By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: The first women and the first Democrat to be elected to the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General, Kathleen Granahan Kane, was widely thought to be a breath of fresh air.
For 32 years, Republicans owned the office, generally allowing businesses to rape and pillage Keystone consumers. Her predecessors’ version of attacking political corruption was to prosecute highly visible Democrats and, less frequently, unimportant Republicans. AG probes of their Republican business friends disappeared into a black bottomless hole.
Democrats had a lock on the state’s other “row” offices – Auditor General and Treasurer – still do – but laid down for an Attorney General campaign. When current Governor Tom Corbett was attorney general, he prosecuted Democrats while slow-walking investigations into convicted assistant PSU football coach and child molester Jerry Sandusky and his cronies’ machinations at Milton Hershey Trust.
The stench of 32 years of injustice, internal corruption and shenanigans that made Pennsylvania government a laughingstock was supposed to end last year. Thought to be the best candidate ever fielded by Democrats for Attorney General, Kane defeated Patrick Murphy in the primary.
Murphy, an Iraq War veteran and former Congressman, was probably the second-best AG candidate to ever run for the Democrats. Both were superior to Dem candidates in the previous eight attorney general campaigns.
However, that was then.
Today there are at least as many critics as cheerleaders. Kane puts up a weak defense to accusations that she is just another “member of the boys’ club.”
Her husband, Christopher, controls a large non-union Scranton-based trucking company. Kathleen was a supporter and worker for President Bill Clinton in the 90s and Sen. Robert Casey in 2010.
In-between, in 2008, she was a contributor to the campaign of Tom Corbett, running for a second term as attorney general. That same year Corbett hired Kathleen’s sister, Ellen Granahan as a prosecutor. Identical twins, the women sharpened their skills as prosecutors in the Lackawanna County District Attorney’s office.
Both focused on putting away child predators. In fact, with Ellen as unit head, the AG office has helped put away three times as many molesters this year as last.
How Ellen has been elevated to Deputy Attorney General in charge of the child predator unit is now in question. Along with the promotion came a 20 per cent pay raise, to $83,423.
Kathleen Kane denied any ethics violations in the elevation of her twin sister. She claims her first deputy attorney general, Adrian King, promoted her sister.
King formerly worked in the office of Gov. Ed Rendell with his brother-in-law John Estey. Estey was chief of staff for Rendell and has recently been appointed an administrator in the $8 Billion Milton Hershey Trust.
The Hershey Trust was an issue during last year’s attorney-general campaign. Corbett forced another GOP candidate to drop out, clearing the way for a run by David Freed, son-in-law of former AG LeRoy Zimmerman.
Zimmerman served a five-year term as Hershey Trust chair, in one year alone drawing about $500,000 in fees. During Zimmerman’s reign, he and several trustees used charitable assets illegally for free rounds of golf, spa treatments and limousine rides while being paid $1,000 per hour for meetings.
These allegations were made by a former Hershey Trust executive, Robert Reese, while Corbett was attorney general. Much more details are available in several stories carried by www.newslanc.com, a respected media site covering state government.
Under Corbett, it was hard to tell whether the Sandusky probe or the Hershey investigation proceeded at the slower pace. Both Kane and Freed said they would increase the pace of the Hershey matter as winner of the AG office.
Just four months after Kane took office she announced that the Hershey investigation was completed. No charges were filed or reforms suggested.
Eight months after taking office, Kane has been unable to determine if Corbett slow-walked the Sandusky child predator probe. Evidence of either taking the time to benefit his governor’s campaign or that it proceeded at a normal pace is within Kane’s office as many with knowledge still work there.
At least four top managers under Kane are holdovers. Also, Katherine Corbett Gibson, the Governor’s daughter, was hired by the AG office in 2012 and remains employed there under Kane.
BOTTOM LINE: Like a confirmed member of the “boys’ club,” Kathleen Kane makes little attempt to clear the air on this assemblage of facts.
