GOP Leaders to back Mensch for Senate

With just three weeks before the departure of Rob Wonderling from the Senate of Pennsylvania, Republican leaders have begun to rally behind state Representative Bob Mensch as his successor. According to sources, Republicans will officially select a candidate at a convention during the first week of August, with a special election expected to be held sometime in early October. The 24^th District includes parts of Montgomery, Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton Counties.

Multiple sources have confirmed that three of the four Republican county chairmen are supporting Mensch:  Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton counties have agreed to join forces in their support for Mensch.

The Pennsylvania GOP bylaws give each of the four counties one conferee at the convention, and an additional conferee for every 1000 votes John McCain received in the 2008 election in the portion of the county that includes the 24^th Senate District..  The total conferees from each county breaks down as follows: Montgomery County - 22 conferees; Bucks County - 12 conferees; Lehigh County – 14 conferees and Northampton county -14 Conferees.

With Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton joining together, the three counties have a combined 40 votes to Montgomery County’s 22 votes. Montco GOP Chairman Bob Kerns is said to be privately backing County Commissioner Bruce Castor.

“Bob Mensch is a solid person who brings real world experience to Harrisburg,” said one insider. “I don’t think voters want someone who has been in government most of their lives,” a clear reference to Castor.

Mensch worked for AT&T for 28 years. In 1997 he left AT&T for ARBROS Communications as Sales Director and General Manager.   He also served as a Marlborough Township Supervisor before his election to the state House in 2006. He was re-elected in 2008 with more than 63 percent of the vote.

While several GOP leaders privately conceded that Castor has high name recognition in Montgomery County, his name identification was no greater than Mensch in the Lehigh Valley. “Name ID is the easiest thing to buy in a campaign,” said one operative.

“The three chairmen agreed that Mensch was the best candidate and that Castor had just too much baggage. His admission at the trial of Vince Fumo that he of used his county office to campaign for District Attorney and cashing in his vacation time through a loophole to grab some $70,000 for a single day’s work we believe are difficult issues for Castor to overcome. Voters are just sick of that kind of stuff from career politicians,” concluded a GOP leader.

Montco’s Castor eyeing state Senate bid

By Derrick Nunnally

Inquirer Staff Writer

He is the man who believes he could be governor, but years of political infighting have stranded him in Norristown, cowboy boots on his desk, surrounded by souvenir firearms and other relics of past success.

Bruce L. Castor Jr., the golden-boy prosecutor who became a feckless Montgomery County commissioner, is restive again. Eighteen months after being cut out of power by his fellow commissioners, he is eyeing a state Senate seat as an escape.

“We have embraced everything that I campaigned against, and we have failed to implement anything that I campaigned for,” he said ruefully.

“I thought it would be totally opposite.”

He is 47, and a once-turbocharged political career has stalled. He remains as sharp and telegenic as when he made his name as a big-trial, perpetually televised prosecutor more than a decade ago. Though the cameras come around less, he retains a high public profile from his days as the charismatic, tough-talking lawman of the suburbs.

“At some point in time, he will hold statewide elected office,” said Tim Woodward, a Norristown defense lawyer and colleague. “The only surprise is that it hasn’t happened.”

For now, for all his considerable assets, Castor is adrift in the political tides.

A state representative is in position to outflank Castor for a Republican nomination to the Senate seat, insiders say. That Castor is even in this battle is surprising, given his ambitions.

“I am not a legislator. I am not a consensus-builder. I am a leader,” he said seven years ago. But he’s now gamely talking up his quest to join a crowd of equals in the Senate.

“I guess I’ve mellowed some,” he shrugged.

His once-boundless future lies in the hands of a GOP hierarchy he has previously offended. Castor may have more at stake than just a state Senate nod.

“I don’t know if he can suffer a defeat of that nature and bounce back politically,” said John Kennedy, political science professor at West Chester University.

 

A blue-blood ascent

Bruce Lee Castor Jr.’s smooth ride up began with his blue bloodlines.

In the family tree are early-20th-century Philadelphia Mayor Thomas B. Smith and Breyer’s Ice Cream president Clyde H. Shaffer. Castor Avenue took its name from where it once led: the Frankford family farm Castor’s Swiss ancestors founded after arriving in 1732.

After law school at Washington & Lee University in Virginia – where a hobby was riding horses – Castor bonded with Mike Marino, the three-term Montgomery County district attorney.

“He’s very, very quick,” Marino said of his former protege. “He can analyze something in 30 minutes that would take another guy two days. I mean, that’s how good he is.” Castor still occasionally rides horses at Marino’s farm.

Showing up early and winning high-profile murder cases got the young lawyer noticed. At 32, he became Marino’s top assistant. At 33, his name was already in circulation for the top job.

By the time Castor succeeded Marino in 2000, he was already talking higher office – attorney general, perhaps governor, people who knew him then say.

Montgomery County was the state’s largest under GOP control. And he was regularly on television in Pennsylvania’s largest media market, delivering flamboyant speeches as he sent criminals to jail.

“As a D.A., you’re kind of on God’s side,” said Marcel Groen, the Democratic Party chair for Montgomery County. “It’s pretty hard to mess that up, and he was pretty popular.”

So, the same week in 2003 that he was reelected county district attorney, Castor announced he’d run for attorney general.

 

A career debacle

The failed campaign never got past the primary level. Though it broke his name statewide, it haunts his career.

Christian Marrone, now the estranged son-in-law of convicted former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, worked on fund-raising and other politicking needs for Castor, who coordinated the work by e-mail and meetings in the District Attorney’s Office. At Fumo’s trial, Castor testified he “probably shouldn’t have” used county resources, and County Commissioner Joseph M. Hoeffel III, a Democrat, lambasted Castor for “political abuses” of his office.

“It was a mistake to let [Marrone] become involved” in the campaign, Castor said.

During that campaign, Castor blamed Republican power-broker Bob Asher for having “hijacked” key endorsements for his primary opponent, Tom Corbett. The two had history: law-and-order Castor had helped block Asher, convicted of a corruption felony from 1986, from appointment to the SEPTA board in 2001. It grew into political war when Castor questioned Asher’s role in Corbett’s campaign.

Now Castor talks of rapprochement.

“There aren’t so many people that have my profile that you can throw away any,” Castor said. “Maybe this Senate seat will be an opportunity to try to repair that rift.”

Asher has little, if any, interest.

“He’s not even on the face of the Earth,” Asher said. “He’s not even part of the Republican plan for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

 

Limited effectiveness

Castor’s broad appeal as a two-term district attorney got him the most votes of any commissioner candidate in 2007. He said he ran to help retain the GOP’s hold on county government, but then the second- and third-place finishers, Hoeffel and Republican James R. Matthews, united against him, finding party differences less problematic than Castor.

He has fumed at length during county commissioner meetings. Hoeffel and Matthews frequently pass measures by a 2-1 vote, and Castor has unsuccessfully fought policies on ethics and economic development, several hiring decisions, and the county’s 2009 budget.

“There’s no partisan way to take out the trash,” said Matthews, “and yet we’ve had all these negative votes and divisiveness.”

Observers see little proof of effectiveness.

“He’s earning a reputation that he can be difficult to deal with in a legislative setting,” Kennedy said. “His career setbacks have not been at the hands of the Democrats. They have been at the hands of people in his own party. That may tell you something.”

Castor’s hope of escaping to the state Senate lies, for now, entirely in the hands of Republican leaders.

GOP delegates from Montgomery, Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton Counties will soon choose their preferred candidate for a special election this fall.

Castor and State Rep. Bob Mensch (R., Montgomery), who has few enemies, are said to be leading the field.

Mensch has declined to clear the path.

“He’s been on television all those years, but it’s about who understands the people,” Mensch said.

If Castor is beaten, he’s considering still running for the Senate seat in the 2010 primary.

It is a potential fallback plan to escape a commissioner’s office.

The certificate of election as a county commissioner hangs in the restroom, and Matthews has been Photoshopped out of a group portrait of the county’s 2007 GOP team.

The office is otherwise decorated in Early Arsenal: his great-grandfather Smith’s mayoral rifle, a gift rifle and saber from his time as a prosecutor, and a replica of the pistol used in a Norristown State Hospital shooting.

Castor toyed with a dagger – a relic from a distant stabbing, sometime in 1986 in Pottstown – as he considered where endless public appearances and political warfare had gotten him.

“I can sometimes get somebody to fix a pothole,” he said.

Candidates test waters for state Senate seat

By: MARGARET GIBBONS

The Intelligencer

The soon-to-be-vacant 24th District state Senate seat is up for grabs.

A recent poll by the Montgomery County Republican Committee shows that any of the three prospective Republicans, and even the most mentioned Democratic candidate, can win the seat in a special election.

Two Montgomery County Republicans, state Rep. Bob Mensch of Marlborough and former state lawmaker and former county Treasurer Jay R. Moyer of Lower Salford, have already announced that they will seek the seat that GOP incumbent Robert C. Wonderling is vacating July 31. Wonderling is stepping down to head the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., a Lower Salford Republican who spent two terms as the county district attorney, also is exploring a candidacy for the seat.

Veteran state Rep. Robert Freeman of Easton in Northampton County is the most frequently mentioned Democrat for the post, which encompasses parts of Montgomery, Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton counties.

Montgomery County Deputy Chief Operating Officer James W. Maza, a Marlborough Democrat who made an unsuccessful bid for the seat in 2002, also has some support.

In head-to-head competition, both Castor and Mensch would defeat Freeman in a special election, according to the county GOP poll summary.

Castor would garner 46 percent of the vote to Freeman’s 44 percent, with 10 percent who are undecided. Mensch would win 44 percent to Freeman’s 41 percent, with 15 percent undecided.

The summary also shows Freeman defeating Moyer, 45 percent to 42 percent.

However, the county GOP poll, which was conducted by the Tarrance Group, has a margin of error of 6.1 percent.

“This poll shows that all three of us are electable and, personally, I just feel I am the best for the job,” said Moyer, the former state representative who lost his re-election bid last year when “the Democrats threw everything but the kitchen sink at me and then I only lost out in the Norristown area.”

Mensch on Monday also said he was pleased with the poll results, even though he contends that the poll, performed by phone June 17 and 18, was slanted to favor Castor, who has the support of county GOP Chairman Robert J. Kerns.

“They are just trying to paint me as a Harrisburg insider and that is just totally inaccurate,” said Mensch, who is in his third year as a state representative.

Mensch specifically pointed to a question asking 250 registered Democratic and Republican voters “likely” to vote in the special election if they preferred a candidate not currently in the state Legislature and who could provide an outside perspective or if they believed having experience as a state representative was more important.

Sixty-one percent said they preferred a state senator with an outside perspective while 26 percent said it is more important to have a candidate with state legislative experience, according to the poll.

“I am very humbled that the polling continues to show strong support for my candidacy and I will continue to work hard to keep the public’s trust and support,” said Castor.

Castor said it will be his discussions with the people in the district, not polls, that will be the deciding factor in whether he makes a bid for the position.

Of the five prospective candidates, Castor had the highest name recognition and even then, despite Castor’s unsuccessful statewide race for the GOP nomination for attorney general, 50 percent of those polled had never heard of Castor, according to the summary.

Fifty-eight percent of those polled said they had never heard of Freeman, who has been in the state House since the early 1980s, according to the summary.

Maza was the least recognized, with 73 percent claiming they had never heard of him.

Castor was the only one of the three Montgomery County Republican candidates who had requested that the poll include three negative attacks on himself to gauge his ability to win the seat.

Responding to the statement “Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce Castor has been accused of using county resources for his re-election campaign’s political activities,” some 61 percent of those polled said they would be “less likely” to vote or him.

However, the polling summary claims that a negative message must sway more than 60 percent of the voters to be considered effective. This message barely meets that threshold and does not meet that threshold among key demographic groups such as seniors, the summary said.

Both Mensch and Moyer disagree with that interpretation, citing a state poll that claims Castor has too many negatives to win the contest and that Mensch and Moyer are the better candidates for the job.

Castor supporters claim that the other poll, which was leaked to bloggers, is biased against Castor and underwritten by the anti-Castor faction of the county GOP.

Castor declined comment on that poll.

Kerns did not return phone messages left Friday and Monday.

One person buoyed by the county GOP poll is Montgomery County Democratic Chairman Marcel L. Groen.

“Basically, what it shows is that the contest is a dead heat,” said Groen.

“The Montgomery County portion of the district is not where we are the strongest but we will do better come election time,” said Groen.

Like the GOP, the Democrats have not yet settled on any one candidate to carry their banner in a special election that likely will be held at the same time as the November general election.

Both parties will hold conventions at which representatives in that state Senate district will select the candidate they want to have on the special election ballot.