Democratic congressional candidate Bryan Lentz called on federal authorities Thursday to investigate irregularities in his opponent’s nominating petitions, which he said were loaded with forgeries and tainted by patterns of fraud.
In his most detailed attack, Lentz said that Republican Patrick Meehan should be held responsible for the petitions circulated by party volunteers who gathered 3,623 signatures to get Meehan’s name on the Republican ballot for the May 18 primary in the Seventh District.
“What I’ve shown you is just the tip of what is a very expansive case of not just forgery, but false swearing, deception, and other acts of fraud which permeate the petition process,” Lentz said at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Philadelphia. “It’s his campaign, and the buck has to stop somewhere.”
The state attorney general is investigating problems with some of Meehan’s nominating petitions, which Meehan himself turned over to law enforcement last month. Meehan, a former U.S. attorney, flagged at least four possibly fraudulent signatures among 20 pages of petitions circulated by Paul Summers, a Republican operative from Upper Darby.
Lentz said the problem goes beyond Summers’ petitions and affects enough signatures that Meehan would not have the 1,000 needed to put his name on the ballot. Lentz argued Thursday that federal authorities would give a more impartial investigation than the office of Attorney General Tom Corbett, a Republican candidate for governor.
Meehan’s lawyer, James Gardner Colins, who is representing him in a civil challenge to his nominating petitions, said that while there may be problems with some of the petitions, that does not mean Meehan “was part of any scheme or design” to submit fraudulent signatures.
“I think this is character assassination of the cheapest political form,” Colins said.
Meehan’s campaign did not respond to a call for comments to some of Lentz’s allegations, but spokesman Pete Peterson issued a statement saying Lentz was engaging in political grandstanding.
Read the full Inquirer article here
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