Political Campaigns

  HARRISBURG - The culture of Harrisburg politics wasn't what made him do it. He and he alone was responsible for his crimes in the Bonusgate scandal. So said Mike Manzo, a onetime top House Democratic staffer, moments before a judge sentenced him Monday to up to four years in prison. Manzo, who went from Bonusgate defendant to the prosecution's key witness, was sentenced to 18 to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay $95,000 in fines and restitution for his role in the wide-ranging conspiracy to use taxpayer money and resources for political gain.

The jury in Rep. Bill DeWeese's political corruption trial deliberated for six hours Thursday before breaking for the day without a verdict. The jurors asked for evidence to be brought back to the deliberation room, including copies of the transcript of DeWeese's grand jury testimony. Dauphin County Court President Judge Todd A. Hoover denied that request but allowed them to review several boxes containing leave slips that legislative employees submitted when they conducted political work during legislative hours.

In an expected transition, Councilwoman Lisa Post was selected mayor at last night's reorganization meeting. Councilman Walter M. Urban replaced Post as deputy mayor. The meeting progressed with the four Republicans on the five-member council voting to reappoint the township solicitor, engineer and accountant. Councilwoman Martha Issod, an independent, tried to attack the appointments, saying those who contributed to the Republicans' political campaign were the ones who got the jobs.

After voting regularly for 40 years, I feel that we need a better way of maintaining political checks, balances and affecting change. The traditional Republican and Democratic Parties are today less important than conservative, liberal and moderate approaches to national problems. The 1986 political campaigns, with their personal attacks against candidates, discouraged the faithful voters and reinforced the feelings of non-voting adult children that "all politicians are corrupt" and "what's the use of my voting?"

I was a reporter for 50 years before my retirement. I have always been a defender of press freedom, one of the great pillars of our free society. But such a privilege should be equated with responsibility. The Inquirer, in its Oct. 12 editorial endorsing Sen. Francis J. Lynch for re-election to the state Senate from the Second District, did not show much responsibility. Of course, it had the right to endorse Sen. Lynch, under the First Amendment, but it struck a low blow to Joe O'Donnell, Sen. Lynch's opponent, when, referring to Mr. O'Donnell's remarks about Mayor Goode, it said he had "injected a whiff of racism" into the political campaign.

THANKS TO columnist Phil Goldsmith for pointing out the absence of female candidates in the mayor's race. And why out of 15 at-large Council candidates is there only one woman running? Philadelphia NOW has spent some time trying to figure out why. We've come to the conclusion that we will have more women running for office when we have real campaign finance reform - public financing of elections. Some of our Philadelphia NOW members have considered running, but backed out or decided not to enter the fray.

In what could be a landmark case, the Supreme Court will decide whether low state limits on campaign contributions are valid or are unconstitutional restrictions on freedom of expression. A federal appeals court has invalidated Missouri's $1,075 limit on individual contributions to statewide political campaigns. The lower court reasoned that free speech was unconstitutionally impaired because the Missouri contribution limit, when adjusted for inflation, was much lower than the $1,000 federal ceiling Congress passed in 1974 and the Supreme Court upheld in 1976.

Spurning elective politics as rancorous and divisive, Teresa Heinz, widow of U.S. Sen. John Heinz, said yesterday she would not seek to fill her husband's seat in Washington. Her decision on whether to run, anticipated for weeks, sets the stage for several lesser-known Republicans to battle for the GOP nomination for the Senate next spring and face Democrat Harris Wofford in the fall. In a lengthy statement to reporters at her home in Fox Chapel, outside Pittsburgh, Heinz said: "The Senate does not represent the best place for me at this moment to have a sustained impact in changing the course of our economy, bringing nutrition and health care to millions of American children, helping to guarantee that growing old does not equate with poverty or developing pragmatic solutions to our environmental challenges.

  HARRISBURG - The culture of Harrisburg politics wasn't what made him do it. He and he alone was responsible for his crimes in the Bonusgate scandal. So said Mike Manzo, a onetime top House Democratic staffer, moments before a judge sentenced him Monday to up to four years in prison. Manzo, who went from Bonusgate defendant to the prosecution's key witness, was sentenced to 18 to 48 months in prison and ordered to pay $95,000 in fines and restitution for his role in the wide-ranging conspiracy to use taxpayer money and resources for political gain.

The jury in Rep. Bill DeWeese's political corruption trial deliberated for six hours Thursday before breaking for the day without a verdict. The jurors asked for evidence to be brought back to the deliberation room, including copies of the transcript of DeWeese's grand jury testimony. Dauphin County Court President Judge Todd A. Hoover denied that request but allowed them to review several boxes containing leave slips that legislative employees submitted when they conducted political work during legislative hours.

HARRISBURG - He conjured the American political system begun by the likes of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. He discussed the influence of Henry David Thoreau. And, in more than three hours on the witness stand Wednesday, state Rep. Bill DeWeese told jurors in his corruption trial that he had worked within the great traditions begun by those men and had not done anything illegal. By turns brash and bombastic, serious and contemplative, DeWeese testified that he knew some of his legislative aides enjoyed politics, but that he always directed them to keep their campaign work separate from their legislative responsibilities.

IMAGINE you're appearing in court, about a matter that's very important to you. You've never seen the judge before. But the attorney for the opposition has given his Honor thousands of dollars in campaign donations, which helped the judge become a judge in the first place. How confident would you feel that justice would be served? In Pennsylvania, you can't. Since the commonwealth still elects judges in partisan elections, that means people who want to be judges have to raise campaign money - though that's not the only problem with the system.

BOSTON - Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and his chief Democratic rival, Elizabeth Warren, have signed a pledge to curb political attack ads by outside groups in their Massachusetts Senate race. Under the terms of the deal, each campaign would agree to donate half the cost of any third-party ad to charity if that ad either supports their candidacy or attacks their opponent by name. At least one outside group that has targeted Warren immediately raised objections to the deal, while two outside groups that have targeted Brown said they were inclined to respect the deal, with one pledging to suspend its advertising.

A proposal that would make it easier to find out who is paying for political ads in federal elections is needed after the damage caused by a recent Supreme Court ruling. The measure from Democrats would require corporations, unions, and advocacy groups, now freed from restrictions against spending on individual races, to stand up for their ads by clearly identifying who paid for them. Groups running ads for or against a candidate would be required to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission.

As usual, State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo appears to have been ahead of his time. Harrisburg lately is caught in the grip of a scandal known as Bonusgate, in which Democratic Party leaders allegedly paid staffers with tax dollars to perform political campaign work. That would be illegal. But if federal prosecutors are to be believed, Fumo perfected this corrupt custom long before Bonusgate surfaced. And he got away with it for more than a decade. According to testimony from the federal criminal trial unfolding in Philadelphia, Fumo even used public money to help defeat his estranged daughter's campaign for a township supervisor's post in Montgomery County.

Longtime political strategist Howard J. Cain has admitted that he padded his bills to the state Senate, hasn't filed a tax return since 1990, and is "scared" about the possibility of going to prison. And he has insisted that he was paid for years of doing political-campaign work for State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo with taxpayer money - thanks to more than $500,000 in contracts with the state Senate. "There was never any doubt that part of my services to the senator was to handle the political campaigns of candidates that he wanted to support," Cain told the jury yesterday during his third day on the stand in Fumo's federal corruption trial.