Santorum staffers gathered signatures for Green Party candidate

[LynneSin]

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/15207504.htm
Santorum staffers gathered signatures for Green Party candidate

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Several people working for Republican Sen. Rick Santorum's re-election campaign - including an intern who dressed as a duck - were among those collecting signatures for a Green Party candidate.

The effort to get Carl Romanelli on the general election ballot is a tactic that could siphon votes from Santorum's Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Bob Casey. Polls show Casey leading Santorum.

Democrats disclosed the Republican involvement in collecting signatures for Romanelli. Virginia Davis, a spokeswoman for Santorum, did not dispute it.

_________________________________________________


Just who were those staffers?


http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15204718.htm

Controversy has surrounded the Greens' attempts to get on the ballot in November. Earlier this week they filed 85,000 signatures, well above the 67,070 required, on behalf of Romanelli and two other candidates.

But it seems their effort has been greatly aided by Santorum, who apparently thinks the anti-war, pro-abortion rights Romanelli could lure votes from his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr.

Santorum has acknowledged having encouraged donors to give money to the Green Party. And five paid Santorum staffers - including deputy campaign manager Luke Bernstein - collected signatures for the Green Party on Aug. 1, according to copies of the petitions obtained by the Daily News.

So my question is this - what effort did the Green party put into getting their candidate on the ticket vs. the efforts of Rick Santorum to get the candidate on the ticket. Seriously, when is the Green Party leaders going to speak out against this guy in PA. If they want us to believe they are the party devoid of political corruption (and yes, I know democrats are corrupt - this is not the issue) then they need to clean this trash out of the house

[acmavm]

1. Everytime the Green's whore themselves out to the republicans they

lose credibility. They show themselves as nothing more than spoilers who have to rely on crooks, cheats, and thugs.

[bleever]

2. Just when you think they've reached

their nadir.


Ed: not condemning all Greens (not by a longshot) but when they get used by repug's, is a sorry thing for everyone.

[LynneSin]

3. I just want the Green Party to speak out against this

I know the democratic party has corruption in their party and have taken money from questionable sources

I know the democratic party had members that go too far to the middle/right and suck up too much to Bush

But the thing is, they are what they are and it's not like they've campaigned on this platform of being free of corruption and progressive to the core (although I wish they would).

But this has been the Green mantra since I don't know how long. It's like me giving smokers shit about smoking and then they catching me with a lit cigerette dangling from my mouth.

If the Greens want my respect they need to denounce this guy. I know Romanelli will have little affect on the outcome of the PA Senate race - it's not about that. I just want the Greens to clean up their act and vow to never take support from Republicans again. Because if they don't, their credibility is shot with me

[bleever]

4. It's a clear accountability moment for the Greens.

Well put.

[RiffRandell]

5. Once again, good post Lynne. n/t

[DRoseDARs]

6. New campaign reform rule: Must be registered to the party in question...

...in order to do anything, paid or volunteer, on its behalf at the time of the activity. Collecting signatures for a Green candidate? Must be a registered Green to do so. Registered Republican or Democrat and caught collecting signatures for a Green candidate? $500 fine for the individual, $500 fine for the organizer per signature collected by the individual.

Will this stop people from being wolves in sheep's clothing? No, but at least they'll lose money for doing so if they're caught doing slimey shit like this.

[LynneSin]

7. Well, I think that's a little drastic

I know when I worked for the Rendell campaign we had plenty of republicans helping us because they were big fans of the mayor (this was in Philly where Rendell served as a 2-term mayor).

But we do need reform. First, the PA laws for 3rd party candidates are some of the harshest out there with the candidate requiring 2% based whoever was the top vote getter of the previous statewide election. (Meaning in 2004, Bob Casey got 3.4mill votes for his run for State Treasure so 3rd party candidates needed what worked out to be 67k signatures). I think that number should be brought down a bit so that all of the 3rd parties have a chance.

But as for the Green Party and some of their shenigans - they used a notorious signature-gathering firm FSM inc. to gather the votes and some $100k was paided to gather the signatures. And it's not uncommon for signature gatherers to be paid per signature collected (a shitload of money was paid out to signature gatherers for the Grey Davis recall). I think that practice should be abolished. If I was getting paid for by the signature and I was either devoid of values or perhaps desparate for money, I would probably use persusive and corrupt manners for the signatures I gathered. You cannot pay signature-gathers and not expect some form of rule-bending to happen in order to either make more money or get the candidate on the ticket.

So if I were to change 2 things right off the bat with reforming the system it would be lowering the signatures required and banning signature-gatherers from being paid to collect signatures. If your party isn't dedicated enough with volunteers willing to go out there and do the work, the perhaps you weren't really meant to be on the ballot in the first place

[DRoseDARs]

9. But as a dirty tactic, you'd have plenty of Republican volunteers...

...to pick up the slack like in this case. I agree that this kind of work should be volunteer-only, but you can always find someone willing to engage in dirty political tactics like this for free anyway if the job is small enough and more likely to go unnoticed/uncaught. If we can have closed primaries, then we can also enforce who can gather signatures for a particular party and punish those that willfully violate regulation.

[Iris]

8. Yet they'd still have us believe their ideas are "mainstream"

if that's the case, they wouldn't have to resort to this sort of thing to try stack the deck in their favor.