Back in March, when committee candidates had to file petitions to get spots on primary-election ballots, the State Committee's organizers, led by Al Schmidt and Joe DeFelice, recruited candidates for more than 200 previously empty committee spots, mostly in sections of West and North Philadelphia where Republicans are scarce.
Instead of embracing the new recruits, the party leadership filed challenges against several dozen of them - demonstrating that "they'd rather have nobody than somebody," as Schmidt described it at the time.
Canuso said the party leadership was just trying to ensure that everybody followed the letter of the state election code.
In fact, the City Committee's challenges were filled with apparent forgeries. Attorney Matthew Wolfe, the Republican leader in University City's 27th Ward, tried to contact all the challengers and documented 30 situations in which individuals said they hadn't signed the legal documents that carried their names. One of the "challengers" was a Wynnefield woman who had died a year earlier.
Meehan and Canuso blamed the bogus signatures on overzealous ward leaders whom they declined to identify.
District Attorney Seth Williams promised to investigate. Meehan said he spent more than an hour answering questions from the D.A.'s office, some weeks ago.
"We are looking into those allegations," said Williams' deputy for special investigations, Curtis Douglas. "That's kind of where I have to leave it."
So far, despite Wolfe's road map, no charges have been filed against anyone.
And the only party official disciplined in the aftermath has been Wolfe himself: When the party reorganized in June, he was dumped from his post as City Committee's assistant secretary.
Canuso and Meehan also backed new party rules in May that conflict with state law, denying committee spots to more than 100 write-in candidates who got fewer than 10 votes.
After Canuso was re-elected as party chairman, Wolfe and Kelly challenged the result in a petition to Republican State Committee, based on the party's failure to let all elected committeemen participate.
But state party leaders have done nothing yet with the petition. Locals expect the state party to try to minimize the Philadelphia friction through November, fearing that it could hurt their candidate for governor, Tom Corbett, who already has angered Northeast ward leaders with his criminal prosecution of state Rep. John Perzel. Corbett, state attorney general, is said to be petrified about being drawn into Philadelphia warfare.
Kelly said he approached Corbett at the Republican State Committee meeting in June and complained about the fraudulent petition challenges that city Republican leaders had filed in March.
"I said, 'Mr. Corbett, I have some grave concerns about these guys. They're criminals.' He looked me right in the eye and said, 'I'm looking forward, not backward.' "
