Pennsylvania porn wars rock governor’s race

The porn wars that have rocked the Pennsylvania governor’s race are escalating.

Gov. Tom Corbett’s press office released details Wednesday of disciplinary action taken against eight state employees for viewing pornography on office computers while working for his Democratic challenger, Tom Wolf, during Mr. Wolf’s tenure as state revenue secretary in the mid-2000s.

The move came after Mr. Wolf, who has a big lead in polls over the incumbent Republican, accused Mr. Corbett of allowing a “culture” of porn viewing among his employees while he was state attorney general. Two of Mr. Corbett’s top aides have resigned after the allegations came to light, and a third aide is resisting the governor’s calls to step down.

Mr. Corbett has denied that he knew anything about his staff’s porn-viewing propensities while he was attorney general, and has called Mr. Wolf’s accusations a “cheap shot.”

On Wednesday, at the request of the Philadelphia Daily News, the governor’s office released information showing that two Department of Revenue employees were fired in 2007 for viewing “sexually oriented websites” while they worked for Mr. Wolf. Six other employees were reprimanded for emailing inappropriate information.

“Instead of once again pointing fingers, Tom Wolf needs to explain how he allowed a culture to develop in his office that allowed this to happen in the first place,” Corbett spokesman Chris Pack told the Daily News.

Mr. Corbett served as the state’s attorney general from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2005 through 2011, when he was elected governor. Mr. Wolf, now a businessman, served in the state’s Department of Revenue from April 2007 to November 2008.

Wolf spokesman Mark Nicastre said the actions taken against the porn viewers in the Department of Revenue were “an example of the contrasting leadership” between Mr. Wolf and the governor.

“Under Tom Wolf, when these types of improprieties arose in a few cases among a staff of approximately 1,800, there was discipline,” Mr. Nicastre told the newspaper. “Under Tom Corbett, his top lieutenants shared hundreds of pornographic emails over four years with no discipline whatsoever.”

The porn wars started when Democratic state Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a review of Mr. Corbett’s handling as a prosecutor of the child sex-abuse case against former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The pornographic emails came to light, and have since become a significant issue in the campaign.

Two of Mr. Corbett’s top deputies, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Chris Abruzzo and DEP Chief Counsel Glenn Parno, resigned last week after their involvement was publicized.