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INSIDER INFO -- MARCH 2008
A legend departs
New worry
2nd Democrat targeted
Early start or not
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A legend departs
After three decades building power, Sen. Vince Fumo calls it quits as he preps for federal corruption trial
After three decades rising to power, we suddenly get to find out that Super Vince is, well, human and vulnerable.
The 30-year state Senate veteran announced this past Wednesday that the physical and emotional toll of being under federal investigation and facing a lengthy corruption trial next September caused him to drop out of a four-way primary contest for his South Philadelphia-based Senate seat.
“There are a number of reasons why I have chosen to retire, but above all I simply don't think it is right for me to ask the voters who have put their faith in me all these years to consider voting for me one more time while there is a cloud hanging over my head,” Fumo said in a Philadelphia news conference with Gov. Rendell at his side..
“While I am confident voters would have treated me fairly and considered my record above accusations, I simply believe it is time for our district to turn the page and look to new, young leadership.”
Fumo’s departure from the race leases electricians’ union head John Dougherty, a Fumo political rival, as the undisputed front-runner in the race against the remaining two candidates, Anne Dicker, a civic activist and Larry Farnese, an attorney who ran unsuccessfully for the state House in 2006.
After Fumo suffered a heart attack nearly two weeks ago, political insiders renewed speculation that the Philadelphia Democrat would pull the plug on his re-election bid.
“I don’t run away from fights, I win them,” the 30-year Senate veteran said last year.
But on Wednesday, after a week to mull over his future in a hospital bed, Fumo announced he was calling it quits. He told reporters that the heart attack wasn’t driving his decision, but rather several factors were, most importantly, the pending federal trial.
“I realize that the situation I find myself in makes it difficult for my voice to be heard above the constant chatter about my upcoming trial. I am sorry that is the case. Last week as many of you know, I suffered a heart attack. I did not make the decision to retire because of health issues. But I did take time while recovering in the hospital last week to reassess my life and set a few new priorities.
“To be frank, the stress of being under indictment has taken a very real emotional toll, a toll that does not afford me the ability to run the kind of campaign I would like to run and would have run in the past.”
The announcement came as a shock to many, though not surprising given the stress Fumo is under, and the health challenges he’s faced lately, analysts said. Fumo had been airing TV ads for weeks touting his Senate record, in preparation for a tough primary next month.
G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said before Fumo’s retirement announcement that he would have the money, and the record of delivering for his district, to fight hard against his three primary challengers despite the federal indictment.
The Harrisburg-based Capitolwire Internet news service reported that internal campaign polls were split on the outcome of the primary before Fumo’s exit. Dougherty’s polls and others showed Fumo leading the four-candidate field, while Fumo’s polls reportedly had him coming in second place.
Fumo need not look any further than the 2006 defeat of former Senate President Pro Tem Robert C. Jubelirer, R-Blair, to see that when an incumbent struggles to get much more than 40 percent of the vote, there’s trouble brewing. However, analysts said with three opponents splitting the anti-Fumo vote, the senator had a better chance of holding on.
But Fumo has more than political survival on the mind these days.
Weakened by the heart attack and his recent back surgeries, Fumo was emotional as he announced his planned retirement Wednesday. But he told reporters that if his girlfriend, Carolyn Zinni, had not ignored his protests and called an ambulance any way, he would have left more than the Senate.
Longtime Fumo critic, former Philadelphia City Councilman Jimmy Tayoun, now a newspaper publisher and political gadfly, told Capitolwire that Fumo “didn’t always keep his word but he did what he had to and he did it better than most, for a long time. He wasn't going to survive a primary.” Tayoun noted that he wasn’t talking about Fumo’s political survival, but the specter of another heart attack.
Fumo won’t be leaving the Senate until his term expires Dec. 1. Rendell, who joined Fumo for the announcement, said Fumo was sticking around at his request.
“I said, ‘Vince, no matter what you do, take a couple of weeks, get back to Harrisburg, we need you,'” Rendell said.
It’s no secret that Fumo is a powerhouse in Harrisburg, and during Rendell’s tenure, he has played a key role negotiating with Senate Republicans to legalize slot machines, fund economic stimulus programs and expand state funding for senior prescription drug coverage.
And even a weakened Fumo is integral now to Rendell’s ability to enact an energy-borrowing plan, health care insurance expansion and the upcoming state budget and all the infrastructure investment Rendell is proposing.
Analysts say, though, that whoever succeeds Fumo won’t be able to replace him and the power structure he built over the years.
“Legislators like Fumo only come around every generation or two,” Madonna told the Daily News. “It's hard to imagine what the Capitol will be like without him. It will be a long time before someone with his acumen, his political abilities, replaces him.”
As if to sum up Fumo’s stature and its loss to the city, the Philadelphia Daily News had an editorial cartoon this week that showed the state Capitol building with a giant-sized human-shaped hole in one of its walls with the caption, “Vince Fumo has left the building!”
After former state Rep. Linda Bebko-Jones, D-Erie, and Rep. Mike Diven, R-Allegheny, were forced into retirement in 2006 due to inadequate and fraudulent ballot petitions, things got even worse for both of them.
Diven’s petitions were found to have the signatures of dead people on them, and an aide was charged, leading to a plea to a minor offense. But Diven, a Democrat converted to a Republican, escaped prosecution.
Then in recent weeks, Bebko-Jones and her former chief of staff were also charged with forging dozens of signatures in 2006. Bebko-Jones dropped her candidacy, a move that in the past generally ended the matter.
But Corbett then filed criminal forgery charges against the pair, which shocked insiders.
The Democratic primary opponents to all three say Blackwell, Payton and Farnese – all separately – forged names on nominating petitions to get onto the ballot.
All three deny the charges, and so far this spring the state courts have been very hesitant to knock people off the ballot.
Guy D. Lewis, an emergency-room nurse seeking to unseat Payton, is threatening such a complaint unless Payton drops his re-election bid.
Staff for Lewis gave Payton – a rising young Democratic Capitol star -- a simple ultimatum, the Daily News reported:” "We're asking for Payton to step down out of the race or we'll forward this to the attorney general," said Bruce Kilpatrick, Lewis' deputy campaign manager. "That was our game plan from the beginning. Now that this [the Bebko-Jones prosecution] has come out, we'll play the card a little sooner."
Kevin Harley, spokesman for Corbett, said if charges involve “an incumbent state representative, we have original jurisdiction."
Lewis’ challenge says Payton himself signed as the signature collector of petitions with dead people listed as helping him get on the ballot.
"If that's what they want to allege, it will all come out in court," Payton told the newspaper. "Anybody can make claims, but it's another thing to prove it."
Veteran political reporter Bob Warner wrote: “a Daily News review of the three Philadelphia Democrats' petitions shows that in each case, scores of names and addresses appear to have been written in the same hand.
Two of the campaigns admit they've got signature problems - but not enough, they say, to jeopardize their spots on the ballot.”
Payton told the paper: “We were running a campaign and some folks involved in the campaign were not working as hard as they should have been. Those folks that were involved, not putting forth the required effort, have been disassociated with the campaign. But at the end of the day, I think we will be fine in terms of the petition challenge."
Farnese’s campaign manager said the campaign had not meant to submit some of the controversial nominating petitions, which they had flagged as problematic, and were upset when they found they had mistakenly done so.
Farnese and Blackwell also expressed confidence that their petitions would keep them on the ballot, and that appeared to be the case, with court action pending, and future state Supreme Court appeals still available as of press time for this issue of the Insider.
Nor is it only Democrats who may face referrals to Corbett for action.
Rep. Maureen Gingrich, R-Lebanon, survived a court challenge to her petitions, but primary challenger Russ Diamond said her candidacy should be struck because Gingrich admitted she signed off on petitions that contained names of voters who said they either did not sign a petition she circulated or said they did not sign her petition at all.
Commonwealth Court Visiting Judge Keith Quigley accepted Gingrich’s testimony that she had not knowingly engaged in fraud.
Diamond, who gained notoriety as a protest leader to the 2005 legislative pay raise, said he might take his challenge to the Supreme Court and take his evidence to Corbett.
But whether Corbett, who is setting a new precedent by prosecuting Bebko-Jones, will file charges against any of these four is a question hanging over their heads.
One of the few cases where an opponent was dumped off the ballot this spring benefits U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown. Murtha’s only filed challenger, Iraq war vet and Republican Bill Russell didn’t file enough valid signatures, garnering only 997 – just three short of the 1,000 needed to qualify. Russell still hopes to win a write-in in the Republican primary and challenge Murtha in the fall.
And in one of the funnier stories of this type this year, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Frank Shimkus, D-Scranton, challenged Shimkus’ petitions, saying he did not really live at the address cited on the petitions, on Boulevard Avenue in Scranton.
So the opponent, Kevin Murphy, tried to surprise Shimkus by going to that address to give him a copy of the court challenge. Shimkus was there, he said, telling the Scranton Times, that he didn’t think to ask Murphy why he came to the home he thought Shimkus didn’t live at, to give Shimkus court papers.
Commonwealth Court also ruled state Rep. Jennifer Mann, D-Lehigh, can stay on the ballot for state treasurer, despite two separate challenges to her petitions by two of the premier lawyers in the field: Gregory Harvey of Philadelphia and Larry Otter of the midstate.
And a Butler County minister triggered a major battle in court by claiming to forget that he had signed a petition for Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler. When Metcalfe’s campaign filed to disqualify primary challenger Robin Redding from the ballot, she found minister Gary Weston, and got him to sign an affidavit saying he never signed Metcalfe’s petition.
Except that once that affidavit was filed in court, Weston remembered he had signed the petition and then forgotten doing so, at a Rotary Club meeting. Ultimately Judge Barry Feudale left Redding on the ballot.
2nd Democrat targeted Another non-Bonusgate prosecution of a Democrat raises questions about Attorney General Corbett
A former state representative from Erie late last month became the second Democrat to fall to Attorney General Tom Corbett’s crackdown on political corruption, when she and a top aide were charged with submitting dozens of fraudulent nominating-petition signatures in 2006.
The story casts Corbett, a Republican seeking re-election this fall, as the public corruption-snuffing law enforcement officer, but some analysts believe it also puts pressure on him to show he isn’t unfairly targeting Democrats.
The Senate GOP general counsel, Steve MacNett, has confirmed that investigators in Corbett’s office sought reams of information in February on financial and personnel matters of the caucus. Those subpoenas are part of Corbett’s ongoing probe into legislative bonuses in 2005 and 2006, nicknamed Bonusgate among Harrisburg insiders.
Corbett’s Bonusgate investigators, MacNett said, have sought information on Senate GOP compensation rates, bonus history and travel expenses, among other things.
Before that, the probe had largely focused on the House Democrats – with good reason. House Democrats doled out $2.3 million of the $3.6 million in bonuses handed out by all four caucuses in 2005 and 2006, including $1.9 million given in 2006 as and after Democrats won back control of the House from the GOP.
Corbett’s investigation is examining whether those taxpayer-funded bonuses were paid to staffers who did campaign work, which would violate the state ethics law.
While no charges have stemmed directly from that probe, Corbett’s concentrated effort in routing out public corruption has ensnared two former Democratic lawmakers so far –Linda Bebko-Jones of Erie and Frank LaGrotta of Washington County. LaGrotta struck a plea bargain on his charges and is serving a sentence of restitution and house arrest.
Bebko-Jones – known as LBJ in Erie political circles – has her legal odyssey just beginning.
She and her former chief of staff Mary B. Fiolek were charged in late February with forgery, tampering with public records, false swearing, false nominating signatures, fraudulent filing and multiple conspiracy counts. The charges were filed after an eyewitness told an investigating grand jury that the two women faked signatures on nominating petitions using names from the phonebook and a personal address book, several newspapers have reported.
Corbett said at the time the charges were filed: "State legislators are responsible for protecting the public trust and ensuring that they uphold the law and abide by it. Nobody is above the law in Pennsylvania, and that includes our elected officials.”
In the fall, LaGrotta was charged with hiring two relatives as “ghost employees,” paying them more than $26,000 for legislative work they never performed. Last month, he pleaded guilty to two felony conflict-of-interest charges and was sentenced to six months of house arrest, along with probation and community service. He also was ordered to pay back the more than $25,000 in false wages his two relatives received.
Corbett is unapologetic about the charges against Democrats, but has held his tongue when reporters try to delve deeper into what might be coming down the road in the Bonusgate probe. Corbett has said only that his investigation on legislative bonuses and public corruption will go “wherever the evidence leads.”
Corbett’s likely Democratic opponent, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, raised questions in the fall about Corbett’s Bonusgate investigation targeting House Democrats too much. Other Democrats, including Democratic State Committee chairman T.J. Rooney and Gov. Ed Rendell, have raised questions about the direction of Corbett’s probe, as well.
But analysts say Corbett doesn’t necessarily have to charge a Republican to avoid any perceptions problems, although he does have to make sure he isn’t coming across as being unfair in prosecuting only Democrats.
“I don't think it is an absolute imperative that he comes down with Republican indictments,” wrote Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, in an e-mail. “As long as he has strong cases against the Democrats that he has indicted to date, he can cover himself politically.
“However if he seems to be reaching with his pursuit of these incidents then he opens himself up for intense criticism. As of now I don't think Morganelli or Governor Rendell's criticisms would be politically potent. As long as his cases are solid he can buffer attacks but if his ducks are not in a row he will clearly become vulnerable to charges that he is playing politics.”
For now, the news of the Bebko-Jones charges has sent shivers up the spines of two House Democrats from Philadelphia facing ballot petition challenges that include allegations on fraud.
Last week, the Philadelphia Daily News reported on the two ballot challenges targeting Reps. Tony Payton and Thomas Blackwell, both city Democrats.
Blackwell told the paper he wasn’t concerned about the challenge and that signatures on his petition looked fine to him.
But Payton admitted there were some problems with his petition.
“We were running a campaign and some folks involved in the campaign were not working as hard as they should have been,” Payton told the Daily News. “Those folks that were involved, not putting forth the required effort, have been disassociated with the campaign. But at the end of the day, I think we will be fine in terms of the petition challenge."
The Daily News reported that it didn’t appear that the attorney general’s office was investigating either case as a criminal matter, but Kevin Harley, a spokesman for Corbett, told the paper that could happen if someone makes a complaint.
Guy D. Lewis, an emergency room nurse challenging Payton in the primary, said he may file such a complaint.
Payton responded in the Daily News story that if his challenger’s campaign files such a complaint, “it will all come out in court. Anybody can make claims, but it's another thing to prove it.”
With two Democratic notches on Corbett’s belt already, that prospect may not be one Payton, or Blackwell, wants to contemplate.
Early start or not Allegheny Exec Dan Onorato’s cross-state trips are an early harbinger of a 2010 quest for governor
Is Rendell fatigue setting in among political insiders and voters alike? Perhaps so.
The Philadelphia Democrat’s job approval numbers have fallen significantly since his 2006 re-election and he now stands where he was midway through his first term – with lousy poll numbers in all regions of the state except in his beloved Greater Philly base.
Perhaps another sign is the increased interest in who will be his successor with two full years yet to go in Rendell’s term.
Perhaps that can explain why Capitolwire.com, the Internet-based news service on state politics and government, devoted not one, not two – but four stories based on a speech given by presumptive Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County executive.
Onorato, also a Democrat, laid down some markers for a potential 2010 run for governor in a Harrisburg speech last month, while making it clear his primary focus was still on continuing to fix Allegheny County’s problems first.
And as history shows, starting early in a race like this is vital. Former Gov. Tom Ridge, who started out with less of a base than Onorato from less populous Erie, started running four years out and formally announced 22 months before the 1994 general election for governor.
Early starts are not unheard of in such a high-profile, high-stakes race that is almost always contested by both parties. Philadelphia millionaire businessman Tom Knox has already said he wants to run for governor or U.S. Senate in 2010, and Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham is actively exploring a race for governor, all but declaring early.
Auditor General Jack Wagner, who is up for re-election this year, Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll and Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Mellow may also put their names in the running.
Onorato has advantages over the rest of field. First, voters in the Pittsburgh media market - which encompasses more than one voter in five - know him well and polls there give him popularity ratings similar to Rendell’s in Philadelphia. Now that media market is only half the size of Rendellphia, the Philadelphia TV market, but it is a good start.
Second, he has raised more money and has the capacity to spend more than any rival but the charisma-challenged millionaire, Knox, who placed second in the Philadelphia mayoral primary last year after outspending all his rivals by millions.
Third, he has so far navigated the Allegheny County Executive’s duties without losing popularity or being touched by scandal by fixating on the property tax issue and vowing to avoid raising it in Allegheny County if he can avoid it.
While he joked in Harrisburg that he doesn’t go into bars anymore because he is unpopular there because of his new 10-percent drinks tax to fund mass transit – the only option Harrisburg gave him to fund that option – he has started to inoculate himself on even that issue by proposing other kinds of measures he would favor to replace that tax.
But he has hung tough by saying he won’t give up the unpopular drinks tax until Harrisburg gives him a replacement levy. “I made a campaign pledge not to raise the property tax and that was my own other alternative. I would not do it,” Onorato said of the despised drink tax.
Still, the tax has created a greater uproar and back lash than even Onorato or others could have imagined. One political insider there, out for dinner in a Pittsburgh restaurant, had the waitress present the check to him and point out that $8 of it was “courtesy of Dan Onorato.”
Onorato has emerged as the early favorite of even many Rendell insiders, who see him as the best chance for the Democratic Party to reverse a pattern that has held true since 1946: Republicans hold the governor’s office for eight years and then the Democrats do.
Rendell’s term will end the fourth straight 16-year cycle of alternating parties holding the governor’s office, spanning 64 years.
He also has a Mayor Rendell-like record in the county, reducing the workforce, streamlining operations and saving money.
But while praising Rendell in his speech, Onorato sharply differed from the governor on business taxes and gun control and while defining himself as “personally pro-life,” he outlined an abortion stance rejected by most anti-abortion groups.
During a Q n A session at the Pennsylvania Press Club, Onorato said most gun control measures, like those he voted against when a member of the Pittsburgh City Council in the early 1990s, were “feel-good measures” that were not as effective as “aggressive policing," community outreach and programs for youths.
Then, when Capitolwire asked him if he supported any of three specific gun control bills that Rendell has called morally imperative and vital, Onorato said he did not back any of them: a bill limiting purchasers to one handgun per month, to stop illegal re-sales of handguns to felons and youths; a bill allowing municipalities to have stronger gun control laws than the state has; and a bill to require the immediate reporting of stolen guns, to keep re-sellers from claiming theft to avoid prosecution.
Onorato told Capitolwire: “We all know what the problem with that is, and it’s the other side of the coin. To do that you would have to have some type of registration and some type of reporting. And again, instead of me struggling with that type of issue, and using that kind of political capital, I think the real issue here is to deal with where the crime is, the way we did it back home. And again, it’s not just aggressive policing, that’s key, that very aggressive policing is important. But you’ve got to follow that up with outreach, you’ve got to follow that up with preventive work, you’ve got to follow that up with human services, and all of this is what works. And it worked for us.”
While Rendell has blistered other Democrats who take that view as “cowards,” he did not attack Onorato. Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo told Capitolwire: “Clearly the governor has a different point of view on several of these points.”
Onorato also touted a bigger cut in the Corporate Net Income tax than Rendell supports, and without Rendell’s condition that would allow fewer companies in this state to evade that levy altogether by incorporating in Delaware..
“We cannot be the highest corporate net income tax in the nation,” Onorato said, adding a few sentences later: “That just knocks you off the list” of companies looking for a new site in a new region. The state's corporate net income tax rate is 9.99 percent, the second highest in the nation.
Onorato, like some House Democrats, also wants to allow companies to recoup early-year losses by deducting them from taxes owed during later, profitable years.
That is something Rendell has declined to propose, but has sometimes made part of his final budget proposals, at lower levels than proposed by lawmakers.
But on abortion, Onorato tacked liberal, after tacking conservative on the gun issue.
While considered a Casey Democrat on social issues “Pro-Gun, Pro-Life, Pro-Labor,” Onorato said
During the luncheon Q and A, Onorato said: "I, like probably everyone in this room, want to see the number of abortions go down. We probably all have different ways we like to see that [happen]. But you say ‘are you pro-life or pro-choice?’ I’m personally pro-life, but I also believe you’ve got to be reasonable about it if you want to lower the number of abortions.
“You’ve got to be willing to say ‘we understand you need family planning, we understand you need to educate and talk about contraception.’ You’ve got to look at the world and if you are pro-life, I believe there are exceptions out there that are very critical: the health of the mother, rape and incest.”
“I think that if you’re going to be pro-life, you have to talk about the issues that help lower the number of abortions, such as the family planning and contraception and those types of issues."
“I support the three exceptions to start with: health of the mother, rape and incest. I also support emergency contraception, I support family planning, and I support those types of issues.
Former Republican congressional candidate Charles Gerow, now a consultant for conservatives and Republicans, told Capitolwire: "That’s not a position that would suit many pro-life folks, as you know. The “health” of the mother has always been viewed as a giant hole through which a lot could be driven. … But there is a line in the sand for most pro-life activists between the LIFE and HEALTH of the mother. The “health” of the mother is viewed as far too broad (an interpretation) … and (is seen) as a legal loophole through which many abortions would be performed.”
But in the Democratic primary, opposing legal abortion is a negative, as Bob Casey Jr. discovered to his dismay in 2002, when it helped him lose that gubernatorial primary to Rendell.
And Onorato’s “personally pro-life” position while insisting on at worst, a weak ban, will make him more acceptable to abortion-rights-supporting voters, who constitute a majority of Democratic primary voters.
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