Winners and losers for the week ending January 20

Why, hello, there! How are you? Anything interesting going on today in your world? Nope, nothing much of note happening here, either. Just your typical, run-of-the-mill quadrennially significant Jan. 20.

Well, since nothing else is going on today, may as well get to …

WINNERS

Josh Shapiro and Joe Torsella: the commonwealth’s newly sworn-in attorney general and treasurer, respectively, take over offices that are in dire need of a decisive reset following scandals that did in their predecessors.

Jim Kenney: Philly’s mayor had a productive week that included a number of appearances at the annual US Conference of Mayors, coming out in support of a ban on the widely discredited practice of “gay conversion therapy” and standing up to Comcast’s threatened suit over legislation that would address wage discrimination in the city.

Christopher McGinley: Marking the second consecutive week that Temple lands a W, the professor at the school’s College of Education was chosen by Mayor Kenney to serve on the city’s School Reform Commission.

LOSERS

Seth Williams: That didn’t take long. After sticking the W last week for a providentially fractured field in his re-election bid, the Philly DA takes another L for being the recipient of a record-setting fine from the Philadelphia Board of Ethics and for being the subject of a billboard/lawn sign campaign by a Fraternal Order of Police eager to see a change at 3 Penn Square.

Dwight Evans: the freshman Congressman got an early wake-up call to the unforgiving nature of the national stage during an on-air dustup with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who took Evans to task for not familiarizing himself with President Donald Trump’s “Plan for Black America.”

Rich Fitzgerald: The Allegheny County Executive was forced to walk back his comments that the Allegheny County Jail’s inmate population was “the lowest it’s been since the jail opened”; in fact, it has increased 70 percent in the past 20 years. The timing of his comments was especially bad, considering the state’s plans to close two prisons this year.