I wonder if this will be the first of many scandals for the Delco GOP trying to put their hand puppet into office.

What’s the penalty for Summers? Who else was involved? Has this ever happened before?

Meehan and Summers are products of the republican machine of Upper Darby. Obviously there is something wrong going on within the Machine. It can only take an outside investigation to determine if there is any election law violations. We can not count on the County Sheriff, the County DA or the State Attorney General to do an impartial investigation. All three are republican and very partisan. In addition, the Attorney General is running for Governor. This is another chapter on why the average citizen has lost trust in our political system. Shame on these career politicians and their political-hacks.

Well well well look who has surfaced to throw rocks. The same guy who was under investigation but never charged by the Delco DA’s office alongside with Rick Lacey for fraudulent petitions. What a hypocrite!
Get your pen out Rocco….start writing one of your long winded nobody really gives a damn letters…and then when somebody points out that all you contribute to this world is criticism you can have your kid write a letter saying what a great amaerican you are. Put your name on the ballot…oh you’ve done that a zillion times as a Repub then a Dem. Try tea party
they love nut jobs like you!

Is Meehan trying to distract from the fact he garnered thousands less signatures than Lentz? I think so.

At least Rocco tells the truth and signs his name to his posting. It sounds like “mirror mirror on the wall” is one of those cowardly, mindless political hacks who can’t stand on his own two feet. More Delco GOP propaganda…I’d like to know why he follows every move my husband makes if no one really gives a damn? Mirror mirror on the wall, you’re the real nut job!

The Mirror-Mirror character appears to me to be some political-hack insider with a napoleanic-complex. I was never informed I was under some form of investigation in the past as the hack alleges. Becareful everyone ! This hack is an in-insider from the machine for how else would he know I was ever investigated before when I never knew it ? When the machine controls the DA, the Courts & the Sheriff; every democrat & independent-republican in this county is constantly under investigation when they file to run for office. The Mirror hack & the Machine is making a mockery of our democracy. The Hack has something to lose; like a political job or a plush part-time paid-appointment if more democrats win local office. For why else would he embarrass himself and the Machine he takes orders from ?

Here is the rest of the statement that our campaign released:

“Pat Meehan had 8 years as District Attorney to investigate Republican corruption in Delaware County and he did nothing. He had 7 years at the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate Republican corruption in Delaware County and he did nothing – choosing instead to conveniently ignore any corruption that touched his political cronies in the local Republican machine,” said Lentz Campaign Manager Vincent Rongione. “It’s very nice that now that Meehan is a candidate for Congress he thinks something should be done about corruption in Delaware County, but the fact remains that when Pat Meehan had a chance to stand up against corruption, he did nothing.”

I would also note that only in the twisted world of machine politics is looking for the truth “gutter politics”. I am guessing that most people see forging signatures on sworn legal documents as “gutter politics”…

Vincent Rongione
Campaign Manager
Lentz for Congress

When you start slamming a man’s character after he does the right thing, that’s gutter politics.

Sorry Polidoro, no soup for you.

I remeber the time it happended to you, and then you fippity-flopped into a different party.

When will you ever learn? You make enough enemies, and you fend off common sense at all turns, and it just wont go well for you.

The only one who took advantage of the situation is you.

First, there was the 2000 election debacle, the 02, then you stayed quiet until 06. But boy did you turn the local scene upside down when you “stayed out”.

So dont go denying the facts, and throwing dirt when your own house aint in order.

Hey Rongione:

Took the bate, like some thirdstring TGIFriday’s night manager with nothing but time on his hands and nothing better to do than to try-an get the last word with a bunch of bloggers.

Impressive use of campaign resources.

Guess that’s why Lentzy’s trailing Meehan in the poles….

Rongione is not ‘taking any bait’, looks like he is trying to clarify the record.
Meehan has had ample opportunity to clean up Delco politics, and unfortunately his efforts appear to be ineffective. He is trying to distance himself from Summers, but his staff did not try to distance themselves from these allegedly fradulent petitions before they were filed.
Sounds to me like the Meehan campaign is trying to have the best of both worlds – they want to look squeaky clean while accepting help from this circulator with dubious intentions.

A waste of taxpayers money, Meehan, investigate yourself, makes no sense.

Mr. Meehan is caught on the horns of a self-created dilemma. Is he the reform candidate or the Delco GOP candidate? So far he’s been trying to be both, and incidents like this show how difficult it is to walk that fine line. The reform bit is a hard sell to a fairly sophisticated Delco voter, and opens Mr.Meehan up to ridicule from a cynical electorate. Mr.Meehan started this race as the favorite but if he continues his passive campaign he’s likely to lose. With a well funded credible opponent, the old GOP strategy is risky. Mr. Meehan needs to decide who he is, what he stands for and start getting that out to the public before it’s too late.

Let’s see who bothers to post under their names..
me (of course), Rocco, Vince (and identifying himself as campaign manager, Colleen and Amelia (Rocco’s wife).

mirror mirror- Seems a bit cracked. 7 years of bad luck for Meehan.

huh- Gutter politics? Huh?

Barry H – What the “H” are you talking about? Vince posted the complete text of the statement released by the campaign. Shocking, isn’t it. Seems to me the Meehan campaign is the one that 3rd rate. Lentz got 5,200 signatures. His Dem primary opponents have almost no money, nor could they use Lentz’s 5,200 signers, but they managed to get 2,000 and 1,200 signatures. Their total (3,200) is MORE than Meehan got with his big Delco GOP machine and 9% registration advantage.

What a weak and pathetic campaign Meehan has. Well, that’s what you expect from a guy that’s had everything handed to him by political cronies without having to earn it.

Here’s something that doesn’t add up:
“in the letter, Meehan says he was alerted by a neighbor whose signature was on a petition he didn’t sign, which led the campaign to investigate further.”

What would have prompted the neighbor to “alert” Meehan in the first place? How would the neighbor know he/she was on the petition in the first place. “Umm. Hello, Pat Meehan campaign. Alert. My psychic told me that my name is on a petition I never signed or saw.” Spooky!

“Representative Bryan Lentz (D-Delaware), asserted that Meehan’s campaign only learned of the potentially flawed petitions after Lentz’s campaign contacted voters whose signatures appeared to have been forged on the suspect petitions”

sooo… Lentz’s campaign contacted said neighbor, neighbor realized something was afoot, and contacted Pat. Seems logical to me!

And Mr. Rongione… now I understand why you came here (and, apparently, the Delco Times website too) to post… you guys somehow caught a whiff of this and thought you had a huge controversy you could open up on Meehan, but somehow your operative was caught snooping the the neighbor’s trash or whatever and Meehan realized that fraud was going on. In other words, instead of you breaking a story about the “criminal” Meehan campaign, Meehan stole all your thunder!

Man, you guys must be pissed!

You are pissed… which is why the campaign manager of a major congressional campaign has been reduced to leaving comments on blogs!!

Don’t be surprised if Gail Conner doesn’t even make it to the ballot. I was volunteering for Lentz the other day, reviewing her petitions…a good 80% of her signatures were from people outside of the district or from Cheney students who aren’t registered to vote at the address they gave.

Mr Spock-
You seem to be having a problem with your LOGIC.

If indeed Meehan was alerted because of Lentz campaign, then Meehan gets no credit for reporting the fraud. It appears that he was trying to get ahead of the story before Lentz campaign exposed it.

Also, YOU find it “logical” that Lentz campaign discovered the fraud, but then you go after Vince with “you guys somehow caught a whiff of this”.

Umm.. if you believe they discovered the fraud in the first place, they weren’t the ones catching a whiff. That would be Meehan.

“Snooping in neighbor’s trash”??? How would that help detecting forged signatures? Handwriting similarities would be my first choice.

I think it’s funny (and ironic) that you are complaining about the Campaign Manager posting on this blog. First of all, it’s the most read political blog in PA. Second, it’s read by a very politically active crowd. Third, the Meehan campaign stooges post here to, but not under their own names. How weak is that?

Taj-
Conner seems too careful for that kind of mistake. She did a lot of grassroots work for Obama in 2008, so I would think she knows the district.

Lentz has little need to knock her off the ballot. He’s got such a lead in money, name recognition and volunteers that knocking her off the ballot would imply that he was scared of her. It would divide the party and cost him her supporters after May.

Lentz will need all of Conner’s supporters in November. So, attempting to knock her off the ballot now, doesn’t help him.

David

Bryan is trying to knock her off. She is doing that all by herself. I’m just saying – She is getting signatures from Yeadon (which is not in the district) and from Cheney students who aren’t registered at the address they gave.

Spock:

My point exactly!

There are footsoldiers, and there are chiefs in every campaign. Hitting the blogs and talkbacks is a function of lowlevel bomb-throwers.

David Diano:

I agree Meehan could be running a better campaign, and I agree that he is a a fair-haired son for the local GOP.

But ultimately, this isn’t about Meehan, or Lentz, it’s really about the political climate. BHO is floundering, and the Ds are facing scandal after scandal. With neither being an incumbent, on a relatively level playing field, I give the advantage to Meehan.

Meehan isn’t exactly endowed with tremendous gravitas, but he doesn’t offend people either, and he presents as a moderate.

Lentz has good credentials, but its just a bad year to be a democrat.

And if Sestak is truly on the brink of imploding, Lentz will also have that negative pull to contend with – ie, the legacy of the last democrat.

The whole petition scandal with Meehan is just kind of bizzare. Don’t know what to make of it, but it looks clumsy at best, and disingenuous at worst. Still doesn’t affect my prediction though.

I just want to correct any impression that Taj’s comment might create that the Lentz campaign is just out to “knock off” opponents. I have been a long time volunteer for Bryan Lentz and was in the office just today checking petitions. This has always been standard procedure in any Primary in order to preserve the integrity of the election process.I am certain that our petitions are also being checked for accuracy. I have circulated petitions myself and have always abided by the painstaking procedure, for example, of having the voter sign exactly as his or her name appears in the voting register of that precinct.It is absolutely necessary to accept only valid signatures on petitions and, I might add, it is the responsibilty of each candidate to ensure that those individuals circulating such petitions are honest representatives of their compaigns.

I don’t buy the “all things being equal, the GOP has an edge this year” argument. I think it’s an anti-insider year, and Rep. Lentz is not an insider (need I remind everyone that Mr. Meehan was hand picked to be U.S. Attorney by Rick Santorum and George Bush).
Nonetheless, it will be a very interesting – and close – race.

Damn your vulcan blood spock!
Lets talk about these Democratic Scandals for a sec, and yes, completely remove the attention to the GOP voter fraud for a second. Charlie Rangel(sp) got caught taking junkets and resigned. Eric Massa got caught having improper relations with staffers, and resigned. When you look at the other side of the aisle, it gets worse… Mark Sanford uses State funds and equipment to sneak off to Argentina to spend time with his soul mate, refuses to step down. John Ensign uses the influence of his office to get his mistresses husband a lobbying job, refuses to step down.
Pat Meehan’s campaign collects fraudulent signatures, immediately blames it on a volunteer, even going so far as to name the volunteer, then asks DA Mike Green to, what is the Cartisano phrase, “look into it”. Please, that is classless on so many levels: first the campaign should ultimately be responsible for its collected signatures, no matter who collects them. Also, a campaign should have enough of its own collected signatures to observe due diligence when receiving them from outsiders (not that I am assuming that Paul Summers is an outsider). Also naming a volunteer in a scandal, no matter who it is classless. It is simply a cheap attempt to divert the attention from the campaign to a scapegoat. Keep that in mind conservative bloggers thinking of helping Pat: You could be next.
Not to mention, if this Republican machine is so awesome, why didn’t he get more signatures anyway? When you think all the state reps in his district, doesn’t the GOP coordinate anything between campaigns. Getting petition signatures is tedious; but it does act as a meter for a campaign’s strength and organization. I am a little disappointed.

One other thing, the office that Meehan is running for is federal. If this was for Pat Meehan’s petition to run for local committee Mike Green would be the DA to look into it. If Pat Meehan was running for State Rep or Senate, Tom Corbett would be the DA to look into it. This is a federal Race, that means the DA that should look into it is Eric Holder. We can’t pick our Jurisdictions like we pick our friends, and we can’t pick our jurisdictions by who our friends are.

Matt from UD: The office is federal, but ballot access issues are matters of state law.