'' The Shame of a City '' is a 2006 feature-length documentary directed by Tigre Hill about the final month of the 2003 Philadelphia Mayoral Election . During that election , incumbent Democrat John Street sought to defeat his Republican challenger Sam Katz . Philadelphia is predominantly Democratic , but early polls showed Katz with a small lead . Twenty-seven days prior to the election , the FBI revealed that it was investigating Street for corruption , but polls showed that the public supported '' more '' Street after the scandal broke . Hill attempts to investigate how Street turned the corruption scandal into an advantage . The film is named after Lincoln Steffens ’ 1904 book , '' The Shame of the Cities '' , which sought to expose the wrongdoing of public officials in cities across the United States . Twenty-seven days before the election , an FBI bug was found in the mayor ’s office . When asked about the bug , the FBI admitted that Street was under investigation . The discovery at first seemed like a death knell to the Street campaign and a near certain victory for Katz . But Street and his supporters argued that the FBI investigation was an instance of institutional racial prejudice , polarizing the campaign . Moreover , Street successfully reoriented the campaign away from local issues and towards a referendum on the locally-unpopular , Republican-controlled federal government . As a result , Street won re-election by a sixteen-point margin even as his closest supporters were indicted
institutional racial prejudice
Institutional racism
The Shame of a City