By Kevin Zwick
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire
SCRANTON (April 24) – Kathleen Kane became the first women nominated by any party to run for state attorney general.
Kane defeated former congressmen Patrick Murphy for the Democratic Party’s nomination Tuesday.
Unofficial results showed Kane, a former Lackawanna County prosecutor, defeating Murphy, 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent, with nearly all precincts reporting.
Kane will now face Cumberland County District Attorney Dave Freed, who ran unopposed for the Republican nomination, in the November general election.
She thanked supporters at the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel following Murphy’s concession of the race shortly after 11 p.m.
Kane told supporters she plans to continue campaigning on Wednesday morning.
“I’m ready to work. Are you ready to work?” she said to roaring applause from supporters and family.
The Democratic attorney general primary heated up after the Democratic State Committee failed to endorse a candidate in January, and weeks later, former Philadelphia prosecutor Dan McCaffery dropped out of the race.
Throughout the primary contest, Kane stressed her experience, with about 13 years as an assistant district attorney in Lackawanna County.
Murphy, who admitted to never taking the Pennsylvania bar exam and not trying a case in Pennsylvania courts, said his five years in the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps provided him with the experience to run the attorney general’s office. He took the Minnesota bar exam, not Pennsylvania’s exam, in order to receive the results faster before entering the Army. Pennsylvania has a reciprocity agreement with Minnesota, allowing those who pass the bar exam in one state to practice law in the other state as well.
Kane scored a key endorsement from former President Bill Clinton just weeks before the primary. Clinton appeared in TV ads, mailers and robo-calls on behalf of Kane. Kane was a regional volunteer coordinator for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and the Kane family supports a number of Democrats.
Murphy received endorsements from Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, the Philadelphia Democratic Committee, former Gov. Ed Rendell and the AFL-CIO.
His campaign message mostly criticized Republicans in the state Legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett for what he called attacks on core Democratic values.
For example, abortion ultrasound legislation proposed in the state House was a campaign issue, with both Kane and Murphy opposing the bill. Murphy went a step further to say he wouldn’t defend the state against a legal challenge to the legislation if it became law.
Murphy also targeted Kane with ads pointing to policies of Kane Is Able, a non-union, Scranton-based trucking and warehousing company owned and operated by the Kane family. According to a Murphy campaign memo, two Kane trucking executives were critical of organized labor, with one saying the Employee Free Choice Act “will make it easier for unions to ‘represent’ you, with all the corruption and associated union dues you’ll be forced to pay.”
Kane said she was pro-union, adding that it was “in my blood,” pointing to her father’s time as a union local president.
A majority of Kane’s campaign funding came from her husband Chris, who loaned more than 90 percent of the roughly $2.5 million raised by the campaign.
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NEWSLANC EDITOR: Kane won by a margin of approximately 54% to 46%.
