Pennsylvania: Cleaning It Up

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno ungallantly declared that his lady opponent was ignorant. The lady, State Secretary of Internal Affairs Genevieve Blatt, charged that Musmanno was violating professional ethics by running for political office while still on the bench. A third contender, 300-lb. Pittsburgh Politician David Roberts, indignantly complained that everybody else was “mudslinging.” In short, it was good old not-so-clean political fun.

Fun, that is, for everybody except Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party. All of the name callers were Democratic candidates in last week’s voting for the U.S. Senate nomination, and their bitter struggle may keep the party in populous Pennsylvania split for a long while.

“High-Kaflutin1.” The snarling started last January when the Democratic Policy Committee met to name its candidate to oppose Republican Senator Hugh Scott. Up to the last minute, the odds-on favorite was “Gen” Blatt, a 50-year-old spinster who has devoted much of her life to the party. A onetime protegee of former Governor David Lawrence, she is now the darling of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh A.D.A. chapters, enjoyed solid support from liberal Democratic Senator Joe Clark.

But two days before the state committee met, Philadelphia’s old-line Democratic organization endorsed Justice Musmanno, 67, a colorful, controversial lawyer who has written eleven books, helped defend Sacco and Vanzetti in their Massachusetts murder trial, was a judge at the Nurnberg war-crimes trials, is so ardent an anti-Communist that he once implored baseball’s Cincinnati Reds to change their nickname. With the Philadelphia machine behind him, Musmanno easily wrapped up Dave Lawrence’s Pittsburgh fief, won the state committee’s endorsement.

Furious, Gen Blatt accused the party’s bosses of meeting in a “smoke-filled hotel room” to ditch her, refused to bow out. To complicate matters, Roberts, 66, who holds the post of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) Prothonotary,*also jumped into the race. A baggy-pants type who never got past grade school, Roberts scoffed at his opponents’ education (Musmanno claims seven college degrees, Blatt three), spoke scornfully if confusedly of “high-kaflutin’ ” politicians.

“Sleazy Politics.” During the campaign, Senator Clark worked hard against Musmanno. A former mayor of Philadelphia, he has little love for the city organization that was controlled for years by Representative Bill Green, who died in December. “Pennsylvania has had enough sleazy politics,” cried Clark. “Let’s clean it up.”

Despite Clark’s effort, Musmanno went into last week’s election a solid favorite. But he was in for some surprises. Musmanno counted on taking Philadelphia by 100,000 votes and winning a big plurality in Allegheny County. Instead, he left Philly with a relatively thin cushion of 59,000 votes, and in Allegheny, Roberts’ 30,000 votes cut deeply into Musmanno’s margin, left him with a disappointing 35,000-vote plurality. Beyond the influence of the big-city machines—in the suburbs, among independents and liberals—it was all Gen Blatt. Statewide, Musmanno won only nine of 67 counties. With 6,000 absentee ballots and a handful of districts still to be counted, Gen Blatt led Musmanno by 455,100 votes to 452,000 (Roberts had some 91,000 votes), appeared a certain winner.

*Introduced to Roberts, Harry Truman asked, “What the hell is a prothonotary?” An Old English term (accented on the second syllable), it is still used in some parts of the U.S. for chief clerk of the common-please court. It is not to be confused with the prothonotary warbler of Alger Hiss case fame. Witness Whittaker Chambers helped establish the fact that he had indeed known Hiss by citing Hiss’s interest in ornithology and his excitement at spotting one of the rare birds. Hiss later confirmed that he had seen a prothonotary warbler (“a gorgeous bird”) along the Potomac.