A debate among the four Democratic candidates for Pennsylvania governor became lively Thursday night when they were asked about ethics and leadership style, and presumed front-runner Tom Wolf continued to sustain and pushed back on daily attacks against him.
The debate at Franklin and Marshall College also revealed that all four candidates support either a moratorium on or an end to the death penalty. Wolf, state Treasurer Rob McCord and former state environmental protection secretary Katie McGinty agreed a moratorium on the death penalty was in order while studying its value, and U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz said she opposed it.
Their reasons included that it’s imposed with bias against the poor and minorities, it’s costly, it’s questionable as a crime deterrent and it’s occasionally imposed against innocent people.
Schwartz said she would be “willing to sign a piece of legislation that would end the death penalty in Pennsylvania.”
The man they’re vying to challenge in the fall election, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, was the target of the most of the attacks, especially for his opposition to a tax on the natural-gas industry and an expansion of Medicaid and his support for 2011’s budget-balancing cuts in education aid.
Wolf, however, wasn’t far behind in being targeted, and he acknowledged that being the front-runner had put a bull’s-eye on his back.
Questions at the debate were posed by journalists and included ones on ethics and leadership style. The event featured a particularly sharp exchange when Wolf, who runs a building materials distribution business in York, responded to assertions by Schwartz, saying, “there’s a lot of nonsense there.”
Schwartz had questioned Wolf’s financial support for the legal fund of a jailed former lawmaker who’s a friend and derided his refusal to take a salary or perks when he served as the secretary of revenue under then-Gov. Ed Rendell.
“I’m not sure this style actually is what we’re looking for,” Wolf told her. “This is the same style of negative attack politics that actually gets you to the point where we have the dysfunction we disparage in Washington and Harrisburg.”
Schwartz was asked to defend her attacks on Wolf, in the context of her ability to be a leader in Harrisburg. She responded that holding people in government to a higher standard isn’t an obstacle to cooperation.
Wolf suggested that, as a successful businessman, he’s different from the others. Schwartz, McCord and McGinty stressed their experience in working in government, perhaps in an effort to contrast themselves with Wolf’s more limited experience in government.
McGinty pointed to her efforts as Rendell’s environmental protection secretary in winning approval from a Republican-controlled Legislature in 2004 to make Pennsylvania the first industrial state to enact renewable-energy standards. As a result, Pennsylvania became the No. 1 state in jobs in wind turbine manufacturing, she said.
McCord, perhaps suggesting Wolf is too naive or inexperienced, said getting important work done in government involves toughness and a willingness to respect other points of view.
“I will highlight, though, that that is not the same as saying, ’let’s send Mr. Rogers to Washington’ and everybody will just say, ’Well, I’m a nice guy so everything will work perfectly,’” McCord said.
Corbett is unopposed in the May 20 primary.
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