By Dick Miller
WE CONNECT.DOTS: Pennsylvania Attorney-General Kathleen Kane has chosen to be a major player in this year’s governor’s race. But to what end?
She pops up in two important categories, without being a candidate.
First, she competes for precious campaign funds with the eight Democrats hoping to be the next Governor. While she is barely into her second year of her first four-year term as the state’s top legal officer, her campaign fund raising activities continue.
Recently her name needed to be on the “to” line of all checks written during a solicitation at the home of a wealthy Comcast executive in Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Kane showed at the annual Pennsylvania Society gathering in New York with Democrat fundraiser Aubrey Montgomery in tow.
We will know the fruits of Ms. Montgomery’s year-long efforts when all political committees file annual reports at the end of January. Her numbers will be compared with Corbett because he was in the middle of his second term as attorney-general when he moved into the Chief Executive’s mansion. During his first year as A-G, 2005, Corbett reported raising $350,000 in contributions, according to Associated Press.
Kane reported in January of last year, just taking office, having $82,000 in the bank.
No one is asking “for what purpose the money?”
Speculation has it she is routinely preparing a run for re-election in 2016 and/or a shot at Governor in 2018, if the Democrats should botch a “sure thing” this year.
Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, wrote “Kane, 47, denies any aspirations beyond her job as the state’s top cop. Yet three people (close to her) told the Philadelphia Daily News she may challenge Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.”
If her eye is on Toomey, then Kane has other problems.
First, is she taking political funds under Pennsylvania law that sets no limits for donor giving? That only complies for campaigns for state and local offices. Campaigns for Federal offices such as US Senate cap contributions.
Married to a wealthy Scranton trucking executive, Kane began her 2012 run for state attorney-general with $2 million in family funds. In 2016, if she decides to run for a Federal office, Kane can go back to the family vault and donate all the money she raised under the wrong rules to United Way.
Kane has another more formidable challenge, if she wants to go to Washington.
Opposition turf to Sen. Toomey since November, 2010, has belonged to Joe Sestak, an early retired Admiral and former Congressman from SE PA.
Sestak shocked the Democrat machine by upsetting the late Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2010 primary.
Specter, a power in Washington for decades, switched parties and — with the blessings of Pres. Obama, Sen. Bob Casey, former Gov. Ed Rendell and many top party and labor chiefs — attempted to remain in the nation’s most prestigious club.
Rank-and-file Democrat voters rebelled and handed Sestak a major victory.
Democrat bosses had the final say. Openingly criticizing Sestak for daring to even run against Specter, they saddled him with a listless campaign for Governor in the fall.
Sestak loss the 2010 general election to Toomey by a respectable margin, but has been campaigning for a repeat match in 2016 ever since.
That means both Kane and Sestak are competing for precious political funds in 2014. Sestak however begs under the more restrictive federal rules where even the most wealthy are limited to how much he can receive. Kane, otherwise, raises money under Pennsylvania’s wild west “no limit” contribution rules, allowing lawyers in frequent contact with her public office the opportunity to write high four-digit and five-digit checks payable to “Kathleen . . .”
Kane’s second impact on this year’s governor campaign is even more important.
“Did Gov. Corbett, while he was attorney-general slow-walk his investigation into child molestation charges against ex-Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky to benefit his political aspirations.”
The Penn State nation wants to know. These people believe if Sandusky had been prosecuted earlier, damage to the University might have been less. In addition, fans of the late head coach Joe Paterno, believe his reputation might have not been so tarnished if he could have defended himself more aggressively before he died.
Kane promised during her 2010 campaign she would open an investigation into Corbett’s timing, which she did. That probe is now a year old.
Some claim she is taking too long for a rather simple task. She will spend as much time explaining how long the investigation took as why the results.
Bottom Line: Kane cannot maintain her newly acquired power-base in Pennsylvania politics by taking valuable campaign cash away from candidates for other offices. She is also past the point of no-gain in the Corbett slow-walk probe. If her turtle-speed investigator says Corbett took too long, Republicans will say the timing of the announcement is political. If Corbett’s investigation is judged to have been timely and mostly proper, Kane will be castigated as another “member of the club.”
Disclaimer: This writer was a long-time supporter of Specter, even when he was a Republican. He switched to Joe Sestak in 2010 and was delighted with that outcome. The writer is one of the hosts for a fundraiser for Sestak next month in Western PA.
