Two Republicans, including a former Scranton police officer, and three Democrats want to succeed indicted state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane next year.
Experience is a major focus of the campaign to replace her. The right kind of experience, that is.
The five are highlighting backgrounds that don’t always include criminal prosecution work as they vie to win the Democratic and Republican nominations for attorney general in the April 26 primary election.
Kane faces an Aug. 8 trial on charges she leaked secret grand jury information as a vendetta against a former colleague who embarrassed her and lied to a grand jury investigating the leak. She is not seeking re-election.
Four years ago, she won the office with 12 years of experience, only as an assistant district attorney — a fact raised by her opponent four years ago, Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed, who said she lacked the experience necessary to run the office.
It’s a contention that surfaced in this campaign, too.
Three longtime prosecutors are running — Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli and Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., both Democrats, and former Scranton police Officer Joe Peters, a Republican, who was a longtime prosecutor in the attorney general’s office almost two decades ago.
The other candidates, Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and state Sen. John Rafferty Jr., a Republican who represents parts of Montgomery and two other counties, said a long career as a prosecutor isn’t necessarily the best qualification for the job, though Rafferty served as a deputy attorney general almost 30 years ago.
“Look around the country, 40 percent of the nation’s attorneys general were never prosecutors,” Shapiro said.
“They were like me” and came from legislative, advocacy-group or private-sector backgrounds, he said.
The Democrats
Shapiro argued his background as a congressional aide, private-sector lawyer, reform-minded county commissioner and state representative and chairman of the state Commission on Crime and Delinquency provide a depth of experience others lack.
“Unless you know otherwise, I can’t remember a time over the last two or three decades where the attorney general has ever been in court in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said.
That doesn’t stop Morganelli, the Northampton district attorney since 1992, from needling — mostly Shapiro, but also Zappala — his primary election opponents.
“Right now, I’m the longest-serving district attorney in Pennsylvania,” Morganelli said. “None of these Democratic candidates, including Zappala, have my resume. ... His job (Shapiro’s) is to salt the roads and cut the grass at the county parks, and that’s certainly not the best experience to be the chief law enforcement officer of the state.”
Zappala, he said, never prosecuted a case himself.
Zappala said that’s not the job of a district attorney in a large county.
“I can’t be in the courtroom. I’ve got 118 lawyers that I’m responsible for and I’ve got 16 courtrooms at the trial level I’m responsible for and I run the grand jury,” he said.
He still knows what he’s doing with his office prosecuting 300,000 cases during his tenure, he said.
As attorney general, he would target the state’s growing heroin and opioid addiction epidemic and target illegal guns. He would increase the use of grand juries to investigate and indict criminals and coordinate the fight against illegal drugs when drug problems cross county borders.
He also proposes targeting slumlords who offer substandard housing and employers who discriminate in hiring. He would focus on increasing the amount of treatment available for mentally ill convicts and even sue the state if that doesn’t happen, he said.
Shapiro envisions an office with a broader focus than now. For starters, he would ban gifts to office employees, publish all expenses online, beef up ethics rules and training and hire a diversity officer to monitor hiring, he said.
He also would fight for a ban on all gifts to government officials; a more robustly staffed Ethics Commission; tougher penalties for public corruption; and instant online campaign finance reporting.
He said he would boost the unit that prosecutes criminals who scam senior citizens, target polluting natural gas fracking companies and even enforce the state constitution in ways others haven’t.
For example, he said, the constitution requires the state to provide “a thorough and efficient education system.” He would not defend the state against an existing lawsuit that challenges the state’s education funding formula, he said. Instead, he might sue the state to ensure adequate and fair funding for all districts, he said.
Morganelli said he is best qualified because of his experience to “walk in and clean up the situation that’s pretty dire right now,” referring to Kane’s office.
Morganelli said he would combat rising violent crime by establishing a gun-trafficking unit to battle illegal gun sales.
“I think that’s a huge priority,” he said.
He would fight for legislation to end parole for repeat violent felons, he said, and would push for more money to treat mental illness and alcohol and drug dependency because they all contribute to crime outbreaks.
“You just can’t lock everybody up. I want to lock up the violent criminals for a long time. You commit a gun crime, you should be in jail for 20 years,” he said.
He also would target transnational drug gangs by pushing for a state racketeering law that punishes even membership in a gang.
He sees his three previous losses for the post — primaries in 2000 and 2004 and the General Election in 2008 — as irrelevant, pointing to former Gov. Bob Casey, who lost in three previous tries for his office.
The Republicans
Peters, Kane’s communications director for a year before her troubles began, said he would work to restore morale in the attorney general’s office.
“They want someone who knows them, knows what they do, knows the office to get it back on track and on a positive road and remove the cloud,” he said. “I can bring instant credibility to the job on day one.”
A prosecutor of drug and organized crimes for 15 years as a deputy attorney general, he was specially assigned to a team of federal prosecutors who gained the conviction of Philadelphia mob boss “Little Nicky” Scarfo in 1988. Those 15 years and his later experience as the No. 2 man in the national drug czar’s office under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush make him uniquely qualified for the job, he said.
He would target the state’s growing heroin and opioid addiction problems, he said. He advocates expanded funding of drug addiction and mental health courts statewide to save taxpayers money in the long run. He would put his experience as an anti-terrorism consultant to use, targeting the overlap between drug cartels and terrorists. He would also create an office to advocate for veterans and fight on behalf of farmers who are victims of government overregulation.
He characterizes the main difference between himself and Rafferty as “career prosecutor versus career politician.”
Rafferty dismisses the notion that running an attorney general’s office requires a career prosecutor. He pointed to former Attorney General Mike Fisher. Fisher was a veteran state senator with only limited prosecutorial experience before becoming attorney general.
“When you’re the attorney general, you’re the managing law partner. You’re the CEO of a 750-, 800-person office. So you have to have that broad knowledge of the law,” he said.
As a deputy attorney general, he concentrated on prosecuting Medicaid fraud, and said that and his 12 years as a senator passing anti-crime laws would give him a broad vision. He helped write criminal laws, practiced the law and met a payroll as the leader of a law firm, he said.
He said his first priority would be re-establishing the office’s spirit and ensuring it doesn’t operate with political vendettas in mind, a charge leveled against Kane.
He would target political corruption, the heroin epidemic and child predators, he said.
He also would work to enhance the office’s cooperation with local district attorneys and other state agencies and enhance the office’s consumer protection unit to target criminals out to scam senior citizens and steal identities.