SEE ALSO: Meehan asks DelCo DA to review his petitions.

By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com

Democrat Bryan Lentz’s campaign lambasted on Thursday revelations made earlier in the day that his congressional opponent, Pat Meehan, has asked the local district attorney to investigate potentially fraudulent signatures on his own nominating petitions.

The possible wrongdoing, campaign officials said, “seemed to go beyond innocent mistakes.”

Meehan’s campaign issued an early morning press release announcing it had uncovered potentially fraudulent signatures on the petitions and had asked the Delaware County district attorney to investigate. In a letter to the district attorney, Meehan said anyone who did something illegal should be held accountable.

His explanation didn’t satisfy Lentz’s campaign manager, Vincent Rongione, who issued a blistering response to the news connecting the former U.S. attorney with what he said is a corrupt GOP machine in the area.

“Pat Meehan had 8 years as District Attorney to investigate Republican corruption in Delaware County and he did nothing,” Rongione said in a statement. “He had 7 years at the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate Republican corruption in Delaware County and he did nothing – choosing instead to conveniently ignore any corruption that touched his political cronies in the local Republican machine.

He added: “There are always mistakes in the petition process but these seem to go beyond innocent mistakes, and that is why we look forward to a complete and independent investigation to determine if any fraud or other criminal misconduct took place and to hold Meehan and his cronies accountable. No one should prejudge the outcome of the ongoing investigation into Meehan’s campaign improprieties, but for him to try to distance himself from the local GOP after they spent 30 years propping him up and giving him political jobs is a joke.”

Meehan’s campaign said the candidate received a call Wednesday night from a neighbor who told him that although his signature was on a petition, he hadn’t actually signed it. But Rongione, in an interview with PoliticsPA, responded that he was notified only because the Lentz campaign had been investigating the possible forgeries.

“If we had not been conducting an investigation there is absolutely no reason to believe that Meehan would have brought this to light,” he said.

The campaign manager declined to reveal what, if anything, his campaign had discovered during its investigation.

Meehan’s campaign said regardless of how the candidate found out about the allegations, the important thing was immediately altering the district attorney of possible wrongdoing. It also issued a rebuttal to Lentz’s criticism, accusing his campaign of using the occasion to play “gutter politics.”

“Rather than take the high-road and commend Pat Meehan for his commitment to the integrity of the electoral process, Bryan Lentz is engaging in partisan mudslinging and gutter politics that have become all too common in Harrisburg and Washington,” said Bryan Kendro, Meehan’s campaign manager, in a statement. “Attempts to impugn the character of candidates like Pat Meehan with unsupported claims and false statements turn people off to politicians like Lentz.”

The Delaware County District Attorney’s office was not immediately available for comment.

Thursday’s exchange between the two campaigns is the most heated yet for what many observers have pegged as one of the country’s most high-profile congressional races. Meehan and Lentz, both trying to replace departing incumbent Joe Sestak in the 7th District, are each considered top recruits this year in their respective parties.

Tags: Bryan Lentz, Bryan Letnz for congress, Pat Meehan, Pat Meehan for Congress

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under PA Reports, PoliticsPA Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.