Allentown Morning Call
In case you were wondering just how competitive the race for Attorney General has become, Pennsylvania Republicans have launched a new website calling attention to what they say are inconsistencies in Democratic nomineeKathleen Kane’s positions and public statements.
The site Can’tTrustKane takes specifically takes issues with Kane’s fund-raising and slams her opposition to hydraulic fracturing by Marcellus shale natural gas drillers, even as her family’s trucking business profited from the industry.
The site also takes issue with the number of cases that Kane claims to have prosecuted while an assistant distriict attorney in Lackawanna County. In early statements, Kane claimed to have prosecuted “thousands” of cases, but later acknowledged the actual number of cases that went to trial was much smaller.
“Kathleen Kane’s duplicitous campaign has disqualified her from seeking an office that demands the public trust,” state Republican Chairman Rob Gleason said in a statement.
Kane faces Republican David Freed, the elected district attorney of Cumberland County in the Nov. 6 general election. Kane has marginally out-raised and outspent Freed, who has the backing of Gov. Tom Corbett and other GOP establishment figures.
In a response to a request for comment, Kane’s spokesman, Josh Morrow, sent along a link to a story by State Impact Pennsylvania in which a spokesman for Kane’s family trucking business,Kane is Able, said the company did not profit from Marcellus exploration.
In a follow-up e-mail, Morrow called Freed, Corbett and other GOP leaders “the gang that can’t shoot straight,” referring to a TV advertisement sponsored by a GOP third-party group that attacked Kane’s record as a prosecutor.
The commercial was paid for by the Washington D.C.-based Republican State Leadership Committee. The group contributed to Corbett’s 2004 campaign for state attorney general and the Republican governor has since raised money on its behalf.
“Once again they have been caught making untrue, misleading and false attacks,” Morrow wrote. “Their first attack was called “one of the most blatantly false attack ads of the political season”, by the non partisan factcheck.org and now this latest attack has been debunked as well.”
Kane is the first female major party candidate to be nominated for attorney general. And, if she wins in November, she would be the first woman to hold the office since it became an elected post in 1980.
In an Oct. 15 Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll that included voters leaning toward either candidate, Kane led Freed 37 percent to 30 percent, with nearly a third of voters undecided (32 percent). The poll of 438 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.
Read more: http://blogs.mcall.com/capitol_ideas/2012/10/pa-gop-launches-new-anti-kathleen-kane-website.html