How Political Interests Stand In The Way Of Change

Philadelphia doesn't.

Many city courts have sharp limits on nepotism and political patronage.

On Philadelphia's court payrolls, it sometimes seems as if nepotism and patronage are the rule.

With some exceptions, changes that work well in other court systems have not been tried here.

Why?

Generation after generation of judges, lawyers and public-interest groups have complained of slack ethical standards and the ever-present drag of political influence on Philadelphia's Common Pleas and Municipal Courts - indeed, on the state's entire court system. But the problems outlast the critics.

"Our experience," says Bennett G. Picker, Philadelphia Bar Association chancellor and an advocate of change, "has been very frustrating."

Judge William M. Marutani, a firm believer in tough ethical standards, says after 10 years on the Common Pleas Court bench: "I've pushed for a lot of things. Pretty soon, you stop pushing."

The system does have its supporters, who say that partisan election of judges is a good thing, and that it is unrealistic to expect a court system as big as Philadelphia's - 120 judges and 2,441 employees handling tens of thousands of cases a year - to exist without some problems here and there.

Those supporters include some of the city's best-known politicians and labor leaders, and some judges.

Patrick B. Gillespie, business manager of the 14-union, 60,000-member Building Trades Council of Philadelphia, says, "Don't take the right to vote away from the people." The council puts its money where its mouth is: Along with the Teamsters, building-trades unions rank among the biggest donors to judges' campaigns here.

"There may every now and then be a bad apple that gets elected," says Gillespie. "But they should not throw the baby out with the bath water."

James J. Tayoun, Ward 1 Democratic leader and former city councilman, goes even further, saying, "The overwhelming majority of the judges have acquitted themselves extremely well. . . . I find them all to be totally conscientious and sensitive."

State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.) says of the court system here: ''It's running pretty good. . . . It has its problems, as does any other political entity."

Yet a broad range of individuals - from Chief Public Defender Benjamin Lerner to former District Attorney Edward G. Rendell, from veteran plaintiff lawyer Marshall Bernstein to judges such as Marutani - see it differently.

They say that the court system too often fails to project an image of integrity, impartiality and competence, and that the failures are deeply rooted in how the city chooses its judges. The basic problem, they say, is that Fumo is right: The courts here are a political entity.

For decades, they say, the parties have endorsed and elected judges more for their party loyalty than for their competence or integrity, enabling them to decide between plaintiff and defendant, incarceration and freedom, innocence and guilt.

Politicians - ward leaders, party chiefs, City Council members, state legislators - also hold considerable sway in hiring many of the courts' employees. And worst of all, say Marutani and many others, some politicians seek favors from judges in court cases.

"As long as you have the political process of picking judges, there's no way you're going to have people who are completely free of political pressures," says Marutani. "All of us are subject to the political barons. . . . This system does require a major overhaul."

Says Chief Public Defender Lerner: "The problems are so ingrained in the political process that speaking out . . . even if you're head of the bar association, speaking out if you're a powerful district attorney, speaking out if you're writing editorials . . . makes no difference whatsoever. . . .

"There's a relatively small handful of people in the commonwealth who presently wield the political power needed to make the kind of basic decisions necessary. And those people are not interested in making those changes,

because it would dilute their own power.

"We're talking about the governor, leaders of the state legislature. We're talking about the leaders of both political parties in this city."

Lerner's view of the court system is shared by many of the city's prosecutors. One well-known prosecutor, former Deputy District Attorney Eric B. Henson, says: "In many ways, Philadelphia has the judiciary it wants."

If lawyers seem to do better in court after donating to judges' campaigns, Henson reasons, those lawyers' clients probably don't object. If a private conversation with the judge seems to help the case - or if a ward leader offers to call the judge for a favor - the client isn't likely to care about the impropriety of what lawyers call "ex parte" contact.

"The reason there isn't change is because enough people are satisfied that they can do as well in the system . . . through inappropriate behavior," Henson said. "Enough of them that there's not an outcry. Somebody or other benefits from the manner in which the courts' business is conducted."

Those familiar with problems of big-city courts here and elsewhere offer a number of fundamental proposals to improve the court system:

* Screen and appoint judges. Under this so-called merit selection system, used in varying degrees in 22 states, a politically balanced nominating panel that includes lawyers and lay people screens potential judges. A list of the best-qualified is sent to the governor, who chooses one. Judges later run in retention elections on a yes-no basis.

* Have a meaner watchdog. Some lawyers and judges say the state agency that monitors judges' conduct, the Judicial Inquiry and Review Board, needs to be more visible and less dominated by judges. As it is, most of the board's work is secret; the board may charge a judge with grave misconduct and not announce it for months. Five of the nine review-board seats automatically go to judges; on similar boards in most other states, non-judges are the majority.

* Ban or limit contributions by lawyers to judges' campaigns. If contributions are permitted, there should be rules to curb the appearance of impropriety, critics say. For example, if a case involved a lawyer who helped the judge's campaign, the judge would be required to disclose the campaign tie in court before hearing the case.

* Impose tougher restrictions on private communications between judges and lawyers for only one side in pending cases. Though such communication is illegal when it concerns the merits of a case, many judges and lawyers say that such ex parte contact occurs regularly. Pennsylvania's rule is less strict than the American Bar Association's model canon, which many states have adopted: "A judge should . . . neither initiate nor consider ex parte or other communications concerning a pending or impending proceeding."

* Adopt rules to discourage defense lawyers from pleading their own incompetence to get convictions reversed. Experts suggest the creation of a central registry to report each time a criminal lawyer makes such a plea. Experts also say the state's lawyer disciplinary mechanism doesn't deal with such cases, and that even if it did, it would be understaffed to deal with the volume.

* Require more disclosure of judges' finances. Though Pennsylvania judges do file disclosure forms, they aren't required to include much detail. The forms are filed in a place most citizens have never heard of: the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. Critics say the disclosures should be much more thorough and should be readily available in Common Pleas Court - as a guard against conflicts of interest in court cases.

* Hire only on merit. As it is, nepotism and patronage in court hiring are rampant; at least 30 of the 120 judges in Municipal and Common Pleas Courts have a relative on the court payroll. Some critics suggest a civil-service system for court employees. Others say Philadelphia could adopt the rule that exists in most other states: Avoid nepotism in hiring.

* Have a more independent president judge. Judges and lawyers say that the president judges of both Municipal and Common Pleas Courts are hamstrung as administrators because they must seek their colleagues' votes for re- election. Some critics suggest the job should be for one term only. Others say an independent authority, such as the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, should appoint the president judges.

* Increase judges' salaries. Many lawyers say that the best people in their profession don't consider becoming a judge in Philadelphia because the job doesn't pay enough. Common Pleas Court judges earn $65,000, Municipal Court judges $63,000. With those rates, says Bruce Franzel, chairman of the bar association's judicial selection committee, the image of Philadelphia judges is "not sufficiently glowing" to attract the best lawyers.

THE ELECTION OF JUDGES

There are differences of opinion regarding many of the proposals for change, but on one point people such as Lerner, Picker, Franzel and Rendell agree: Philadelphia needs a better way to choose its judges.

Bar chancellor Picker put it this way:

"We potentially compromise the integrity - and we absolutely compromise the appearance of independence - of our court system by having our judges go through the election process. And specifically, the problem arises with judges and judge candidates campaigning among lawyers who may appear before some of these judges at a later date."

Choosing his words with care, Picker said that elections also failed to produce the best judges. "The present system is not one which is designed to bring to the court judges who are of high quality - although many are - or who are independent," he said.

Says Public Defender Lerner: "We do have some good judges. . . . But under the system we have, it's more an accident than anything else."

Says Marshall Bernstein, a plaintiff lawyer who has tried cases here for 35 years: "I would say that because the political process is so deeply into the selection of judges, the quality of judges leaves something to be desired."

Says Rendell: "If a genie woke me up in the middle of the night and said, 'Mr. Rendell, you have one wish to (use to) clean up the judicial system in Philadelphia,' I'd clearly spend the wish on merit selection of judges. Then I'd go back to bed. I think until merit selection is in place, we will never totally cure the problems of the Philadelphia judicial system."

Even Edward J. Bradley, president judge of Common Pleas Court since 1975, praises the status quo with a faint damn. "I believe we have a good corps of judges," Bradley says. "I think the system of selecting them could damn well be improved."

Although two previous campaigns to adopt a merit-type system of choosing the state's appellate judges have failed, Picker and others still are optimistic on that point. But they say merit selection for the city's judges faces a much tougher battle.

Short of changing the method of choosing judges in the state, Bernstein says one simple step would help improve the existing process:

"Prohibit lawyers from contributing to the campaigns of judges."

Judge Marutani agrees, saying that such a ban also would eliminate what he called the terrorum effect on lawyers who felt they had to donate, or else face the judge's wrath in court. Terrorum is Latin for terror.

Cleveland's bar association has confronted the problem by urging all judicial candidates to pledge not to seek or accept donations larger than $50

from individual lawyers. Members of law firms can give $50 each - but with a ceiling of $500 per judge for the firm.

There is a built-in incentive for candidates who make the pledge and then get approved by a bar screening panel: The bar endorses and advertises them as a slate. Tom Brady, the association's executive director, says roughly 90 percent of judicial candidates make the pledge.

The Philadelphia Bar Association experimented with a similar rule last year but applied it only to incumbent judges rated as qualified by the association's screening panel.

CONTROLLING PRIVATE CONTACTS

As Rendell points out, the ex parte problem - judges having private contact with lawyers or others interested in court cases - is perhaps the hardest to control. "There are so many judges and so many ways to have ex parte contact," he said. Some lawyers and judges say that Rendell's own prosecutors have not been faultless on this issue.

In Chicago, after the FBI's Greylord investigations produced federal corruption indictments of nine judges and 22 lawyers, a new rule was adopted last year. It gives lawyers 48 hours to report, in court or in letters to all parties, any private contact with the judge in a pending case. Failure to report can result in disciplinary charges.

Lawyer Jerold S. Solovy, chairman of the commission that wrote the rule, says he does not want to hear about how some private communications with the judge might be too petty to report. "Look," Solovy says, "ex parte communication is the first step in corruption. You cannot corrupt a judge if you can't talk to him."

Solovy acknowledges that enforcement of the new rule will depend largely on lawyers' honesty. He is mindful of the common wisdom: "You always hear the cry, in a big-city court system, that the system cannot go on without ex parte communication." He says that if lawyers think that way, they should imagine themselves in a case in which they learned the other side's lawyer had spoken privately with the judge. "You'd be apoplectic," he said. "And rightly so."

*

"When a judge does something he knows, or ought to know, is clearly illegal . . . nothing happens to that judge," says Public Defender Lerner, whose office represents the vast majority of defendants in criminal cases here. ''The judicial inquiry and review system here is a joke."

Here, again, top prosecutors share Lerner's view. Rendell said his office got "almost uniformly unsatisfactory results" when it complained about judges to the review board.

Richard E. McDevitt, the review board's executive director since its inception in 1969, countered, "We have looked into every complaint." He added a complaint of his own: Rendell's office often contacted the review board about judges' conduct but failed to follow up with written complaints, as required by review-board rules.

Part of the problem is secrecy: It is almost impossible to find out whether the review board thoroughly investigates complaints against judges here. Under rules laid out in the state constitution, the review board carries out nearly all of its work behind closed doors.

Investigations, formal charges against judges and hearings on those charges are confidential. Cases against judges become only if the board asks the state Supreme Court to censure, suspend or remove a miscreant judge. And that happens rarely.

Richard E. McDevitt, the review board's executive director since its inception in 1969, countered, "We have looked into every complaint." He added a complaint of his own: Rendell's office often contacted the review board about judges' conduct but failed to follow up with written complaints, as required by review-board rules.

While agreeing that more public information about review-board cases could work as a deterrent to judicial misconduct, McDevitt maintains that the secrecy rule has its value: When the board privately tells judges to stop misbehaving, those judges often comply rather than risk having their cases go public in the state Supreme Court.

Another problem, in the eyes of critics, is the review board's composition: five judges, two lawyers and two non-lawyers. According to the nonprofit American Judicature Society's 1980 survey, Pennsylvania is one of only 13 states in which judges are a majority on the board that polices judges.

In the last decade, the board has called for the censure of two Philadelphia judges. One of them, Common Pleas Court Judge Bernard Snyder, was defeated by the voters last November before the state Supreme Court could rule on the review board's recommendation to remove Snyder because of his alleged contacts with the winning side's attorney in a lawsuit.

In 1981, Municipal Court Judge Mitchell S. Lipschutz was publicly censured for what the high court called "arrogant, rude, ill-tempered and demeaning conduct" in jailing a public defender and a prosecutor. Among other things, Lipschutz said he had been angered by the public defender's refusal to tell him what she had said to a client and the prosecutor's failure to produce a witness on time.

The Democratic Party slated Lipschutz last year for a Common Pleas Court judgeship, despite the 1981 censure - and despite a "not-qualified" rating

from the Philadelphia Bar Association committee that screens and rates judicial candidates. Lipschutz won. He was sworn in Jan. 3.

AN AGREEMENT THAT WAS BROKEN

To those who criticize the judicial election system, the slating of Mitchell Lipschutz represented the most telling evidence of just how little the political parties care about the quality of the court.

Both parties had agreed in advance to slate only judicial candidates given a ''qualified" rating by the bar association's selection commission.

"We look forward to continue our cooperative efforts in providing the citizens of Philadelphia with the best possible candidates for judicial office," bar commission chairman Bruce Franzel wrote to Democratic city chairman Joseph F. Smith last Feb. 1.

But even as the commission was concluding that Lipschutz was "not

qualified," the Democratic city committee was endorsing him. That meant most, if not all, party ward leaders would feature Lipschutz on the sample ballots passed out to voters in the spring primary, virtually assuring his nomination to Common Pleas Court. Bar association executive director Kenneth Shear wrote to Smith on March 6 urging the party to "immediately rescind its endorsement of Judge Lipschutz."

Smith never responded.

Several attempts to interview Smith about the incident have been unsuccessful.

Ian Lennox, head of the Citizens Crime Commission and a member of Franzel's panel, said that the incident showed that the city's majority party leadership wasn't really serious about choosing good judges. The Lipschutz endorsement, Lennox said, "throws the lie at all they've been saying."

Why, then, did the Democratic leadership back Lipschutz?

Part of it was his reputation as "a compassionate guy, an understanding judge," said labor leader Gillespie, who serves on the party's policy committee. Then there was "his track record in the political field. He paid his dues in the vineyard prior to becoming a judge." Most of the 69 Democratic ward leaders backed Lipschutz, Gillespie said, because "he was a sensitive person towards the Democratic Party, and the committee people and the like."

Ward 27 Democratic leader Kevin Vaughan - who opposed slating Lipschutz - said that other ward leaders had pressed him to change his mind because the judge was "responsive to the needs of ward leaders."

Lipschutz, in a recent telephone interview, said that he had never done anything improper at the suggestion of a ward leader or other politician. He said he sometimes found party officials' calls about constituents to be useful in making such routine decisions as setting bail. Lipschutz said such calls are "not the same as, 'Hey, pal, do me a favor.' "

SELECTING PRESIDENT JUDGES

Although they differ over how to change it, many of the judges and court observers interviewed criticized the method of picking president judges for Common Pleas and Municipal Court. Each court's active judges meet once every five years and vote for the so-called PJ.

That, critics say, puts the president judge in no position to make his colleagues more accountable. Some would empower the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to appoint president judges; others say the job should be elected - but for one term only.

Speaking privately, many judges feel that Common Pleas Court President Judge Bradley is looking for votes when he hires judges' relatives for court jobs, or passes out choice assignments.

Bradley concedes that "it might not be a bad idea" for president judges to

serve just one term. But he denies using his appointment power to win votes. ''If you're going to do that," he says, "you might as well chuck it in."

Likewise, Municipal Court President Judge Joseph R. Glancey sees no problem in having to seek his colleagues' votes. He argues that the main burden of disciplining judges should reside elsewhere: "They've got to have a good Judicial Inquiry and Review Board - with muscle."

MISSOURI PLAN: IS IT FAIR?

Many Democratic Party leaders say they don't believe that merit selection of judges would give fair treatment to minorities, women or labor, or to lawyers who don't come from big law firms with giant corporate clients. They say the very words "merit selection" are a euphemism for removing judicial selection

from the voters and giving it to an elite few.

Adopted first by Missouri in 1934, the screening-and-appointment method became known as "the Missouri plan" and has long been suspected by its critics as the thinly-gloved hand of the upper classes and their WASP- dominated law firms seeking to wrest control of the courts away from less- powerful groups: white ethnics, nonwhites, organized labor and Democrats.

In 1948, a Missouri judge, James G. Wallace, wrote a song:

Oh, the Old Missouri Plan,

When Wall Street lawyers all judicial candidates will scan

If you're not from Fair Old Harvard

They will toss you in the can,

And they'll hand the buns

To their younger sons

On the Old Missouri Plan

Oh, the Old Missouri Plan,

It won't be served with sauerkraut nor sauce Italian

There'll be no corned beef and cabbage,

And spaghetti they will ban,

There'll be no such dish

As gefilte fish

On the Old Missouri Plan.

A study published earlier this month actually suggests that nonwhites and women have been better served by the merit selection system. M. L. Henry, director of New York's nonprofit Fund for Modern Courts, says his two-year study covered virtually every judgeship in the country and found that about 17 percent of merit-selected judges have been women or minorities, while the comparable figure for elected judges is about 11 percent.

STEPPING IN FOR A CONSTITUENT

What advantages do some Philadelphia politicians get from a politically elected judiciary? The critics offer several: frequent hiring of patronage employees on the courts' $55 million payroll; lobbying the Board of Judges (which consists of all 81 Common Pleas Court judges) to support the parties' hand-picked choices for various city commissions such as the Board of

Revision of Taxes that are filled by a vote of the judges, and above all, access to judges on constituents' court cases.

Few of the politicians interviewed for these articles acknowledged having contacted judges about court cases. City Controller Joseph C. Vignola, Democratic leader of Ward 2 in South Philadelphia since 1978, was an exception.

A ward's committee people, Vignola said, believe that when someone gets arrested, ward leaders "can go to the judge and say, 'There's a neighborhood connection here' " - in other words, a family or community tie that would make the defendant a better bail risk, or someone who deserves less jail time.

Vignola estimated that before he became city controller in 1983, he made an

average of one call per month to judges about setting bail for criminal defendants. He said he has also written to judges asking for leniency at sentencings. He said he always asked judges to put his letters in the court record.

"The way I used to do it, I would call up the judge. . . . I would say, 'Judge, hi, this is Joe Vignola.' I would say that 'John Livingston is scheduled to be arraigned in front of you. I don't know what the charges are; I don't care. I just want you to know that his mother called me, and, you know, is concerned about his spending time in jail prior to trial, and that she lives in my community and she'd hope that you would consider that in setting bail."

"You have to remember," Vignola said in a telephone interview, "as long as you're not trying to influence the outcome of a case, there is nothing illegal about expressing an interest in a defendant."

While saying he had never tried to lobby a judge about a case's actual outcome, Vignola estimated that 10 percent to 12 percent of the city's ward leaders and local elected officials would seek favors on case outcomes.

Who seeks such favors? "I would say the older style of politician," said Vignola, "whether that person is an elected official or a political party official."

Politicians' favor-seeking, says Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Katz, taints even those judges who never take a politician's wishes into account on a case.

"What's nefarious about this is, if somebody calls you, let's say, about a resident that's arrested for a fight . . . and it turns out that the defendant is not guilty," then, even if the judge decides the case honestly, Katz says, "the committeeman is going brag all over the place that he's 'got' the judge."

*

Clearly, many judges refuse to let such calls enter their thinking on cases. Those interviewed spoke again and again of judges who, early in their terms on the bench, hung up the phone, cut off the conversation or otherwise made it clear that they were unapproachable.

But even when a judge wants to keep such elements out of the court, it may be impossible.

Shortly after Carolyn Temin became a Common Pleas Court judge in January 1984, the calls started coming in to her office from politicians. The first two were handled by people in her office. But the third came late one night when everyone else in the office had left.

"It was someone I knew," she recounted in an interview. "What was said could have been construed as someone trying to fix a case." Temin said she stopped the conversation as quickly as she could. But the damage had been done. Outraged by the call and afraid she might take out her anger on the defendant, she recused herself from the case.

"You don't become a judge without becoming aware this might happen," she said.

When Common Pleas Court Judge Harry A. Takiff learned how some politicians seek favors from judges, it was by accident.

Once, Takiff recalled in a 1984 interview, he was sitting in for another judge - he declined to say which one - when a ward leader or ward committee chairman called about a criminal case due to be heard that day.

Mistaking Takiff for the judge normally in that courtroom, the caller said in matter-of-fact tones that he would like the judge to favor the defendant. The case involved a question of probation or parole for a man already convicted of a crime, Takiff recalled.

After the caller had spoken for a moment, the judge said: "This is Harry Takiff."

The caller hung up.

Takiff, who is now a senior judge and became court administrator under Bradley in 1984, reflected later: "Does it happen? Obviously it does. I was witness to it.

"How frequently? I can't begin to say. It could have been a totally isolated, never-to-be-repeated experience. It could have been commonplace.

"I was taken aback. I thought, 'Maybe this is the real world.' "

Sometimes a politician's private calls to a judge shows up in the public record of a criminal case.

On June 2, 1983, Common Pleas Court Judge Lisa A. Richette was deciding whether to jail a woman named Millicent Curry for violating probation. She had previously given Curry 10 years' probation for her role as an accomplice in a holdup. Now, Curry had been caught using a stolen credit card to buy a diamond ring and had pleaded guilty to forgery.

It happened that Curry also did volunteer work in the office of then-City Councilman James J. Tayoun.

"Millicent thinks she has Councilman Tayoun on her side," Richette said in court. "I'm tired of the phone calls. I want you to know he can't influence me one bit. I resent it. . . . He's been calling me for days on this. I told him to come up to the courtroom and put it on the record." She said Tayoun later did place a letter in the court record.

In a telephone interview, Tayoun said that he could not remember exactly what had happened in Curry's case, but that if he had called Richette more than once, it was only to leave messages until he could speak with the judge directly.

Tayoun said he had made many similar calls to judges throughout the city's courts. "I might not call for six months; I might call twice in a week." In 99 percent of his calls, he said, he offered to testify as a character witness - although he said he actually testified in only about a third of the cases. He said he was selective. "I wouldn't go to bat for a murderer or a rapist or something like that," Tayoun said.

At Millicent Curry's hearing, Richette said Tayoun had complied with her wish by putting a letter in the court record.

Richette said Curry's temporary job with Tayoun, plus her expectation of getting a full-time housekeeping job, showed "a good attitude." That, she said, was why Curry deserved to stay on probation.

In one area, prosecutors and many defense attorneys say the current rules don't need changing - just better enforcement. These lawyers say the state board that polices lawyers should take action against defense attorneys who testify that because of errors they have committed that violate disciplinary rules, their former clients deserve new trials.

In many cases, as The Inquirer reported yesterday, prosecutors say the defense lawyers falsely testify to improperly representing clients in an effort to help those clients win new trials.

But state Disciplinary Board officials say they often are not told of such instances. Many prosecutors contend that it would appear vindictive for them to report the lawyers, and that such responsibility rests with judges. And some judges contend that their role is that of neutral arbiter, making it inappropriate to make such referrals.

Chief Public Defender Lerner, among others, contended that too many judges are willing to protect lawyers from discipline, in part because they rely upon attorneys for campaign support. And, he said, prosecutors are reluctant to report such instances because they "don't want to make judges angry."

Staff members of the President's Commission on Organized Crime have suggested as a remedy that each state establish a central register, where all such admissions would be recorded. The bar would be required to investigate and discipline lawyers who make such claims.

While defense attorneys contend such instances are rare, Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Irving R. Kaufman has said that whatever the number, the bar must respond.

As Judge Bradley, an accomplished distance runner, has often said, changing the judicial selection system is "not a race for the short-winded."

No one disagrees. Judicial elections are mandated by the state constitution, and the only way to amend it is the long way. Two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly (the sessions are two years apiece) must approve any proposed amendment. Then a statewide referendum gives Pennsylvania's voters a chance to ratify the amendment or kill it. In the best circumstances, says the bar's Picker, the soonest all this could happen would be 1988.

Likewise, any bid to change the judicial review board's judge-dominated, secrecy-bound style of policing the judiciary would move at the same sluggish pace. The review board's composition and rules are all written into the state constitution.

So it is not surprising that many of those who discuss changes in the court talk not of years, but of decades.

In his last month as district attorney, Rendell was asked to predict when the city and the state might abandon political elections of judges.

"It won't be an easy fight, but I think it's a winnable fight," Rendell answered, sounding full of hope and conviction. "It can happen before the century's over."