward in tracking responsibility.
