NEWSLANC EDITOR: This is the appropriate response to an incumbent whose performance is thought to be subpar. We vote them out, not conduct “inquisition by indictment” because there is not way to re-call them in Pennsylvania, as in 19 other states.
By Kevin Zwick
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Aug. 20) – State Rep. Todd Stephens announced his candidacy for Attorney General on Thursday, saying Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s troubled first term has “shattered the faith” in the state’s criminal justice system for many.
“I think it calls you to action,” Stephens, R-Montgomery, said in an interview with a few reporters in Harrisburg. He said it’s less about Kane’s “vulnerability” than it is about her “inability” to lead the office in the right direction.
Kane, despite facing criminal charges and calls to resign from top Democrats, said she is seeking re-election. In 2012, she became the first woman and Democrat elected to the post. At a recent public appearance in Harrisburg, Kane defended her tenure in office by touting an “800 percent increase in child predator arrests and 30 percent increase in drug arrests.”
Stephens joins fellow Montgomery County legislator Sen. John Rafferty, who announced his candidacy in June and said there is a “black cloud” over Kane’s office.
In his travels to dozens of counties, Stephens said political and law enforcement leaders want a candidate with “with proven prosecutorial experience.” He was an assistant prosecutor for a decade in Montgomery County and was appointed a federal prosecutor prior to his election to the state House in 2010.
January’s endorsement vote appears key to Stephens’ run for AG. He wouldn’t say whether he would stay in the race if he didn’t receive his party’s endorsement.
“I fully expect to receive the endorsement in January,” he said.
To do so, he’ll have to out-game Rafferty, who has a leg up in the endorsement process with the support of National Republican Committeeman and GOP powerbroker Bob Asher, a member of the GOP’s leadership committee which makes endorsement recommendations to the full Republican State Committee.
“As I go out and discuss my experience, and I think that’s what distinguishes us,” Stephen said of Rafferty, “we have different experiences.”
Rafferty, who’s been in the Senate since 2003, is a former deputy attorney general who ran criminal investigations and oversaw grand juries from 1988-91, and calls himself the “chief law enforcement legislator” in the General Assembly. In 2012, he was in the attorney general’s race for about a month until Gov. Tom Corbett endorsed Cumberland County DA Dave Freed and Rafferty dropped out, clearing the field for Freed ahead of the party’s endorsement vote.
“We feel very confident of where we are,” said Mike Barley, Rafferty’s campaign manager, pointing to the endorsements from the PA State Troopers Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the PA Professional Fire Fighters Association. “That shows confidence they have in him to be the next attorney general.”
Stephens said he also plans to run for his state House seat while seeking the Republican AG nomination, saying his constituents have encouraged him. Rafferty, elected in 2014 to a four-year term, will retain his Senate as he runs for AG.
Democrat Jack Stollsteimer, a former assistant DA and assistant U.S. Attorney from Delaware County, is the only other Democrat to jump in the race.
