The big losers in last Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary: the voters of Pennsylvania
As long as our political system is awash in unaccountable money and untruthful negative ads; so long as our votes don’t count; and so long as our elected representatives don’t even have to tell us whom or what they support, nothing else in government is going to be fixed
Last Tuesday’s primary election in Pennsylvania was one of the sleaziest in recent memory.
Consider the following:
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other PACs poured millions into Senate hopeful Katie McGinty’s campaign in a last-minute effort to defeat fellow Democrat Joe Sestak. McGinty consistently ran behind Sestak in polls until the last minute blitz of TV commercials informed voters that she was one of nine kids, and was endorsed by President Obama. Not much else was revealed in her campaign ads.
Almost 2.4 million votes were thrown out. Those votes were cast for a ballot question about whether state judges should delay their retirement to 75. Shortly before the primary the judges and their allies worried they would lose and decided to redo the vote on the November ballot (they lost this time by 46,000 votes). Those 2.4 million voters had little or no idea their votes wouldn’t count.
The rest of the country learned (and complained) about Pennsylvania’s unusual and “archaic” convention delegate rules in our Republican presidential primary. Delegates can do pretty much what they want, and don’t have to tell voters whom they’ll support at the convention.
From all this we see that big money and backroom deals still sway the electorate in Pennsylvania.
And that’s too bad.
Democrats are increasingly criticized for searching out and backing big-money candidates to compete against well-heeled Republican candidates, rather than fighting this money trend and backing candidates with fresh ideas, and little money.
McGinty is a beneficiary of this mentality, even if she didn’t raise the big money herself: national Democratic Party funds meant for a general election were used by party officials to buy her primary nomination.
So what we have with McGinty looks a lot like Republican Lite.
The Democrats, like the Republicans, have lost touch with the electorate, and no doubt are helping to feed the rise of Donald Trump.
Washington Post complains of ‘sleazy’ McGinty ads
McGinty’s last-minute TV ads, and one in particular financed by the PAC Emily’s List, drew the wrath of the Washington Post, which called the ad “sleazy.”
(“Emily’s List sleazy attack ad in the Pennsylvania Senate race,” reads the Washington Post’s headline.)
McGinty’s TV ad told viewers,” Joe Sestak supports a plan that the New York Times reported makes cuts to Social Security benefits.”
But, the Post’s Fact Checker column reports, “Sestak never supported the specifics of the plan highlighted by Emily’s List; he offered just vague expressions of interest in tackling the challenges posed by systemic budget deficits.” Moreover, “Sestak was not on the commission,” mentioned in McGinty’s ad, “and while in Congress he never cast a vote regarding its provisions.”
“When Emily’s List accuses Sestak of wanting to cut Social Security benefits, it is actually referring to a proposal embraced by Obama,” the Post complains. This is all the more ironic since it was President Obama who was helping to bail out McGinty with these last-minute ads and endorsements.
In the days before the primary, Sestak’s campaign complained to the TV stations about the misleading ads. But the stations refused to pull them.
“The television stations that refused to pull this ad should be ashamed of themselves — as should Emily’s List. This is simply a sleazy way to win a campaign,” writes the Post.
McGinty’s TV ad “is designed to have the ring of authority,” the Post complains, when actually it was just garden-variety political sleaze.
This unwittingly sums up the entire Pennsylvania primary, if not Pennsylvania government these days: sleaze masquerading with the ring of authority.
2.4 million votes won’t be counted …
Which brings us to the subject of the 2.4 million Pennsylvania voters who cast their ballots on the question of whether to keep the retirement age of state judges at 70.
“On April 20, 2016, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled that House Resolution 783, postponing the vote on Ballot Question 1, a proposed constitutional amendment relating to the mandatory judicial retirement age, will go into effect, and that the question should not appear on the Primary Election ballot,” the Wolf Administration tells readers on its election results page. “Because this ruling came so close to the April 26, 2016, Primary Election, it was not possible to remove it from the ballot. Any votes cast on Ballot Question 1 will not be counted/certified by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.”
This strange statement appears on the Pennsylvania Department of State’s webpage above the 2,376,049 votes that have so far trickled in on the measure, but which state judges and complicate officials will now somehow try to ignore.
Of course this is blatantly unconstitutional. But, as a luncheon companion said to me this week, “What court are you going to take it to?”
PA’s unbound GOP convention delegates
If you’re looking for more proof that Pennsylvania government and elections promote insincerity and disenfranchise voters, look no further than the sorry state of unbound delegates to the Republican national convention.
Pennsylvania awards one of the largest pools of delegates to Republican presidential candidates. Just don’t imagine those delegates will vote for your candidate, as the nation learned this week.
Republican convention delegates are like the rest of Pennsylvania judges and officials: they do whatever they want.
“Some said they believe it would be their duty, if elected, to reflect the wishes of the voters who choose them,” relates the Allentown Call. How’s that for a concept?
The big winner and the losers
The big losers in last Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary: as usual, the voters of Pennsylvania.
The big winner in last Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary was Gov. Tom Wolf.
Candidates supported by Wolf for the U.S. Senate and the attorney general’s office won.
“Yesterday, Democrats across the Keystone State made their voices heard in a spirited primary election and nominated bold leaders up and down the ballot who want to move Pennsylvania forward,” Gov. Wolf said in a statement. “Hillary Clinton, Katie McGinty, Josh Shapiro, Eugene DePasquale, Joe Torsella, and other Democrats need your help to take on Republican extremists like Donald Trump and Pat Toomey. The future of both Pennsylvania and our great nation is at stake.”
But it’s rather hard to embrace any of these candidates and their supposed positions if you can’t trust either the candidates or their positions.
So all this may yet blow up in Tom Wolf’s face.
Ballotpedia, for instance, suggests that the $1.5 million spent by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on McGinty could backfire.
“The expenditure was unusual as the money was spent as a coordinated expenditure from the DSCC, not the usual independent expenditure,” Ballotpedia reports. “This could potentially harm the Democratic Party in the general election, as there is a limit of $1.9 million that can be spent on these types of expenditures in Pennsylvania, unlike independent expenditures which have no monetary limit.”
RealClear Politics adds, “Sestak said the DSCC did the same thing six years ago, spending significant portions of coordinated money to back Sen. Arlen Specter – who had switched to the Democratic Party – and leaving little of it to be spent in the general election, which caused significant problems for Sestak’s campaign against Toomey in 2010.”
But fear not. There are ways around those pesky election finance laws.
“Filings with the Federal Election Commission, however, show that the DSCC gave the maximum amount to Sestak’s general election campaign six years ago and spent about $1.5 million supporting him,” RealClear Politics reports. “According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the DSCC also spent $8 million in advertisements against Toomey that wasn’t coordinated with Sestak’s campaign because of campaign finance rules.”
The real problem here is that the Democrats actually think they can take on Sen. Toomey using these sleazy methods, and that voters won’t notice, or care.
Toomey may be dead wood, but he hasn’t been accused of being rotten wood.
Let’s at least attempt to be honest. All this is simply manipulating voters, and isn’t changing anything.
So long as our political system is awash in unaccountable money and untruthful negative ads; so long as our votes don’t count; and so long as our elected representatives don’t even have to tell us whom or what they support, nothing else in government is going to be fixed.
Maybe that’s what these guys really want.
