Political Office

When it came to local politics, South Jersey Democratic Party kingpin George E. Norcross III offered two ways of dealing with his political adversaries - he wanted one appointed a judge, and he wanted "to crush" the other. "I am doing everything humanly possible . . . things that are distasteful to get John Harrington on the bench," Norcross said in a secretly recorded conversation made public yesterday, "because I know that is the only way I can get rid of him. " At another point in the same 2001 conversation, Norcross said another adversary, Ted Rosenberg, "is history, and he is done . . . and anything I can do to crush his ass . . . " Harrington, who has since been appointed a state judge, and Rosenberg were Burlington County lawyers active in the Democratic Party and at odds with Norcross.

Saying it's time for "real people" to hold public office, a former national chief of the American Legion has announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor. Dominic DiFrancesco, a Republican from Middletown, says he's running for the state's second-highest office to help change the focus of government. "I am not a politician and I have never run for office," DiFrancesco said at a well-attended Capitol rally yesterday, "(But) it's time for real people with real solutions to step up to the plate.

Raj Bhakta, the dapper but ultimately hapless Philadelphian fired by Donald Trump in last year's The Apprentice, may be setting himself up for another form of public whupping. Bhakta, who now lives in Fort Washington, says he is very close to deciding to run a longshot campaign for the 13th District congressional seat held by U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.). "Why do I want to get my brains beaten in?" he asks. "Because I've always had a deep love of this country. I have a special appreciation as a first-generation American.

Saying the Supreme Court "has been lost to us," the president of the National Organization for Women yesterday urged an audience of college students to work to elect women to legislative office and to consider running for office themselves. "We can kiss the Supreme Court goodbye," Patricia Ireland told the audience of about 300 students, who gave her a standing ovation at the conclusion of her speech at Temple University's Sullivan Hall. "We are being stymied by being excluded," she said.

About three years ago, City Controller Joseph C. Vignola made an astonishing confession to City Councilman Thacher Longstreth. As Vignola put it at the time, the city controller's "role of city watchdog had, unfortunately, been reduced to that of a creature with a bark much larger than its bite. " Mayor Wilson Goode's moves last week to destroy the independence of the city controller's office have probably taken even the bark out of the job. What the mayor has done makes it clear that politics is more important than independence when it comes to watching over the city's finances.

On the morning after the night before, an assortment of political analysts came out, red-eyed and bleary to check the condition of the portrait they had drawn. This was the season they had entitled "The Year of the Woman. " In 1990, they said, more women were running for office than ever before. In 1990, "their issues" would be hot. In 1990, "their votes" would count. In the early light, the big picture was still littered with undigested data, with gender issues and gaps, with women candidates and voters.

Bob Martin is a retired Inquirer editor and writer If the anomalies of Pennsylvania politics and government need a human face, here are six: Michael Helfrich, Francis "Shorty" Schultz, Stephen Rambler, Terry McGirth, Deborah Shelton Griffin, and Pete Cianci. All six were convicted of felonies, yet held - or now hold - political office. Yet the Pennsylvania Constitution and subsequent court rulings render felons ineligible to serve. All took an oath to support, obey, and defend the constitution of Pennsylvania, then immediately violated it by taking office.

Special arrangements were made this week by a top Philadelphia police official and the city Democratic chairman for a ward leader accused of Election Code crimes to be fingerprinted at a political headquarters rather than at a police station. Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady cooperated Monday night to have Carol Campbell undergo pretrial processing in private, at Brady's 34th Ward office in the city's Overbrook section. Johnson said he saw nothing unusual in the arrangements.

A task force of the American Bar Association called yesterday for restricting, but not banning, campaign contributions by lawyers to candidates for political and judicial office. The panel, appointed last year by ABA President Jerome J. Shestack, of Philadelphia, to study such a ban, is set to make the recommendations next month at the annual meeting of the bar association in Toronto. By a unanimous vote, the group recommended that there be limits on donations to judicial campaigns as well as increased disclosure of money given to any elected official who has influence over the awarding of government legal work.

Branko Grucic's hard, dark eyes peer through a curtain of cigarette smoke as he gently caresses the rim of a small glass of plum brandy. Peace? He does not expect it anytime soon. "For us, there is no retreat," says Grucic, the chief political official in this Serb-dominated corner of Bosnia, about 25 miles north of the besieged Muslim village of Srebrenica. "For us, no surrender. " A few miles away, across the icy Drina River in what is left of Yugoslavia, a convoy of U.N. relief trucks is camped beside a village dump awaiting word from Bosnian Serb leaders - like Grucic - that they may proceed to the aid of Srebrenica, where dozens of Muslims are dying every day despite U.S. airdrops of food into the region.