City & State - The 10 Titans

POWER PLAYERS YOU NEED TO KNOW

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May 16, 2016

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CONTENTS 6.

NEXT STOP: 1776

A local historian illuminates Philadelphia’s political past

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TEN TITANS

The under-the-radar power players you need to know now

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COAL AND LIGHT

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A look back at three centuries of Pennsylvania politics

PERSPECTIVE: GRADING THE GOVERNOR

Has Wolf lost his chance to right the ship?

30.

POST PRIMARY

A look at three key contests heading into the general election

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Editorial Director Michael Johnson mjohnson@cityandstateny.com Editor Greg Salisbury gsalisbury@cityandstatepa.com Managing Editor Ryan Somers rsomers@cityandstateny.com Associate Copy Editor Sam Edsill sedsill@cityandstateny.com Staff Reporter Ryan Briggs rbriggs@cityandstatepa.com

Vol. 1 Issue 2 - May 16, 2016

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POWER PLAYERS YOU NEED TO KNOW

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May 16, 2016

Cover art direction GUILLAUME FEDERIGHI Illustration by ALEX LAW AND GUILLAUME FEDERIGHI

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EDITOR’S NOTE ON SOME LEVEL, virtually every story about politics is about power: who is aggregating it and who is hemorrhaging it; where is it being used properly and where is it being abused; where it is emanating from and where it is evanescing.

There are so many reasons why this is true, but for me (and, I suspect, for a great many others who are reading this) it really coalesces around one simple fact: Because of the myriad ways it impacts our lives, political power, and the people who wield it, are endlessly fascinating.

To that end, this month’s cover story explores some of the most influential people in Pennsylvania you may have never heard of – “the guys behind the guys,” as it were. Senior staff reporter Ryan Briggs and freelancer Jake Blumgart have combined forces to cover loci from the Delaware River to Presque Isle Bay. In the process, they have come up with a list of 10 (well, 11) mahoffs which includes people like the most powerful retiree in the commonwealth and a 20-something fundraising wunderkind.

Greg Salisbury Editor

The success of those profiled – and, indeed, of the American political process itself – is a testament to the success of what historians have described as the “political utopia” brought about by William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” here some 336 years ago. As Peter Durantine so ably explains in his primer on the state’s political history, Penn himself quickly set the precedent for power within and without these borders by becoming the largest nonroyal landowner in the world. And while only one U.S. president has come from the state, Durantine illuminates how Pennsylvanians have made their political presence felt across American history, from railroad barons having their own desk on the statehouse floor to governors brokering presidential nominations.

By the time the Democratic National Convention arrives in Philadelphia in July, the nomination will have been all but decided – and it will be a historic one regardless – as the party becomes the first to nominate a woman or a Jew to the top office in the land. As Natalie Pompilio finds in her latest dispatch from the road to the DNC, there are all kinds of ways to both commemorate and profit from the event, including building specially themed walking tours that are composed entirely of left turns.

Whether Pennsylvania’s voters will bear left in the general election is still up for debate, as evidenced by three races that are already drawing national attention and dollars. Ryan Briggs sifts through the carnage of last month’s primaries to try to divine what will happen in the battles for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the state attorney general.

Finally, one statewide office that isn’t up for grabs this November nonetheless has an occupant who seems to be more and more in danger of becoming a lame duck – despite having two and a half years left in his first term. Longtime political observer Tom Ferrick focuses his first column for City & State Pennsylvania on what Tom Wolf can do to get his groove back.

If you feel like we missed out on someone who would have been perfect for our list of titans, or if we’re not covering something that you think we should be – or if you want to provide feedback of any kind – please let me know: gsalisbury@cityandstatepa.com.

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TOURS DE FORCE

A local guide plans to take DNC visitors back in time

By NATALIE POMPILIO

ED MAUGER IS CREATING SPECIALLY THEMED TOURS FOR THE DNC. ABOVE IS INDEPENDENCE HALL, ONE OF HIS MAIN STOPS.

PHOTOS BY JOE KEMP

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TOUR GUIDE ED MAUGER paused as he looked for the best way to exit the site where the Philadelphia home of George Washington once stood. He’d almost made a right turn, but stopped himself just in time. “Oh, that would have been bad,” he said. “I would have to give you all your money back.”

The well-known local historian and author’s measured pace, courtesy of a recently broken foot, made the mistake easy to catch. His round, bearded face evoking a gentle, Santa-like glow when he talks, his eyebrows and forehead hard at work invoking moods and emotions, Mauger bubbles over with ideas and enthusiasm for his job, often interrupting himself as he remembers yet another good story while talking about his walking tours based on the Democratic Party’s top two presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

The Sanders-centric tour was more difficult to plan and remains challenging to pull off: In honor of Sanders’ self-proclaimed socialist beliefs, Mauger promises that these tours will only make left turns, even offering that money-back guarantee.

The Clinton tour is much more directionally bipartisan, with left turns in honor of her progressive politics and right turns in honor of the women’s equality struggle sites in the city.

Yes, it’s a gimmick, but an engaging one, an example of how even the smallest details are being attended to as Philadelphia and its citizens prepare for the Democratic National Convention, to be held here July 25-28.

Organizers predict the event will bring an influx of about 50,000 people, including 6,000 delegates and their guests and about 20,000 members of the media, to the region. Due to the guarantee that the party’s presidential nomination will make history – with either the first female candidate or the first Jewish candidate – those numbers could be even higher. They also believe the convention could bring as much as $300 million into the area.

Businesses of all kinds are eager to take some of that money. At the urging of local restaurants and bars, the state legislature is considering extending bar hours until 4 a.m. during the convention, as it did in 2000 when the Republicans nominated George W. Bush. There are already signs and flags adorning the windows of local businesses, including an adult toy shop, a stationery store and a candy shop.

Mauger, a former associate dean at Rutgers University’s Camden campus, started his own walking tour company, Philadelphia on Foot, in the 1990s. He wanted to turn his love of history and storytelling into

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a second career while also making sure local tour guides got their facts straight. Far too often, he said, he’d heard tour leaders mix fact and fiction, presenting both as history.

Mauger knows what he’s talking about.

He is the founding president of the Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides, which seeks to ensure that guides working in the city have a certain baseline reservoir of his-

torical knowledge. The truth, as he points out again and again during his walks, is much more interesting – and far stranger – than fiction.

“There are a lot of guides giving tours, but they think it’s the same old history, and they present it the same old way: like you’re dragging some fifth-grader around by the ear,” he said. “I thought, ‘These are fasci-

THE MERCHANTS’ EXCHANGE BUILDING, THE OLDEST STOCK EXCHANGE BUILDING IN THE NATION.

THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK BUILDING IS A POPULAR TOUR STOP.

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nating, powerful people, and there’s got to be more to their stories so we can have more fun with this.’”

In 2000, Mauger created the “Exercise Your Rights” tour for visiting Republicans, leading about 50 members of the Indiana delegation through the city. The walk featured sites of particular interest to conservatives, like the First National Bank of the United States, founded by the country’s first Treasury Secretary (and posthumous Broadway star) Alexander Hamilton. The tour’s promise: It would take only right turns.

One lesson that Mauger took away from developing that first trek: Many individuals can be made relevant to those seated on either side of the aisle. “It’s like the Bible: The devil can quote it for his own purposes,” he said. “I can quote the Founding Fathers for my own purposes.”

Benjamin Franklin, for example, was born into a poor family but became a multimillionaire during his lifetime. He was

“the paragon of the entrepreneur – Trump would love him,” Mauger said. “He criticized London because they provided money to the poor; he thought it would make them lazy to have welfare.”

On the other hand, Franklin was also the most liberal of the Founding Fathers, he said. “He trusted the common man, and really espoused their rights throughout his life.”

Mauger is a showman, gregarious and with a contagious enthusiasm for his work.

Because of his deep store of knowledge, his stories are richly detailed and engaging.

There always seems to be one more on the tip of his tongue, one that he has to withhold because of time constraints. He may sing, as he did on the recent Clinton and Sanders preview tours. He may so clearly describe something – Washington’s top coat, a Colonial meal – that it’s almost visible. It’s clear he enjoys his work. It’s also clear he’s a big fan of the City of Brotherly Love, noting how it was the largest and most

FRANKLIN COURT IN OLD CITY, THE SITE OF THE HOME OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

cultured city George Washington ever saw in his lifetime, and marveling over the decision in 1800 to move the national capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., “that swamp on the banks of the Potomac River.”

The Sanders and Clinton tours both begin at the Independence Visitors Center, which is across Market Street from the Liberty Bell in an area considered America’s most historic square mile. Within these boundaries can be found Independence Hall, the homes and workplaces of Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross, and newer museums honoring the country’s founding and its diversity.

In 2015, UNESCO named Philadelphia the nation’s first World Heritage City because of its contributions to American and world history. Each tour takes between 90 minutes and two hours, and covers about two miles, but no stops or times are set in stone.

“Tours evolve,” he said. “It’s a performance art, being a tour guide. You’re only

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as good as your last tour.”

While the Clinton walk exits the center through a side door, the Sanders tour begins outside the main entrance. The first stop is the site of the house that Washington designed and lived in during his presidency. The home’s footprint, on a square sandwiched by cobblestone streets, was only converted into a historic attraction in 2010. Before that, it had been overgrown with grass, its existence all but erased.

Mauger has multiple stories about the home where, he said, Washington “essentially invented the American presidency.”

During the Sanders tour, Mauger talked about Washington the slave owner, noting that 13 enslaved Africans had lived on this property. Washington’s own letters reveal he went to great lengths to skirt a Pennsylvania law that would have freed those people after six months of living in the state by sending them on day trips to New Jersey.

The first president also sent slave catchers to New Hampshire after one of Martha Washington’s favorite slaves escaped. They returned empty-handed.

Washington’s house is also included on the Clinton tour, but it’s the final stop.

Mauger tells different stories here, includ-

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ing one that’s a nod to the biggest scandal of President Bill Clinton’s administration. “We have to get some sex in this for the Hillary part,” Mauger said.

It’s another little-known and engaging tale: In 1777, British Gen. William Howe and his troops took control of Philadelphia, banishing Washington and his men 26 miles north of the city to Valley Forge.

Howe and his aides were confident that with the rebel capital in hand, the war would soon be over.

But as Franklin, then in France, sagely noted, “Has Howe taken Philadelphia, or has Philadelphia taken General Howe?”

It turned out to be the latter. As Mauger tells it, Howe was so smitten with the city’s bars, theaters and his new mistress – the wife of one of his officers – that he missed multiple chances to crush the upstart Americans. His own soldiers created a pub song to mock him. Mauger sung the first verse, but declined to sing the second, noting “there’s a line in there about ‘grasp your warlike staff,’ but I won’t get into that.”

Mauger has fashioned other differences between the tours. During the Sanders walk, for example, he’ll stop at the First National Bank, because “it was the first big bank, and the banks are such a big part of

the Bernie Sanders approach to America. …

We could talk about it in Hillary terms as well, but they wouldn’t have paid a woman in the 18th century 100 grand or so to speak to them. They wouldn’t have paid a woman at all to speak to them.”

Instead, those on the Clinton tour will go farther north, visiting the Betsy Ross House, where it is believed the seamstress created the country’s first flag. They’ll learn about the “real Ross,” not the small woman sitting in a rocking chair and sewing that many paintings depict. Ross was known as the “little rebel” for her actions against the British government, including creating munitions in her Philadelphia shop. They’ll see the Arch Street Friends Meeting House where Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott worshipped. They’ll visit Elfreth’s Alley, the nation’s oldest continuously inhabited residential street, where two female seamstresses broke barriers with their business prowess and property ownership.

“It was in the colonies, particularly in Philadelphia, where women began breaking into the field of economic parity,” Mauger said.

And on and on he walked, his stories flowing, never missing a step.

Or taking a wrong turn.

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THE

KEYSTONES TO

POWER After three centuries, the path to political influence in Pennsylvania remains the same

By PETER DURANTINE

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HEN REPUBLICAN Tom Ridge tried to propose reform and referenda as a newly elected governor in 1994, the leaders of the GOP-controlled legislature informed him they would only consider the time-honored business agenda that Republicans have followed since the 19th century. Ridge gave them what they wanted and became a widely popular governor. Successful politicians know that past is always prologue in the Keystone State.

“Pennsylvania’s politics are complex because of the origins of its settlement and the diversity of its population,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll and the college’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs. “Through the development of late 19th- and early 20th-century industrialization and oneparty-boss rule, it became a democratically competitive, two-party state that continues to play a leading role in American politics.”

The history of Pennsylvania – as well as the politics of the commonwealth – owes a debt to the British monarchy. The “Holy Experiment” began in 1680 when its 36-year-old founder, William Penn, was granted an extraordinarily generous charter by England’s King Charles II: 45,000 square miles of land.

The king’s charter made Penn the largest non-royal landowner in the world at the time – an action executed less out of generosity than necessity. The crown owed Penn’s late father, an admiral who proved a loyal and effective sailor, a significant amount of back pay (about $3.3 million in today’s dollars) and the king took the granted land from the Duke of York, leaving the duke with the colonial holdings of New York, the island of Manhattan and parts of Delaware.

King Charles also wanted to get Penn out of England, where the Quaker freedom fighter had been imprisoned for his defiance against the Church of England. With the newfound land, which he named Sylvania (Latin for “woods”), and which King Charles renamed Pennsylvania in honor of Admiral Penn, William Penn went about establishing what historians describe as a “political utopia.” His revolutionary “char-

WILLIAM PENN SET OUT TO CREATE A “POLITICAL UTOPIA” IN PENNSYLVANIA.

ter of liberties” guaranteed free and fair trials by jury, freedom of religion, freedom from unjust imprisonment and free elections. The king had no objection to such radical lawmaking in the colony, although he reserved the right to override any of the laws.

To make his Holy Experiment a profitable enterprise, Penn went about first attracting Quakers, many of whom were happy to leave their oppressors in England to buy property and live in Penn’s Woods. He later attracted other persecuted minorities throughout Europe, among them Amish, Catholics, Jews, Mennonites, Huguenots and Lutherans – the foundation for a diverse electorate that would form voting blocs and require adroit political skills for future statewide office seekers.

“Since representative government first began with the 54-member elected Provincial Council on March 12, 1863, the Pennsylvania citizenry has evolved into one of the most diversified in the nation,” journal-

ist Paul Beers wrote in his definitive book on the subject, “Pennsylvania Politics: Today and Yesterday.”

Influenced by liberal philosopher John Locke, Penn organized a representative government with a General Assembly, although it lacked real powers, and established a public discourse in which all people were permitted to speak freely, similar to how Quaker Meetings are conducted.

Historians such as Hans Fantel, author of “William Penn: Apostle of Dissent,” and Bonamy Dobree, who authored “William Penn: Quaker and Pioneer,” wrote that Penn established what would later become the basis of the U.S. Constitution: a flexible framework for governance that could be amended to reflect and adapt with the evolving times. “Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them,” Penn has been quoted as saying.

Since then, that motion has often been powered by ambition, greed and self-interest – as Penn’s offspring would demonstrate

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“THE TREATY OF PENN WITH THE INDIANS,” BY BENJAMIN WEST, DEPICTS A LEGENDARY 1683 PEACE AGREEMENT BETWEEN WILLIAM PENN AND MEMBERS OF THE LENAPE TRIBE ON THE DELAWARE RIVER.

57 years after he established Pennsylvania.

His sons, John and Thomas, essentially swindled the indigenous Lenape Indians out of an area of land in eastern Pennsylvania that was roughly the size of Rhode Island. As late as 2004, the land deal was still being disputed in federal court by one of the Lenape tribes, Delaware Nation. A U.S. District Court dismissed the case, but acknowledged fraud was used to acquire the land, according to court records.

In 1722, a young Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, a fugitive from his home state of Massachusetts for writing pamphlets criticizing the government in Boston while advocating for free speech.

Twenty-nine years later, the newspaper publisher and author practically ran the City of Brotherly Love and had been elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. By 1785 he was the second-most influential leader of the American independence movement, serving as a delegate at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia two years later.

“It is in Pennsylvania that the two characters (of Northern and Southern states) seem to meet and blend and to form a people free from the extremes both of vice and virtue.”

— THOMAS JEFFERSON

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MATHEW BRADY / EVERETT HISTORICAL

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LOCOMOTIVE AND CROWD AT HANOVER JUNCTION RAILROAD STATION IN PENNSYLVANIA IN 1863. RAILROADING WAS A DOMINANT INDUSTRY IN PENNSYLVANIA. THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD WAS AT ONE TIME THE LARGEST RAILROAD IN THE WORLD, EMPLOYING A QUARTER OF A MILLION WORKERS, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF THEM IN PENNSYLVANIA ALONE.

At the time, Philadelphia was the seat of the state government, but the U.S. Congress had also been meeting in Independence Hall during the nation’s early years, which compelled state legislators to find a new place to call home. They first went to Lancaster before eventually settling on Harrisburg in 1810, after John Harris, a trader and frontiersman, gave the state land along the Susquehanna River, where his father had started a trading post.

Since then, Harrisburg has been the seat of government and the headquarters of Pennsylvania’s Democratic and Republican parties, but the state’s political power comes from its two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Indeed, Harrisburg, often viewed as a backwater by some politicians, succeeded in stopping an early 20th century attempt by those same politicians to return the state capital to Philadelphia.

By the late 19th century, Pennsylvania’s political power emanated not only from its

two largest cities, but also from those made wealthy through ventures like drilling, mining, smelting, timbering, forging, railroading and banking.

Well into the 20th century, the Pennsylvania Railroad, at one time the largest railroad in the world – employing a quarter of a million workers, tens of thousands of them in Pennsylvania alone – had such dominance in the legislature that its lobbyist had a desk on the floor of the statehouse, where he would review any bills that affected the railroad. “PRR officials were extraordinarily adroit at influencing the courts and, to an even greater degree, the legislature,” according to the multi-volume history, “The Pennsylvania Railroad, Vol. 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917.”

Other industry giants in coal, steel and manufacturing wielded significant political influence, just not as dominantly as the PRR. The Mellon family of Pittsburgh made

JAMES BUCHANAN, RIGHT, THE STATE’S SOLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE PRESIDENCY.

its fortune in business, banking and publishing, with Andrew Mellon serving as U.S. Treasurer under three presidents in the 1920s and ’30s. The political influence of western Pennsylvania’s most powerful dynasties – the Mellons, steel magnates Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab and Henry Clay Frick, Sun Oil Co. (Sunoco) tycoon Joseph Pew, among others – was unstated, but, as Beers noted, politicians knew they risked their political livelihoods by not knowing and responding to their needs.

“The old joke about the Republican-controlled state Senate was: ‘The Pennsylvania Railroad having no more business in this chamber, we stand adjourned,’” Beers wrote. “And pamphleteer Henry Demarest Lloyd in 1881 penned the oft-repeated line: ‘The Standard (Oil) has done everything in the Legislature of Pennsylvania except to refine it.’”

While Pennsylvania produced a couple of Founding Fathers and was the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, it has given the country exactly one president, James Buchanan, who failed to address the issue of slavery that resulted in the secession of the southern states, leaving his successor, Abraham Lincoln, with a nation divided.

The state’s most capable politicians have served as governors and U.S. Senators. Before Lincoln named him Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, an opponent of slavery, served in the Senate. He was nominated for president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but he supported Lincoln in a deal that included the Cabinet post. Cameron returned to the Senate after the Civil War (he arranged to have his son, Donald, serve as President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War and then inherit his Senate seat) and headed Pennsylvania’s GOP. Lawyer Matthew Quay would replace Cameron as party boss, serving as GOP chairman from 1878 until 1902, doing double duty during much of that time as a U.S. Senator. “Quay was the ultimate schemer and spoilsman in Pennsylvania politics,” Beers wrote. “He originated the phrase ‘shaking the plum tree’ to explain his method of using political pressure to extract money from clients.”

CURRIER & IVES ENGRAVING, 1861 / EVERETT HISTORICAL

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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SEN. BOIES PENROSE WAS THE STATE’S MOST POWERFUL POLITICIAN IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY.

According to Beers, New York’s political boss at the time, Tom Platt, cited Quay as “the ablest politician this country has ever produced.” At Quay’s death, U.S. Sen. Boies Penrose, already a power broker, became the dominant political player in the state.

“The Quay-Penrose machine had long tentacles, touching the White House, the Congress, the Governor’s Office, and the legislature down through the courts and local, county, municipal and school board jurisdictions,” Beers wrote. At Penrose’s death in 1921, Gov. William C. Sproul eulogized, “We shall not see his like again.”

Pennsylvania continues to have its share

of political rogues and rascals, but it also has had reformers, such as Gov. Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, who, in the 1930s, improved farmers’ livelihoods with paved farmto-market roads, expanded the parks and improved conditions for coal and iron workers.

Democrats began to dominate Pennsylvania politics in 1934, when Pittsburgh business executive Joe Guffey unseated a Republican to become the first Democrat in 60 years to win a U.S. Senate seat in the state, while wealthy Main Line businessman George Earle became the first Democrat in

the 20th century to win the governorship.

Others would follow, such as governor and four-term Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh David Lawrence, who was known to have had a strong influence in securing the party’s presidential nomination for Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. In 1971, Milton Shapp became both Pennsylvania’s first Jewish governor and the first to serve two terms after the state constitution was amended to allow governors to succeed themselves.

“Pennsylvania started to become a competitive two-party state with Roosevelt’s election in 1932 as well as the success the Democrats had with the New Deal,” said Madonna, who wrote the 2008 book, “Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century.”

The 21st century dawned with Republican Gov. Tom Ridge resigning midway through his second term to serve in the Bush Administration to become the nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security in 2003.

He was succeeded by Lieutenant Gov. Mark Schweiker, who chose not to run for the office when Ridge’s term expired.

Former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, a Democrat, followed Schweiker into the governor’s office, and the political influence he wielded in his two terms often frustrated Republicans and Democrats alike. Together with Congressman Robert Brady, who is also Philadelphia’s longtime Democratic boss, Rendell has become one of the commonwealth’s most high-profile power brokers. Two of his former Cabinet secretaries, Katie McGinty and Tom Wolf, who headed the departments of environmental protection and revenue, respectively, have benefitted from his endorsements – McGinty just won a hotly contested Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate and Wolf is now governor of Pennsylvania.

Much has changed in the 336 years since William Penn began his experiment in the rural woodlands of Pennsylvania, but the primacy of political power has remained as entrenched as ever. To paraphrase American historian Henry Adams, the state is like a coalbed: dark and dirty, but a source of light.

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REMEMBER THESE

TITANS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ALL OF THEM, OR THE POWER THEY WIELD – BUT YOU SHOULD

By RYAN BRIGGS AND JAKE BLUMGART

“Power” can be a loaded word. Within its onomatopoeic impact lies one of the most, well, powerful ways to label something – or, in the case of this article, someone.

The 11 Pennsylvanians profiled within these pages all possess it, each in their own way affecting how things work within our borders. You may not recognize some of their names – and some of them like that anonymity just fine, thank you very much – but without them, the people you do recognize in Pennsylvania politics wouldn’t be where they are today.

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DREW CROMPTON THE CONSIGLIER E

F

OR TWO DECADES, the president of the Pennsylvania state Senate – no matter who holds the position – has turned to Drew Crompton for advice. The Montgomery County native, 48, moved to Harrisburg in his early 20s for a job with the Senate Republicans’ policy office. Fifteen months later, then-senate president Robert Jubelirer’s chief counsel retired and Crompton was approached to replace him. When Jubelirer lost his primary in 2006 and current Senate President Joe Scarnati – one of the most powerful politicians in the commonwealth – rose to take his place, he kept Crompton, eventually giving him the job of chief of staff as well as counsel.

Crompton’s been in the Senate President’s office for so long, he jokes that he’s occupied just about every cubicle and office inside the sprawling suite. Instrumental in creating Pennsylvania’s mid-2000s ethics laws, his responsibilities have grown along with his experience and influence.

“I do a lot less drafting than I used to. I tell people that my role now is walking around,” says Crompton.

In 2014, Crompton was named general counsel to the Senate Republican caucus in addition to his roles with the president. His boss’ grip on this large and sometimes acrimonious mass of Republican senators is, of course, less ironclad than that of powerful party leaders of old, but as an enforcer for the powerful president pro tempore and his troops, Crompton enjoys access everywhere.

He also believes that his Southeastern Pennsylvania roots help him build bridges between Scarnati, who represents a massive swath of rural northern Pennsylvania, and the more moderate wing of the delegation from the Philly

region.

“I represent a guy who lives 200-plus miles from the Southeast,” says Crompton. “Having some limited appreciation of the Southeast allows me to make recommendations and advise my boss on the nuances of constituents from totally different areas of the commonwealth.”

Scarnati formerly led the caucus with Delaware County’s Dominic Pileggi, the ex-majority leader, but ran at the top of a slate against him in 2014 – a move that was seen as rejection of compromise in the wake of Gov. Tom Wolf’s election.

Those geographic distinctions matter in a state this large. The culture and politics of Bucks County are dramatically different than those of Forest or Tioga counties, even if all the politicians involved have “R’s” beside their names.

Of course, it helps that now the Republican senators all have a common opponent in Wolf, a Democrat who has had a predictably tumultuous relationship with the legislature, and Scarnati is already predicting another budget battle this year.

For the Republican caucus, Crompton says the budget is front and center, with pension reform being most important to the members, but compromise will be in short supply “Unfortunately, both in Harrisburg and Washington, it seems people are running from the far left or the far right, and then want to govern (from those fringes),” says Crompton. “That accounts for a lot of the dysfunction we are currently encountering.”

In his telling, Scarnati is a voice of reason who still tries to avoid giving in to the most extreme voices in his party while ruling from the middle — with Crompton pounding the pavement to make sure the president’s voice comes through loud and clear.

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MARIAN TASCO THE KINGMAKER

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HEN MARIAN TASCO moved from West Philly to East Mount Airy in 1969, the middle-class neighborhood on the fringe of the city was changing.

“Whites were moving out and blacks were moving in,” she recalls. “And I felt, back in the 1970s, there was very little attention given to African-American neighborhoods. I thought there was more attention paid to (majority white) South Philadelphia or the Northeast – that their services were more of a priority than ours.”

Today, Tasco is one of the most influential figures in city politics, but during this time of social upheaval in Philadelphia, she felt powerless.

With City Hall dominated by white politicians from ethnic neighborhoods, Tasco and a new generation of fellow young political crusaders saw politics as the only venue for black Philadelphia to make its voice heard. In 1975 she joined the mayoral campaign of Charlie Bowser – the first black man in the city’s 300-year history to seek the city’s highest office in a general election.

“I was naive,” she reflects today. “I thought when Charlie ran, the world would change, because we’d have an African-American man running. But that didn’t happen … I learned to be realistic.”

Bowser lost, and Tasco says she learned that righteousness and optimism alone wouldn’t cut it. Real change would take deal-cutting, money and the long, hard work of retail politics – the same rmula the white political machine employed to keep its stranglehold on City Hall jobs and services.

Today, the 78-year-old Tasco sits in her leafy home, exhausted from another primary. She officially retired from a 32-year political career last spring. But the ward that she still leads, outwardly a fairly ordinary middleclass black community, is the single most influential ward in Philadelphia. And it has made Tasco one of the most powerful retirees in the city, if not the state.

She bucked many established black political leaders by endorsing mayoral contender Jim Kenney, who is white – in turn securing support in white electoral wards for proteges Derek Green and former state Rep. Cherelle Parker in their City Council bids.

The move was hailed by the press as the moment when Kenney, a last-minute candidate, clinched the election.

Later, when the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee endorsed indicted Congressman Chaka Fattah, Tasco’s refusal to back the incumbent helped end his 22-year career in Washington, D.C., at the hands of the candidate she wound up supporting, state Rep. Dwight Evans.

“I am very straightforward with Bob” – that would be Congressman Robert Brady, who leads city Democrats – “I tell him, ‘I can do this,’ or ‘No, Bob, I can’t do this,’” she said.

She couldn’t “do” Fattah. And that was that.

“I’m only talking about (Fattah) as a congressman, but he doesn’t pay attention to us up here,” she elaborates.

“So, I called him and said, ‘I’m disappointed in the way you neglected us.’”

Other ward bosses might have faced a rebuke from the powerful congressman, but Brady respects Tasco’s power. Fattah garnered 59,000 votes to Evans’ 70,000, with 20,000 votes alone coming from just five wards controlled by Tasco and Evans in Northwest Philadelphia.

And when the party lined up against Democratic Attorney General candidate Josh Shapiro, again Tasco said “no.” She didn’t know Steve Zappala, Shapiro’s Pittsburgh rival.

“Josh ca me to t he wa rd meet i ng a nd made a presentation. He’s not a stranger to us because he’s across the street in Montgomery County,” Tasco said. “We knew him. We knew Katie McGinty, too.”

Shapiro kissed the ring and walked away with 25,000 votes from Tasco and Evans’ allied wards.

Tasco says her success is all about knowing people.

She knows the candidates she wants to support and she knows her neighbors from community meetings, block parties or the grocery aisle. They trust her, so they trust the candidates she likes.

“I don’t look for candidates; I look at them,” she said.

“I’m not trying to put anyone out of business. I don’t oppose the city committee just to oppose.”

In other words, it’s not so different from when she got started back in the 1970s. Some things have changed.

For one, Tasco no longer has to worry about whether her neighborhood is a priority in the city hierarchy. Today, if a block is dirty or a rec center needs a swingset patched, she can get it taken care of.

“We had a lot of new neighbors move into this ward. I have about three or four whte families in my district, in fact,” she said. “Times are changing; the neighborhood is decent. A lot of people are moving in, so we can’t just sit back.”

CityAndStatePA.com

21

WILLIAM SASSO THE PHIL ADELPHIA L AW Y ER

W

HEN WILLIAM SASSO speaks, he closes his eyes for long stretches of time, as though he were reaching into some deep recess of his memory for the answer to a question.

“I quickly realized that the more sophisticated the business, the more they would bump into regulations at the state level or federal level,” the corporate lawyer says.

“So I became involved in the political world pretty early on.

Many of the companies we talk to today are interested in Philadelphia as the next great energy hub, so much of my political efforts revolve around energy – the facilitation of bringing companies here and making cheap energy available to them is the only way we’re going to rebuild this area as a manufacturing center. We need pipelines.”

Sasso muses on the intersection between politics, business and the legal world – and his view for restoring the city’s greatness – in elaborate detail from his office atop Two Commerce Square in Center City West. When asked about himself, though, he is more circumspect.

Sasso suddenly opens his eyes. “I’m a ‘glass-half-full’ kind of guy,” he says.

These days he has reason to be – as do members of his inner circle. Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro, who recently swept the Democratic Attorney General nomination, is on staff at Sasso’s law firm, Stradley Ronon. So is Val DiGiorgio III, a contender to be the next chairman of the Philadelphia GOP. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams hailed from Stradley, too, and

Sasson says he counts Leslie Richards, the commonwealth’s first female secretary of transportation, as a friend that he admires.

As the good fortunes and varying political alignments of his associates suggest, Sasso is both one of Philadelphia’s most politically influential fundraisers and a self-described Republican who likes “to cross the aisle.”

“I just feel great about that the fact that here at Stradley, we’ve created an environment where the rising stars of both parties are actively involved in both the practice of law and the political process,” he says. “I can’t help but think that if they were involved in running the country they’d get us to the place we should be on a national level.”

Born in Philadelphia’s Logan neighborhood, Sasso, 69, went from grinding horseradish at a corner deli to graduating from Harvard Law. Never interested in litigation, he started off doing tax work in the 1970s, which he says is inextricably bound to the corporate and political worlds.

“I thought I could make more of an impact by remaining local, and I think that’s borne out to be true,” he says.

Indeed, the political connections and personal relationships he forged brought him onto prominent boards, from the National Constitution Center to his recent appointment to Independence Blue Cross, and brought his firm to prominence.

As a result, he acquired a reputation as a fixer.

When developer Bart Blatstein wanted an assist in winning a gaming license, he turned to Sasso (albeit unsuccessfully).

When the W Hotel wanted tax credits to open the chain’s first property in Center City Philadelphia, they hired him, too (successfully).

When indicted Congressman Chaka Fattah needed cash, he turned to Stradley Ronon lobbyist Herb Vederman, who was later bagged by federal authorities in connection with Fattah’s corruption case. Sasso was subpoenaed, along with a parade of political movers and shakers, but emerged unscathed.

His political work helped make Tom Corbett governor, with Sasso as a chief architect of his administration – his personal priorities, much like Corbett’s, include supporting charter schools, building pipelines to move fracked natural gas to the port in Philadelphia, and gutting business regulations.

“I guess you could say it’s a viewpoint that’s counterproductive to developing our business,” he says.

“The more regulations that exist, the more legal work is created. But I think business, especially big business, needs less regulation, not more.”

Today, Sasso raises millions through personal fundraising and through the Pennsylvania Future Fund, a PAC he controls with chocolate magnate Bob Asher that funds dozens of Republicans (and the occasional Democrat) across the state. Perhaps a measure of his influence, he “doesn’t see much disagreement” with newly prominent Democrats like Gov. Tom Wolf or Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney over the things he holds dear.

Even more than his quest for deregulation, Sasso says his biggest priorities are installing a new generation of politicians who can fix what he describes as the “unfortunate situation” in Harrisburg.

“The political parties can’t seem to find a middle ground, and you can’t pin the blame on either party,” he said.

CityAndStatePA.com

22

MIKE LONG

THE CONSULTANT

M

IKE LONG SAYS he understands what the average Pennsylvanian wants because he is one. In his view, it’s what sets Long + Nyquist and Associates, the political consulting firm he founded with Todd Nyquist, apart from its competitors.

“I think the best attribute we bring – both myself and Nyquist – is we’re both working-class guys. My father was a carpenter; Nyquist’s was a lineman. We understand what working-class Pennsylvania is because it’s what we grew up with,” he said. “It’s difficult in our business, because too many lose touch with working people.”

Long, who was born in Lebanon County, where he still lives, got his start in politics as a teenager writing letters to his local newspaper supporting President Richard Nixon and the war effort in Vietnam. After being thrown out of the local Chamber of Commerce for being “too partisan,” Long says he joined the local chapter of the Young Republicans. He rode into Harrisburg as part of the campaign retinue for longshot Speaker of the House

candidate H. Jack Seltzer, the Lebanon bologna king, in 1979.

He worked in the statehouse for three decades, eventually joining the staff of state Senate president Robert Jubelirer in 1983. But both wound up jobless in the wake of the 2006 legislative pay raise scandal and “Bonusgate,” in which Long got $41,000 in bonuses spread over two years.

“Everyone knew the pay raise would be poorly received, but the extent of the pay raise scandal surprised everyone in the legislature,” he recalls. “But I still wanted to continue to be involved in both sides of politics.”

Long went on to partner with Nyquist, advising elected officials and campaigning for new Republican candidates.

They found success in flipping Western Pennsylvania districts where working-class Democrats, drawn into the party by unions, felt increasingly disconnected from the state party’s politics on gun rights and abortion.

“Western (Pennsylvania) has really dramatically changed,” Long explains. “There’s a lot of reporting about Southeastern (Pennsylvania) going Democrat, but less about the Southwest Republican change. We’ve had a terrific string of victories and we’ve got a great box score.

We’ve been involved in replacing nine Democrats with Republicans.”

He credited his success to selectivity, saying his firm has turned down several low-grade candidates, and to opponents underestimating what he calls the “diversity” of the Keystone State.

“I once ran a race in Montgomery County, and my clients asked me how it compared to Republican races in Northern (Pennsylvania). I said, ‘Every single position is the opposite,’” Long recalls. “They think their views will play everywhere that they don’t. For example, the severance tax for natural gas. Folks in Southeastern (Pennsylvania) are for that in large majority, but in the Northern Tier, they benefit from it. Someone running statewide just has to understand that.”

Today, his firm is repping John Rafferty in his run for attorney general, Otto Voit’s campaign for state treasurer and John Brown’s for state auditor general (all Republicans, of course), along with dozens of lobbying contracts.

Long describes himself as a “Reagan Republican,” who ascribes to the former president’s “big tent” philosophy of welcoming conservatives of all stripes. Interestingly, the shifting nature of rural conservatism that brought Long success has continued to change, and the consultant said he worried about the drift away from traditional economic conservatism – think Trump – and toward a party dominated by a quest for ideological purity.

He says these shifts were harming public perception of government and making it harder for good candidates to jump into politics.

“Todd and I went to a district about four years ago trying to recruit a candidate” he remembers. “He was a local businessman and he said to us, ‘You want me to spend three nights a week in Harrisburg for less money than I’m making now, so I can get criticized for the positions I take while most people think I’m some crook?’

Honestly, it was kind of hard to dispute his argument.”

CityAndStatePA.com

23

WALTER D’ALESSIO

T

THE BUILDER

HERE ARE TWO Walter D’Alessios. One version exists on paper. He’s a guy from a chicken farm in Western Pennsylvania who holds a degree in landscape architecture from Penn State. He ran the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority in the 1970s and also happens to sit on a number of many strangely prominent boards in the city, from PECO to Independence Blue Cross to Brandywine Realty Trust.

Eighty years old, he lives in Roxborough and today operates a small mortgage firm, NorthMarq Investments, out of an office on Market Street. A sheet of paper with his company’s name scrawled in black marker is taped to a door that points the way down a narrow hallway that leads to NorthMarq.

“We’re a small firm with a small number of clients – and we like it that way,” he says of the company.

This is a technically accurate summary of the bureaucratturned-mortgage broker’s life. But it is a summary that ignores the other Walter D’Alessio – confidant to half a dozen Philadelphia mayors, untold city council members, and some of the city’s most prominent businessmen.

This is D’Alessio the builder.

When former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo was struggling to lock down billions in federal funding for a submerged train line that would link the Penn and Reading railroads downtown, he called D’Alessio.

“I called the federal secretary of transportation – and he understood the importance of the project because

he was a Philadelphian – but he said, ‘You have to get an equal amount of private investment. I need an office building,’” he recalls.

D’Alessio made it happen by securing tenants, signing Aramark and the city’s water department onto leases that underpinned the construction of a tower that today bears the food purveyor’s name. Federal funding flowed into the rail tunnel project, uniting the region’s rail system.

Many of the city’s biggest developments seem to trace back to D’Alessio in this quiet way. As a member of Brandywine’s board, he convinced a suburban Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust to double down on a modest office tower proposal near 30th Street Station, which has ultimately become today’s trio of Cira Centre buildings. On the board of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, D’Alessio helped push the shuttered Navy Yard toward its current iteration as a booming office park, and counseled Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro to consolidate county jobs in Norristown to spur development in the beleaguered county seat. The stadiums, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, I-95: D’Alessio was there for all of them.

Thirty years after the Aramark deal, when longtime Aramark CEO Joe Neubauer retired, he called D’Alessio to warn that his successor, Eric Foss, would try to move the company out of the city. After an experiment with shipping a unit of Aramark to Nashville that D’Alessio described as a “fortunate disaster,” the mortgage broker from Roxborough and a string of city officials met with Foss and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“Their people didn’t want to move – the ones that did came back,” D’Alessio said. “(Foss) kept complaining about the environment, people on the street, the methadone clinic nearby. We got the city to clean up as much as they could and then we started to do everything we could, all the incentives we could, to get them to move to a new building.”

The company decided to stay, and will be moving to a new tower in Center City when its current lease expires in 2018, likely with city-provided tax breaks. D’Alessio thinks Thomas Jefferson University, spilling out of a collection of cramped buildings downtown, would be perfect to backfill Aramark’s old space.

This is how D’Alessio talks about Philadelphia, as though the Class A office towers and Fortune 500 companies were game pieces being repositioned on a chessboard. D’Alessio is central to many important things in Philadelphia, but, in keeping with his persona, he doesn’t take credit for any of them.

D’Alessio says his real skill is building relationships and bringing people together. He can do this because of his background, but also because of his power to make other people see Philadelphia in the relentlessly positive way that only an urban convert from the hinterlands could.

“Once something gets built, you can have a dedication or a ribbon-cutting and you can put the people on that platform who can help you get the next project done,” he explains. “The only value I bring to this stuff is that I know some of the steps. My view, by and large, is that politicians want to do the right thing. My job is to help them see the right thing.”

CityAndStatePA.com

24

DAISY CRUZ

F

THE ORGANIZER

IVE YEARS AGO, the notion of a $15 minimum wage was, at best, a radical idea that would draw scoffs from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Today, with crowds of frustrated fast-food workers banging down the doors to Philadelphia’s City Hall or the statehouse, a lot fewer people are laughing.

Daisy Cruz, from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), can turn out 10,000 members across the Philadelphia region.

The union represents janitors, security guards and other service-sector workers who are employed in skyscrapers and office parks from Wilmington to Bethlehem.

Although her movement hasn’t found a way around Pennsylvania’s preemption law, the $15 demand has been weaponized by the union in its contract negotiations in both the Southwestern and Southeastern regions of the state.

“We might not always win the whole thing,” Cruz says in her purple-bedecked offices on Market Street – right across from Philadelphia’s City Hall. But the $15 demand allows her members “to go to the bargaining table and

fight for that.”

“We have to continue, because even these small pockets (of union workers) actually help the larger fight,” she says.

As the Mid-Atlantic director of SEIU’s 32BJ – a mega-local that stretches from Florida to Boston – Cruz is on the front lines of the daylong mini-strikes, trafficclogging Market Street rallies and pickets at the airport that Philly-area residents have been experiencing the last couple years.

Cruz grew up at Fourth and Indiana streets, in an area of Kensington that became known as “The Badlands” after former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez penned “Third and Indiana,” a gritty novel about the crime-plagued area, in 1994. Much of her family still lives in the neighborhood, and Cruz still attends church there, although she has since decamped to Mayfair in the northeast.

She started working for SEIU in 1998, when the local union realized that while its membership was increasingly Hispanic, it had no Spanish speakers on staff. Since then, Cruz has worked her way up from a receptionist to assistant area leader and, three years ago, to district leader – just as the Fight for $15 movement was taking off.

Now she is at the helm of a union whose scope stretches from Delaware to the Lehigh Valley.

“My priority is to continue to raise their wages and continue to keep these good jobs, especially when they are cleaning and maintaining and securing these beautiful skyscrapers,” Cruz says.

Asked how her union, which is majority Hispanic and African-American, interplays with the predominantly white local building trades unions (which sometimes employ anti-immigrant rhetoric), she simply offers: “If a building should be built by hardworking people paid a living wage, once it is done, whoever is maintaining that building should also be paid a living wage.”

32BJ ma i nt a i n s a power f u l get-out-t he-vote apparatus, which includes three political clubs: in West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia and in the River Wards neighborhoods. From these locations, members come together to eat meals, learn about the candidates and canvass their respective neighborhoods in favor of whichever politicians meet their specifications.

In the past year, Cruz and her union have orchestrated a series of eye-catching – and car-stopping – rallies and protests for the $15 minimum wage in a parallel effort to the socialist “$15 Now” group, which often has more radical demands. Stymied at the city and state level for now, SEIU has been using the demand for $15 as a cudgel in contract negotiations with building operators in its three different master contracts with employers in Philadelphia, its suburbs and in Delaware.

During the rallies in support of pay raises and preserved benefits, a who’s who of Philadelphia’s powerful politicians, from Mayor Jim Kenney to Darrell Clarke, spoke in support of the workers. Although strike votes were taken and authorized last year, the employers caved before the workers walked out.

As long as Cruz has the clout to summon similar numbers of protesters and political support, she’ll likely enjoy similar results.

CityAndStatePA.com

25

ERICK COOLIDGE THE FAR MER

E

RICK COOLIDGE IS a lifelong dairy farmer, a Tioga County commissioner – and one of the Northern Tier’s preeminent political leaders.

He speaks fondly, and often, of awakening at 4 a.m. to milk the cows before donning his suit to head into the county seat of Wellsboro (which, at almost 3,300 residents, is the second-largest municipality in the county).

First elected in 1995, the 62-year-old Coolidge decided to seek another term in 2015 after publicly considering retiring from politics. Part of his regional influence can be chalked up to the longevity of his reign: Coolidge has cultivated relationships across Pennsylvania – including with politicians like state Senate President Joe Scarnati – and a lifetime spent among the people who became his constituents has provided him with an intimate understanding of the inner political and economic workings of this part of the state.

In addition to his role as one of the county’s three commissioners, Coolidge actively exports his expertise.

He ensures that his region’s voice is heard by sitting on a multiplicity of commissions and boards, including the National Association of Counties, the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, the governor’s Conservation and Natural Resources Advisory Council and the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

“We oftentimes are not the first on everyone’s agenda because the size of the population doesn’t really warrant the amount of attention” received by populous suburban and urban areas, says Coolidge. “It’s a delicate position.

The rural areas oftentimes do not have as strong a voice as the metropolitan areas. But one size does not fit all, and we may have to modify (state policy) a bit to make sure we don’t

alienate the rural section of the population.”

One high-profile area where Coolidge wielded his influence is in the taxation and regulation of the natural gas industry.

When well pads and drills started operating in earnest throughout the northeastern part of the state at the end of the last decade, he was a leading voice arguing that the companies should pay an impact fee to compensate host regions for the environmental, social and infrastructural burdens brought by the industry.

In 2012, Coolidge and his allies in the County Commissioners Association successfully encouraged Gov. Tom Corbett to pass Act 13, which gives counties and localities the power to assess an impact fee for each gas well – which can only be spent within their boundaries.

For Tioga County, that meant over $16 million in new infrastructure investments, including an emergency services center, a new hangar at the airport and upgrades to the prison and courthouse. Today, Coolidge calls it “perhaps one of the best pieces of legislation to be created for this specific issue and need.”

Coolidge is known as a serious and civil politician.

Although he is based in a very conservative region, he isn’t known as a partisan street fighter or a tea party ideologue. Instead, he acts as an elder statesman for Northern Tier Republicans, although he would be loath to describe himself that way.

Coolidge’s name may not ring out in Harrisburg, but statewide power has never been a priority for him. He has other matters to attend to, after all. His 700-acre, 173-year-old dairy farm, Le-Ma-Re, was named a “Dairy of Distinction” in 1990. Keeping it that way, in Coolidge’s telling, is his first priority.

CityAndStatePA.com

26

RYAN BOYER

R

THE L ABOR ER

YAN BOYER’S STAR is on the rise. The North Philadelphia native became a member of Laborers Council 332 during his summers home from college, where he worked for construction contractors. Over 20 years later, Boyer, 45, heads up the Laborers’ District Council of the Metropolitan Area of Philadelphia and Vicinity.

His almost 6,000 members live in all five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

“The unofficial job is to get the next job – whatever it takes to bring commerce into this region, I’ll do,” says Boyer. “Politics is about as important (to the work I do) as oxygen is to breathing. It makes me chuckle when people say they aren’t involved in politics. Politics is involved in our business, so you’d better be involved in it. (Politicians) have the resources, they have awesome powers of zoning and land use. You have to be involved in politics to ensure there is a level playing field.”

Philadelphia’s building trades unions have a reputation for being vastly majority white, suburban-oriented and intimately involved in the politics of the city. The Laborers are different in the first two capacities (Boyer estimates that 60 percent of members live in Philly), but the union

is just as engaged as its counterparts in the Carpenters, Steamfitters or Electricians Local 98, the undisputed heavyweight of the local labor movement.

Boyer’s power in the city and the region is likely to continue to grow. The Laborers backed a dud in the 2015 mayoral election, throwing their support behind early favorite Anthony Williams, but their bets this year have proved better.

He is a close ally of state Rep. Dwight Evans, a leader of the Northwest Coalition that represents a series of highturnout, middle-class African-American wards near the border of Montgomery County. The Laborers supported Evans in his successful primary challenge to incumbent U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah.

Boyer also supported Montgomery County’s Josh Shapiro in the heated Democratic attorney general primary, despite most other Philadelphia building trades unions backing Allegheny County’s Stephen Zappala. Boyer and his members also backed a host of other primary winners, many of them Democratic party favorites like Sharif Street, son of former Mayor John Street.

“Laborers District Council is the No. 1 funder of A frican-A merican candidates in t he state of Pennsylvania, period,” Boyer says when asked about his union’s place in the Philadelphia building trades-oriented labor movement. “The numbers say that, not me. My guys work really hard to have a profile and sometimes, quite frankly, it pisses me off that we’re ignored. I don’t know why that is, but we’re out here. You ask politicians about the people who helped them and they’ll tell you.”

Even the 2015 mayor’s race didn’t end badly for the Laborers. Evans was a major player in Jim Kenney’s victory in the Philadelphia mayor’s race, and Boyer is a fan of the new mayor.

Last year, Boyer’s strength grew when Gov. Tom Wolf appointed him chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, which operates the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the PATCO regional rail service.

Although the DRPA, co-operated by Pennsylvania and New Jersey, has long had a reputation for opacity and corruption, Boyer says he is continuing the legislativeordered reforms begun in 2011, and is seeking a contract for the agency’s union employees who have been working without one for much of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s tenure.

But there are regional – and partisan – limits to Boyer’s influence. His district council only encompasses the Philadelphia metropolitan area and, as state politics become ever more polarized, the influence of labor leaders is increasingly relegated to Democratic strongholds.

Boyer insists on his union’s bipartisan credentials, and Republicans in Delaware County boast of their good relationships with him. But the number of sympathetic Republicans grows ever smaller, even in Philadelphia’s blue-collar counties, as ideological and partisan differences sharpen. The only Republican politician Boyer mentions by name as an ally is Dominic Pileggi, the former Delaware County state senator who lost his position as majority leader because he was deemed too moderate.

CityAndStatePA.com

27

MICHAEL PUPPIO

THE CHAMPION OF DELCO

M

ICHAEL PUPPIO’S OFFICES sit on a quiet, tree-lined street in Media, the seat of Delaware County. He’s a partner in the law firm Raffaele Puppio, which serves as a solicitor for school districts and municipalities. It requires an encyclopedic knowledge of the inner workings of the second-most densely populated county in Pennsylvania.

Good thing Puppio’s sideline work is in politics, which he describes as a “hobby,” but which looks like a second fulltime job. And even in this age of increasingly nationalized politics, it’s the local races that get him excited.

“You are drawn into politics by national issues,” says Puppio. “Then, as you get more involved, it’s the recognition that it’s local politics that influences most of what happens to us day to day.”

Puppio, 49, was born, raised and still lives in Springfield, a suburb with a median income of about $90,000. Just west of Upper Darby, it has long been a stronghold of the county’s Republican organization. It has yet to see the demographic changes sweeping the townships on its eastern borders, which have become more racially and politically diverse as immigrants and African-Americans from West Philadelphia have moved in.

During the second half of the 20th century, the Puppio family ran the largest banquet hall in the county, where many of the great political fêtes were held when the Delaware County Republican Party was the most slickly oiled political

machine in Pennsylvania. Puppio dates his interest in politics back to those galas, and when he returned to Springfield after law school, he jumped into local party politics.

Puppio eventually became a commissioner for the township and a county councilman. But these days, he is more of a behind-the-scenes actor, serving as chairman of the Springfield Republican Party and as chairman for numerous political campaigns. From those positions, Puppio keeps a keen eye out for young party recruits – a hugely important skill for local party building.

“You have to try to do it because there aren’t people knocking at your door saying, ‘I want to be involved in my local party,’” says Puppio. Asked whether he would ever run for office, he responds: “I’m not interested. I want to play a role in selecting and advocating for a candidate who can carry forward Republican principles.”

Puppio first chaired former Congressman Curt Weldon’s ill-fated re-election campaign in 2006, which he lost to Joe Sestak. But he recruited many interns and low-level campaign workers from that campaign for the county GOP: Nick Miccarelli, now a state representative; Caitlin Ganley, now political director for Congressman Pat Meehan; Meredith Buettner, Meehan’s finance director; and Alex Charlton, who is chief of staff to state Sen. Tom McGarrigle and a candidate for the 165th District Pennsylvania House seat. In recent years, Puppio has continued to find fresh recruits and backed winning candidates, including McGarrigle and Meehan.

Puppio is well known in Harrisburg as well. After Delaware County state Sen. Dominic Pileggi lost his post as Republican majority leader in 2014, Puppio ensured that the region would still have a connection to the state Capitol by building strong ties to Senate President Joseph Scarnati’s office.

Nonetheless, Puppio understands that he is in a tricky position. Meehan faced a primary challenge from a tea party conservative this season, further evidence that the Delaware County Republican party – which counts both centrist voters and organized labor among its constituencies – appears out of sync with the increasingly rigid ideology of the larger party.

On the other hand, the Democrats are trying to press their advantage in the eastern parts of the county, where they court Philly expats, immigrants and moderate voters hesitant to split their vote between national-level Democrats and local-level Republicans. Similar dynamics have already humbled the Montgomery County Republican Party, which lost nearly every local election in 2015.

“The national trend has been that you get less ticketsplitting, but I would say this is an area that bucks that trend,” says Puppio. The 2014 election results would seem to confirm that: Gov. Tom Wolf won Delaware County by almost 40,000 votes, but McGarrigle beat his Democratic opponent by 4,000 votes.

“We don’t buck that trend for any other reason than folks working it,” says Puppio. “On the national level, could that wave come? Absolutely, it could. That’s why I lay awake at night looking at the ceiling, trying to figure out whether I have done everything that I could to provide guidance for the campaigns I’m working on.”

CityAndStatePA.com

28

ROGER RICHARDS

R

THE CAP TAIN OF ER IE

OGER RICHARDS HAS been involved in Pennsylvania politics since the 1960s, when the state, Harrisburg and the Republican Party all looked very, very different. But no matter how much state politics have changed, this old-school lawyer from Erie, who is also vice-president of the Pennsylvania Society, is still making things happen.

Richards, 70, has been a player for decades, raising money for most ly Republican candidates while championing economic development projects in and around Erie. Despite the high-profile nature of his avocation, Richards prefers to remain behind the scenes.

“I’m a little apprehensive about this – that’s been my goal, to avoid publicity,” he says during an interview. Later, when asked about his priorities for the coming year, he laughs. “Well, I’m trying to avoid publicity; that’s one priority. I don’t think you’ll get your 600 words from this conversation.”

Richards was a teenager when he started out in politics as a page in the state Senate. He recalls mid-century Harrisburg as a place of greater comity both within and between the parties.

Although he isn’t a fan of the seemingly ever-increasing polarization of today, Richards also hesitates to say that the arrangements of the past were better. Party bosses used to run the show, and he doesn’t miss their influence.

Richards is certainly a strong Republican, but his first alliance is to his region. Erie – both the county and city – are rare Democratic strongholds in northwestern Pennsylvania, and he has friends on both sides of the aisle on his home turf.

“What I like to do is organize our general assembly delegation from our area to be united when we look for certain things to be supported in northwestern (Pennsylvania),” says Richards. “Erie is the farthest

community from the state capital, and without a lot of electronic or print media to get our message across. To make a presentation to decision-makers, you have to be more organized when you come from this part of the state.”

Richards has focused much of his attention on Presque Isle Bay, one of Erie’s principal attractions, and was a key player in making the almost 29,000-square foot Bayfront Convention Center a reality. In addition to that institution, which opened in 2007, he was instrumental in bringing an estimated $200 million in economic development, with help from the state, to the city’s post-industrial waterfront.

Considering his longstanding political ties, Richards’ job is no doubt made easier when the governor is a Republican – not because he has bad blood with state-level Democrats, but because his ties to the GOP have been much closer.

Richards enjoyed very good relations with Tom Corbett when he was governor, but he was closest with fellow Erie denizen and former Governor Tom Ridge. “Tom Ridge did ask me to support Jeb Bush, and I did financially, and then Marco Rubio,” Richards notes when asked about his recent political involvement.

It isn’t as though Harrisburg is closed to him with Tom Wolf in office, but Richards has no desire to talk with a journalist about what he’s working on in the capitol or elsewhere in the political arena.

“People in Harrisburg know what (my priorities) are, and I don’t really believe in publicizing those efforts,” Richards says. Nor does he care to detail his political fundraising efforts. “I try to raise funds through various committees because people always try to track the source of funds. Well, I just don’t like to get my name out front on anything for either party. Am I supporting people financially? Yes, but I’m doing it in ways that probably no one would be able to figure out.”

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ONE TO GROW ON:

JULIE HALLINAN THE F UNDR AISER

JULIE HALLINAN HAS mostly been profiled in t he past for her yout h – PoliticsPA noted the promising young Pittsburgh-based fundraiser in 2014 after Tom Wolf’s gubernatorial campaign picked her up.

Two years later, there’s another, more relevant number associated with the 25-year-old Hallinan: $1.2 million.

That’s roughly how much she has helped Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald raise since joining his campaign last year. And to be clear, Fitzgerald faces no challenger for his seat.

“The county executive is very involved in supporting down-ballot candidates,” Hallinan explains. “It’s about continuing to grow the impact and being able to benefit constituents across the commonwealth, so we can expand not just here in Allegheny County. It’s something he and I feel very strongly about.”

Hallinan and Fitzgerald’s impact in Allegheny County has largely revolved around marginalizing the influence of the so-called “Network” – a collection of businessmen and political operatives aligned with former Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl that had a lock on political fundraising and influence in the Steel City for nearly a decade.

No longer. Since Fitzgerald moved from city council to county executive in 2011, he has scored a string of wins: Bill Peduto’s successful Pittsburgh mayoral campaign and several council races featuring similar candidates were all backed by Fitzgerald, who has always been a capable fundraiser.

Hallinan has helped him and his growing cadre of allies raise even more money since coming on board at the beginning of 2015.

“We raised about $600,000 just in November and December last year,” she says.

Hallinan hails from what she describes as a “civically engaged” family in Altoona, the town she left to study political science at the University of Pittsburgh. She fell in love with the city’s Shadyside neighborhood and fast-paced campaign life after an internship at Sen. Bob Casey Jr.’s Pittsburgh campaign office in 2012. She hopped on Allyson Schwartz’s failed gubernatorial primary bid and then over to Wolf’s successful campaign in the general election.

There, she met Eric Hagarty, Fitzgerald’s former finance director who became Wolf’s deputy campaign manager. Hagarty was impressed enough with her abilities to recommend her for his old job in Allegheny County.

Hallinan credits her rapid ascent in

Pittsburgh-area politics to Hagarty’s assistance and mentorship from Grant Forbes Managing Partner Mike Butler and Aubrey Montgomery, principal at Rittenhouse Partners – along with her own abilities.

“I’m sort of a jack-of-all trades,” she said.

“It’s about being flexible, but also organized – I’m one of the most organized people you’ll ever meet.”

The allure of ready campaign cash has helped Fitzgerald consolidate even more power around the state’s western metropolis.

An attempt to replace county controller Chelsa Wagner with another Fitzgerald ally hit a wall last year. But this year, Hallinan helped organize a joint fundraiser with Wagner.

“They were listed on the fundraiser invitation together,” Hallinan recalls. “It was a tough primary, and afterward, they took time to sit down and try to make amends a little bit. They realized this was something that the public was unhappy about, so the relationship has been mended and is much healthier. It was something that we all agreed on.”

She started work on Katie McGinty’s Senate campaign in February. Her next priority is ensuring Peduto enjoys a well-funded mayoral reelection campaign next year.

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THREE FOR THE ROAD The most contested primary season in recent memory was just the beginning

By RYAN BRIGGS

Talk about one hell of a primary season. Where to start? Republican Congressman Bill Shuster narrowly avoided a loss to tea party challenger Art Halvorson in the 9th Congressional District primary, while indicted Philadelphia-area Democrat Chaka Fattah lost his grip on the 2nd Congressional District seat to state Rep. Dwight Evans. The longestserving member in the statehouse, Democratic Rep. Mark Cohen, was right behind him, exiting Harrisburg with a whimper in the face of upstart candidate Jared Solomon. Democratic Reps. Brian Sims and Vanessa Lowery Brown – who is also facing corruption charges – both just barely hung on in the face of multiple challengers. It’s a lot to take in. But the race isn’t over yet, of course. City & State is taking a look at the personalities behind some of the biggest and most competitive races across Pennsylvania heading into the general election.

US SENATE: TOOMEY/MCGINTY THE ATTACK ADS started airing before the janitors were done sweeping up the balloons at the South Philadelphia union hall where Democrat Katie McGinty cl i nched her pa r t y’s nom i nat ion i n Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race.

But even before McGinty’s win, the Senate race was already one of the most expensive in the nation, with Pennsylvania awash in millions of ad dollars in the pitched battle to challenge Republican Pat Toomey.

Democratic operatives spent big to ensure they got a female candidate to pair with Hillary Clinton in the fight for one of the GOP’s most vulnerable Senate seats.

Republicans, fretting over their incumbent’s electability in a key swing state with their most divisive presidential candidate yet

likely leading the ticket, have rushed to shore up Toomey’s credentials as a job creator and gun control advocate.

And, wasting no time, the Republicanbacked PACs immediately took aim at the Democratic nominee in the week following the primary.

The Club for Growth aired ads featuring a McGi nt y-i sh st a nd-i n repeated ly walking through a revolving door until she emerges wearing a fur coat and glasses – a not-so-subtle reference to the former environmental secretary’s stint as a partner at gas industry investment firm Element Partners before she launched her campaign.

McGinty supporters said Toomey’s ads reeked of sexism and political desperation.

But Democratic groups, like AFSCME

PAT TOOMEY

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and Emily’s List, also immediately began throwing money into attack ads savaging Toomey as a Wall Street shill (he worked as a trader with Morgan Grenfell) on the wrong side of the fight for abortion access (he’s pro-life).

Outside of T V land, t he McGinty campaign gained an edge earlier this month when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out of the presidential race, all but sealing Donald Trump’s nomination – not a great sign for a guy like Toomey, who has never been too loud about his brand of conservatism.

“Wit h Tr u mp a l l but t he of f icia l Republican nominee, Toomey’s reelection prospects are dire,” said McGinty staffer Sabrina Singh. “Toomey has remained silent on Trump’s insults toward women, immigrants, Muslims, veterans and many others, confirming that the TrumpToomey ticket is wrong and harmful for Pennsylvania.”

You can expect to hear a lot more about this “Trump-Toomey” character in the

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months to come as McGinty’s camp tries to fuse the two Republicans together – the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s Twitter account even tweeted a Photoshopped image of Toomey with “Trump hair” – just as the Senator’s campaign does its best to keep the two men very, very far apart.

“Pat Toomey has made it very clear that he disagrees with Donald Trump in several areas,” said Toomey Communication Director Ted Kwong. “Katie McGinty has made it very clear that she’s a total rubber stamp for Hillary Clinton and the Washington party bosses who bought her primary victory for her.”

Kwong added that Toomey had, in fact, rebuked Trump before. Once, via Twitter, for refusing to disown Klan members that endorsed him, tweeting “#voterubio,” and in another instance in which the Senator said he didn’t support Trump’s “religion test” for refugees.

Nevertheless, Toomey told CBS radio in late April that he will reluctantly back Trump in the general election.

KATIE MCGINTY

ATTORNEY GENERAL: SHAPIRO/RAFFERTY TO HEAR THE candidates for Pennsylvania attorney general describe each other, you’d think neither one was qualified to run a lemonade stand, let alone clean up an office wracked by years of dysfunction.

“The first time Josh Shapiro walked into court was for his campaign photos,” said Mike Barley, a consultant for Republican state Sen. John Rafferty’s campaign. “Kathleen Kane is another person who didn’t have enough experience to run that office. Josh isn’t going to be able to restore integrity to that office.”

Ouch.

Shapiro, the current frontrunner to succeed the embattled Kane, is a corporate lawyer from Stradley Ronon who served as a state representative and later as chairman of the Montgomery County Commissioners. He was a bit more reserved when asked about his opponent.

“I know what I’m doing as an executive.

The Montgomery County government is four times larger than the attorney general’s office,” he said. “(Rafferty) has never run anything.”

Both triumphed in their April primaries

– Rafferty, who also hails from MontCo, crushed little-known Northeast Pennsylvania prosecutor Joe Peters, while Shapiro comfortably defeated a serious challenger in Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala.

In truth, both are pretty qualified, with long careers in the statehouse and their respective legal fields – Rafferty was a former deputy attorney general.

Shapiro has attracted impressive endorsements (and a lot of campaign cash) from just about every major Democrat, up to and including President Barack Obama.

Rafferty has recently unveiled a string of law enforcement nods: the statewide Fraternal Order of Police, the State Troopers Association and the prison guards union.

Ultimately, the race will come down to which candidate can convince voters he is more capable of cleaning up the smoking wreckage of an office left behind by Kane, who opted not to seek a second term due to long-running feuds with prosecutors and allegations that she leaked grand jury documents.

Of Shapiro’s three campaign planks, the

JOSH SHAPIRO

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first two are “restoring integrity to the state justice system” and “cleaning up the mess” that is the attorney general’s office. Using the office as a progressive platform to protect citizens from polluting frackers, senior scammers and online predators comes in third.

Rafferty’s campaign said he wants to reform the office so it can crack down on identity theft and Medicare fraud. According to Barley, Shapiro is more interested in his political ambitions than cleaning up – and cleaning up is important, remember?

“The fact is that Josh is simply running for this office to be the governor-candidate-in-waiting or to run for U.S. Senate.

He doesn’t want to be attorney general,” he said. “The office is a mess and you can’t

afford to get someone like that in there.”

Despite Rafferty’s best attempts to bait him, Shapiro is taking the (relatively) high road for now, sticking to a message of unity – especially after a race where Zappala sought to pit different regions of the state against him.

“They were lined up against me and we got almost 60 percent of the vote,” he said.

That’s the past, he adds; Democrats statewide are already lining up to back him.

“We won 10 counties across (Pennsylvania) in some of the most rural parts and the most urban parts,” he said. “Throughout the campaign people kept trying to pit this as east vs. west, and I kept saying it’s not about that. I don’t think some reporters believe me.”

JOHN RAFFERTY

8TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: SANTARSIERO/FITZPATRICK DEMOCRATIC STATE REP. Steve Santarsiero and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick are on opposite sides of a contentious race to succeed Congressman (and Brian’s brother) Mike Fitzpatrick in Bucks County, but they have a few things in common.

They both handily won their party’s nomination after shaky starts in the primary, their fundraising war chests are nearly equal, and they both like to talk about 9/11.

A lot. And not for wholly clear reasons.

Both released campaign ads that evoke the terrorist attacks almost out of thin air.

Santarsiero has built a narrative around watching the towers fall while working as a lawyer in New York – it’s what led him to become a teacher, he says, which in turn presumably motivated him to run for office years later.

He got rapped for the March advert by Daily Kos for the tenuousness of the 9/11 connection to a race in a different state, some 15 years later. But then Fitzpatrick followed suit just before the primary, releasing a considerably longer online video that shows the former FBI agent recalling how he asked to be assigned to the New York City bureau after attending a 9/11 memorial in Quantico, Virginia.

The race, which encompasses one of the wealthiest – and, objectively speaking, safest – counties in the United States has been tinged with references to safety, perhaps as a reaction to national headlines about ISIS. Fitzpatrick’s grim-sounding slogan is

“security and opportunity for all,” and his campaign is strongly playing up the political newcomer’s FBI credentials, both on national defense issues and cleaning up the corrupt political status quo – which is, of course, obliquely symbolized by his opponent.

“I’ve spent a career dedicated to security and holding public officials accountable,” Fitzpatrick told City & State through his campaign. “Voters want an independent voice representing them in Washington, not more insider partisanship.”

Beyond his earlier pledges to keep his district safe and create jobs, Santarsiero is running on his record in a district that has leaned left in recent years.

“In the statehouse, I’ve flipped a Republican district blue, and I’m ready to do the same in Congress,” he said. “I’m grateful to have received the trust of Bucks and Montgomery County voters.”

Part of what makes this race interesting is its unpredictability. Fitzpatrick has the right name and an interesting story, but little political background or local recognition, while his opponent has experience but seems to still be trying to figure out what he wants to tell voters.

Success could very well depend on how much outside money gets funneled into this race. But laying off the 9/11 references – which neither camp wanted to discuss – would probably be a good move for both contenders.

■

STEVE SANTARSIERO

BRIAN FITZPATRICK

“HE DOESN’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING BECAUSE OF HIS INTELLECT AND DEGREES, AND THE FACT THAT HE SAVED THE FAMILY BUSINESS. WE THOUGHT WE WERE GETTING THE PEACE CORPS GOVERNOR. INSTEAD, WE GOT THE HARD-ASS CEO.”

PERSPECTIVES

DIRE WOLF

Experts predict a gloomy future for the governor

By TOM FERRICK

Can the Wolf administration survive?

That may sound like an odd question, given that Gov. Tom Wolf has two and a half years left in his first term. But by survive I don’t mean will he continue holding the office – he obviously will – rather, will he have any power and influence?

Will Wolf rule or merely reign, with a coalition of Republicans and some Democrats in the legislature essentially ignoring him as they pass budgets and other legislation?

In my search for answers, I have spent a lot of time talking to an array of lobbyists, legislators (past and present), public policy experts and even an academic or two. All of my sources, who wish to remain anonymous, bring to the table years of experience in Harrisburg. They are all experts in realpolitik: the art of knowing how power and politics actually work, as opposed to how they ought to work.

All of them, to varying degrees, believe that Wolf is in deep trouble due to mistakes he has made during his first 18 months in office, especially when it came to his first budget proposal, which never got past the Republican-controlled legislature.

“I think his problems are severe,” one observer said.

“Ask anybody: What has he done? Where’s the ‘there’ there? If you can’t do a budget, what can you do?”

After a nine-month slog, the state did get a budget for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, which Wolf allowed to become law without his signature in March. (Pennsylvania has the reverse of a pocket veto.) A few weeks later, he let the fiscal code – which usually accompanies the budget – become law as well. He had previously vetoed it.

Why did he relent? Because he had to. Those bills, passed with the support of a small group of Democrats who crossed party lines to vote with the Republican majority, had the votes to override any Wolf veto.

“Allowing a budget to become law was a strong indication of his weakness,” said one of my experts.

“The fiscal code was proof of it.”

There’s also a strong sentiment that if there is a repeat of the last year’s stalemate, “he will be fucked,”

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as one expert bluntly put it. The governor needs to come to an agreement with the legislature on taxes and spending – and quickly – or lose whatever political juice he has left. Implicit in this scenario is that Wolf will have to scale back his goals significantly.

As one source put it, “He is in a quagmire. The next 60 days are going to determine whether he is going to be a two-term governor.”

In the absence of an agreement brokered by the governor, there is a belief that a cadre of Democrats in the state Legislature will make a separate peace with Republican leaders on a new budget and pass it with a veto-proof majority.

“If he doesn’t change with this budget,” said one lobbyist source, “there are Democrats who won’t put up with it. They will override (a Wolf veto) and it will be done. They will send it to him and go home.”

I was surprised by the harshness of the criticism of the governor. I thought significant blame would be given to Republicans, who have an ultra-conservative core group of members who are dead set against any tax increases or compromises.

So I asked my experts to draw a mental pie chart,

“I THINK HIS PROBLEMS ARE SEVERE. ASK ANYBODY: WHAT HAS HE DONE? WHERE’S THE ‘THERE’ THERE? IF YOU CAN’T DO A BUDGET, WHAT CAN YOU DO?”

entitled “The Fiscal Mess,” and tell me what slice of blame should go to each party. That was when the Republicans came in for criticism, with people lamenting the rise of state Sen. Scott Wagner, the take-no-prisoners freshman from York County who is as anti-tax and anti-government as they come. Another gave 20 percent to the general polarization in politics these days.

So, the Republicans got a slice of the blame, but Wolf’s slice was never smaller than 40 percent and in one case was as large as 80 percent. Why? For starters, as governor, Wolf has a broad array of powers at his disposal. He’s been given the tools he needs to lead. But the same observations came up again and again: He’s proven to be a far more ideological leftist than expected, reflexively pro-union and pro-spending.

The words “inexperienced” and “naive” were used several times, though no one doubted Wolf’s intelligence. But, prior to his arrival in Harrisburg, he had limited experience with state politics and failed to do what one source said was necessary for initial success: bringing in someone who had a “dispassionate, cold eye for making deals when deals are needed.”

Instead, he named Katie McGinty and John Hanger

as his chief aides. Although both are gone, during their time in Wolf’s cabinet they were viewed as ideologues “who want to fight everything and win surprisingly little.”

The governor also is not interested in hearing from those who disagree with him – and are vocal about alternative strategies. As one source put it: “He doesn’t want to hear anything because of his intellect and degrees, and the fact that he saved the family business. We thought we were getting the Peace Corps governor. Instead, we got the hard-ass CEO.” One lobbyist’s assessment: “Tom Wolf is a smart guy, so I would never sell him completely short, but he is woefully inadequate. On election night, he should have looked at the composition of the Legislature. We now had the most liberal governor in the state’s history and a Legislature made up of the largest number of conservative Republicans since 1926. Anyone who is prudent will say to himself, ‘I am not going to get my way on everything here.’”

Seen in this light, his first budget – a huge mélange of new and higher taxes, and more spending – represented a fundamental misreading of the reality in Harrisburg. And he used his second budget address to excoriate Republicans in the legislature, which was seen as a tactical blunder.

“My advice for him? Stop pissing down everyone’s leg. Start with that,” said one ex-Harrisburg aide. “As a Democrat, I like the fact that he beat up on the legislature in his second budget address. But that is not a good strategy.”

Ditto the personal attacks, often delivered by Wolf Press Secretary Jeff Sheridan, against specific legislative leaders, such as House Majority Leader Dave Reed, a Republican legislator from Indiana County.

“Why, in the name of God, do you insult the guy who is trying to be a moderate?” was the take of one lobbyist.

What can Wolf do to change things? Some suggestions: Tone down the confrontational rhetoric. Take as much of your ego as possible out of the equation. Get ready to go hat-in-hand to Republican leaders and work hard for an agreement. Accept the reality that no broad-based tax increase can be done this year.

And as one source put it, “I don’t know what to tell him other than: ‘You dug this hole – and my advice would be to stop digging.’”

There’s not a lot of confidence among those I talked to that Wolf will change in any major way. “Can you un-ring the bell?” asked one, referring to the path taken and the damage done.

None of the people I talked to would be surprised if Wolf decided not to seek a second term; and none of them – Democrat or Republican – could be classified as Wolf enemies, with some acknowledging they were early and enthusiastic supporters.

Tom Ferrick is an award-winning reporter and columnist who has covered state and local government and politics since the 1970s.

COMING IN JUNE

NO EXIT? In the wake of a MacArthur grant to implement sweeping reforms of Philadelphia’s broken criminal justice system, City & State investigates the role that probation and parole plays in contributing to overcrowded urban jails.

EVENT HORIZON With the Democratic National Convention barely a month away, an entire industry has sprung up to participate in the festivities.

We profile the people behind one of the most visible aspects – the Donkey Program.

HELD BACK School may be out for many students looking to enjoy a carefree summer, but the spectre of another lengthy budget impasse – and its attendant money crunch for already-strapped schools – weighs heavily on many districts in the state. We visit some of the schools hit hardest by this year’s conflict to see what has been learned.

NEW! And features like the first edition of political WINNERS & LOSERS from around the state, a new column from Tom Ferrick, an exploration of what happened to the Lehigh Valley power structure, and much more.

Pennsylvania politics in the palm of your hand.

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