The two faces of Ed Rendell

By Dick Miller

WE.CONNECT.DOTS:   – Rigging a general election is a “crime.”  But seldom is that label applied when the bad guys cheat in a primary election.

A primary election is often rigged by an established party campaign committee.  Donors contribute funds to help defeat candidates of the opposition party.  Re-routing those bucks to defeat one Democrat over another is a fraudulent conversion.

Former Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Ed Rendell qualifies as an “expert” witness.

In the Washington Post, one week ago today, Rendell was quoted as follows:

“Myself and other Democrats who were Clinton supporters, we have been saying this was serious.  It truly violates what the DNC’s (Democratic National Committee) proper role should be.  The DNC did something incredibly inappropriate here and needed to acknowledge that,” added Rendell who once also served as a DNC chairman.

The Post story was about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida member of Congress, in her final days of a five-year stint as DNC chair.  A leak of 20,000 DNC emails exposed her role of overseeing favoritism for the past two years of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy over Bernie Sanders’s efforts in the presidential race.  The DNC had not endorsed either one.

The top-ranking Democrat Party official (and some of her staff) were caught tipping the balance in Hillary’s favor.  This was that rare smoking gun.

Both major parties are known to unfairly favor certain primary candidates, even when there has been no formal endorsement by the committees as a whole.

This year establishment Republicans tried the same approach on behalf of Jeb Bush.  Pathetic as a candidate, Bush failed to respond and Donald Trump wrestled control of the GOP machinery.

A social revolution led by Sanders, not even a registered member of the Democrat Party, threatened to dislodge Hillary from her long-intended mission.  Gov. Rendell was deemed “quotable” on this incident . . . at least by the Washington Post.

Since leaving the governor’s office in early 2011, Rendell has been a “talking head,” paid by NBC, for free to others, poised to make rain for his law firm or a personal client.

Clinton directed millions in contributions from her wealthiest donors for the past two years into over 30 Democrat state committee coffers to influence the votes of “super” delegates.  Hillary won super delegates by a 10-to-one margin.

The financial chicanery was documented in February by Bloomberg Business News and in April by a respected left wing blog known as “CounterPunch.org.”  Perhaps this issue was not raised last week because Sanders had known about it and, reportedly, had even considered pulling the same stunt.

Rendell, being a former chair of the DNC and a consummate insider, had to know of these dealings.  He certainly knows how to rig Democrat primary elections.  He played a major role in blocking Joe Sestak from a nomination to the US Senate this past spring.

That story begins six years ago.  Rendell, President Obama, US Senate Democrat leaders, organized labor and other powerful Dems first coaxed Sestak to leave his Congressional seat.  They expected Sestak to challenge longtime Republican stalwart Arlen Spector for his Senate post.

Suddenly Spector concluded the only way he could save his Senate seat was to change parties.  Democrat leaders decided to throw their weight behind Spector and told Sestak to drop out.  Sestak, a former Navy Admiral and national security advisor to President Clinton, not only did not withdraw, but upset Spector in an un-rigged 2010 Democrat primary.

These same Democrat leaders, including Rendell as Governor, starved Sestak of campaign funds and he lost narrowly to Republican Pat Toomey in a Republican voting year.

Sestak began a six-year odyssey to take another shot at Toomey.  He generally supported the Democrat ticket in the intervening years, making hundreds of personal appearances at Party functions in every county.

Early this year it became publicly apparent Sestak was not wanted on the Democrat ticket by the power brokers.  U.S. Senate leader Harry Reid and his heir apparent Chuck Schumer openly said they didn’t want Sestak.

Either getting his orders or acting on his own, newly elected Gov. Tom Wolf handed up Katie McGinty to be the candidate who would prevent Sestak from getting to the fall ballot.  McGinty had been an environmentalist in the Rendell administration.  She had also been an important cog in Wolf’s efforts to get his first budget passed, an event that failed miserably.

Rendell became McGinty’s campaign chair.

PA Democrat Bob Casey – holds the other Senate seat — apparently had little input with these power brokers.  They decided Sestak would not be his junior lawmaker, even if it meant misappropriating campaign funds to corrupt a primary election.

Casey not only did not resist, he, too, endorsed McGinty.  This was Casey’s way of paying Sestak back for his endorsement of Casey’s re-election bid in 2012.

The US Democrat Senate Campaign Committee poured at least $3.5 million into advertising intended to defeat Sestak.  Sestak quickly ran out of money and lost to McGinty.

Even President Obama and V-P Joe Biden endorsed McGinty in the primary.  In this Senate campaign, the only bigwigs playing by the rules were Hillary and Bernie Saunders.

In both campaigns, DNC secretly helped Clinton and McGinty.  Money donated by party faithful to be spent for Democrats against Republicans, instead was used to defeat other Democrats.  Permission was not asked, nor was explanation made to the donors.

Bottom Line: Small wonder that rank-and-file in both parties have lost faith in their government and their political parties.