A part of a RealReporting.org/Newslanc.com series
Here come the prosecutors
Corruption in the Shapp administration, and what to do about it, not only resulted in a constitutional amendment to elect the state’s attorney general in 1980. It became the preeminent issue in the 1978 campaign for governor to replace Gov. Shapp. Five former prosecutors sought nominations for governor that year.
Richard Thornburgh set the prosecutorial tone on the campaign trail. Thornburgh was a former Nixon-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and a former Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
In campaign appearances Thornburgh said he’d counted 60 people who’d either been indicted or convicted during the Shapp administration. Gov. Shapp, for his part, characteristically replied, “Thornburgh says today out of 107,000 or thereabouts state employees there are 60 people who have either been indicted or convicted. Now I think that’s a pretty low percentage.”
If elected governor, Thornburgh promised, he’d take a get-tough approach of a prosecutor to the state’s highest office.
Thornburgh was elected. Under Thornburgh, however, corruption arguably not only got worse, criminal activity became much more vicious and outlandish, and institutionally protected.
The years would prove that a prosecutor by nature is not the most balanced, fair, nor competent individual to place in the highest office. Prosecutors by nature are prosecutorial, accusatory, and often tend to see and present things in stark black and whites, with little or no nuance, nor impulse for the whole truth or fairness.
Most prosecutors (there are exceptions) are not used to telling people to be fair, to listen to all sides, to suspend judgment, or to wait until the jury is in before rushing to judgment, as a leader must often do. Prosecutors, instead, are used to telling a jury to ignore the other side of the story, to render a guilty verdict, and to throw the book at those he or she is prosecuting.
For the next thirty years, beginning with Dick Thornburgh, Pennsylvania would be morally and politically hobbled by a long line of ethically challenged prosecutors either in the governor’s office, or vying for the governor’s office. Coincidentally or not, Pennsylvania never has been in such a state of moral and political decline as now.
The prosecutors have brought their own peculiar brands of corruption to state government. Cronyism and cover-up, particularly in the justice system and the courts, would become a growing problem. Another big problem would be misuse of the justice system for personal or political ends.
Of these former political prosecutors vying for the governor’s office, only one successful candidate — Ed Rendell — has not been a Republican.
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The State AG and bad Governor circus has made PA a laughingstock.