What is Agenda 21?

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Election Nears

This Tuesday the polls will be open from 7am - 8pm. This election is more local in nature plus all the judicial races. I hope that there are people in your community whom you feel comfortable voting for. Please if you are in West View vote for our candidates for council Jim Barr and Dave Urban. If you do no not like a candidate in a particular race write in a name, yours if you want. Personally I do not know enough about the judges in this race but I plan on voting for Mike Krancer and voting NO retention for Judge Saylor other than those two I will probably not vote for a judicial candidate. Good Luck to Jim and Dave, also to Phil Haddad who is running for council in Scotdale twp. in Westmoreland County.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Krancer only PA Supreme Court Candidate who did not take Trial Lawyer Money: Legal Intelligencer

Page printed from: http://www.thelegalintelligencer.com

The Money Keeps Rolling In as Candidates Disclose Contributions
Gina Passarella, Peter Hall and Amaris Elliott-Engel

09-26-2007

The money is flowing in this year's race for two open Supreme Court seats, and a large portion of it is coming from a 527 group headed up by Philadelphia trial lawyers.

The Committee for a Better Tomorrow, whose treasurer, Mark Tanner, is the current president of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, donated $632,000 to Supreme Court candidates, including the retention campaign of Justice Thomas G. Saylor.

The committee gave a total of $707,000 when Superior Court candidates are included in the mix. These donations were for the latest reporting cycle, which is from June 5 to Sept. 17. Candidates had to file contribution data with the State Department by 6 p.m. yesterday.

According to campaign contribution records on the Pennsylvania Department of State's Web site, this was the first cycle in which the committee donated to any of the candidates. A 527 group has to file its own disclosure reports, according to the Web site www.opensecrets.com, but it is not limited by certain contribution caps. These groups are often issue-based advocates that support a cause without supporting individual candidates, the site said.

Supreme Court candidates Seamus P. McCaffery and Debra Todd, Superior Court judges running on the Democratic ticket, each received $225,000 from the committee. Republican candidate and Superior Court Judge Maureen Lally-Green received $107,000. The committee did not donate to Republican candidate Michael L. Krancer, according to the Department of State's site.

Saylor received $75,000 from the committee this cycle. The committee donated $75,000 in total to the Superior Court campaigns of Democrats Christine Donohue and Ron Folino, an attorney and judge from Allegheny County, respectively.

Tanner, of Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner & Weinstock, said the committee is the PAC of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, which he said has been around for a long time but isn't always as active as it was this cycle.

He said the group is bipartisan and feels that judicial elections are important. The group talks with its members and the committee reads through prior opinions of some of the candidates and makes its decisions from there, he said. The committee looks for candidates that are in support of fair and meaningful access to the courts and who support the rights of victims at trial.

"We avoid that appearance of impropriety when single lawyers or judges write [individual] checks," Tanner said.

In terms of Krancer, Tanner said the group just didn't know enough about where he stood on certain positions because there weren't as many opinions for them to read.

Tanner said the PAC waited until after the primary to make any donations for this election cycle.

G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics & Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, said that while that is a "huge amount of money" for one PAC, trial lawyers have historically donated to judicial campaigns.

Madonna said he doesn't get the sense that there is some sort of conspiracy that is benefiting trial lawyers once the judges are on the bench.

While the group has done nothing illegal or unethical under the current rules, he said, "that's a poster child case for why there ought to be limits."

Madonna said Tanner's argument that the PAC avoids the appearance of impropriety does hold some merit.

"That's far better than individual law firms giving large sums of money," he said.

Maureen Lally-Green

Lally-Green raised more than $458,000 in the latest reporting cycle. In total, Lally-Green has brought in just under $830,000 for the year.

The party-endorsed candidate took about $166,000 of this cycle's donations from lawyers, law firms or political action committees related to the legal industry.

The biggest contributor was the Committee for a Better Tomorrow. It donated $70,000 at the end of August and $37,000 in September for a total of $107,000.

Other large donors to Lally-Green included former K&L Gates Management Committee Chairman Charles J. Queenan Jr., who donated $10,000. Pittsburgh-based law firms DeForest Koscelnik Yokitis & Kaplan and Cohen & Grigsby PAC donated $5,000 each, and McErlane & Frank donated $6,000. The PA Future Fund PAC, led by Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young Chairman William R. Sasso, gave $5,000.

Debra Todd

Todd raised $370,871 through her campaign committee during the June 5 to Sept. 17 reporting period. Todd brought in a total of $710,511 over the course of the year.

In the latest cycle, Todd collected $48,200 from organized labor groups or union-affiliated PACs including a $25,000 contribution from the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers Committee to Support Public Education.

In addition to the contribution from the Committee for a Better Tomorrow, which was by far her largest, lawyers, law firms and law-related PACs also contributed at least $69,500 to Todd's campaign committee.

Notably, Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel in Philadelphia contributed $5,000, Cohen & Grigsby in Pittsburgh contributed $2,500, Eckert Seamans contributed $2,500 and Swartz Campbell in Philadelphia contributed $2,000.

Edwin H. Beachler III, of Caroselli Beachler McTiornan & Conboy in Pittsburgh, gave $10,000; Daniel Berger of Berger & Montague in Philadelphia gave $5,000; Nancy H. Fullham, of McEldrew & Fullham in Newtown Square, Pa., gave $5,000.

Todd also received contributions from state legislators. Sen. Constance Williams, D-Montgomery, and Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, each gave $1,000.

As of publication time, Saylor, McCaffery and Krancer had not filed their reports.

Other Big Donors

John M. Templeton Jr., president of the John Templeton Foundation, was a big donor to the Republican Party across both the Supreme and Superior Court races. He gave $30,000 to Lally-Green. He gave Dauphin County Common Pleas Court Judge Bruce Bratton and Allegheny Common Pleas Court Judge Cheryl Allen, both Republican candidates for Superior Court, $40,000 and $35,000 respectively. His donation to Allen made up almost all of her $41,785.

The Templeton Foundation focuses on donating to groups that share its scientific and philosophical background.

Superior Court Candidates

Bratton received $86,005 in contributions and receipts.

Besides the $20,000 donation from Templeton, Bratton also received $5,000 - $1,000 Aug. 9 and $4,000 Sept. 14 - from the Pittsburgh-based law firm Eckert Seamans PA Government PAC; and $5,000 from the PA Future Fund PAC.

Allen received $41,785 in contributions. Besides the $35,000 Templeton donation, most notably she received $1,000 from the PA Future Fund PAC and $1,000 from Robert Gleason Jr., chairman of the state Republican Party.

No other Superior Court candidates had filed their reports at the time of publication.

FOP fights retention bid by Nauhaus for judge

Tuesday, October 30, 2007
By Ann Belser, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The city's police union has come out against a sitting judge, saying he is too soft on criminals and anti-police.

Members of the Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, have taken up a collection among themselves to pay for yard signs calling for Common Pleas Judge Lester G. Nauhaus' ouster.

Normally, retention elections overwhelmingly return sitting judges to the bench. But a statewide campaign against retention, growing out of the legislative pay raise fiasco two years ago, has led Judge Nauhaus and others for the first time to raise money to support their retention.

The anti-Nauhaus signs went up over the weekend and police Lt. Bill Mathias said there are more that will be posted before election day along the major roadways around the city.

"It's always been the belief among police officers that he was anti-police," Lt. Mathias said.

Judge Nauhaus, who was elected in 1997, is the former public defender for the county. He said he was surprised the police are working against his retention because he said they have rarely filed appeals when he has ruled against them.

He argued that every decision he makes, other than guilt or innocence, is subject to appeal. In the last 10 years he has never had a sentence overturned and in the same time he has only had appeals on about five suppression motions where he ruled against the police. Of those, he noted, the rulings from the higher courts have been fairly evenly split.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. would not make a comment regarding a sitting judge.

"This is part of the public process," he said about the issues surrounding the retention election.

Lt. Mathias said he was the designated spokesman for the campaign because unlike detectives he doesn't have to appear in court very often.

He said his opinion of Judge Nauhaus was formed in the police academy when the judge, who was then a defense attorney, started a class for the officers-to-be by saying "Good Morning, how are my little piglets doing?"

He found that offensive.

The FOP as an organization did not take the initiative to go after Judge Nauhaus. Instead, FOP President Jim Malloy said, it was individual members, particularly detectives, who came to him asking to use the FOP's name on the signs.

"I didn't print the signs. The signs were printed by the policemen out in the zones," Mr. Malloy said. He said it was the members that took up the collection for the signs and had them produced.

The signs, which along four lines read "Support your police/ Vote no/ Judge Nauhaus/ Paid for by FOP Lodge #1" went up over the weekend mainly along Route 51 and in the North Hills.

Judge Nauhaus already was worried about retention before the police decided to take him on.

PA Clean Sweep, which two years ago led the fight against pay raises for legislators and judges, has targeted 66 of the 67 candidates up for retention statewide. Judge Nauhaus said the threat posed by the statewide campaign didn't worry him as much as the new voting machines which, unlike the old machines where retentions were hidden at the top, have a screen in which voters are asked to vote on retention.

The confluence of the new machines and the statewide anti-judicial campaign led Judge Nauhaus to raise $42,000 for a retention campaign. He is not the only local judge raising money. Common Pleas President Judge Joseph M. James has raised $118,000 for his own retention bid, according to the campaign finance report his committee filed on Friday.

Judge James said the bar association, which has endorsed the retention of all three Common Pleas judges running, is handing out slate cards at the polls for them. Judge W. Terrence O'Brien is the third Common Pleas judge running. He has not raised money for his retention bid.

The two judges started raising money because of the retention election two years ago in which, amid the furor over the legislative pay raise, voters threw out Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro.

This is the first time that a group has taken on members of the Court of Common Pleas.

Even eight years ago, when Judge Jeffrey Manning's retention was not endorsed by the Allegheny County Bar Association, Judge Manning did not mount a campaign to save his job but still won retention.
First published on October 30, 2007 at 12:00 am
Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.