Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett has been called to resign from his post as Pennsylvania’s top legal officer by the editors at the Philadelphia Inquirer because of conflict of interest issues.
The Associated Press reported that the Inquirer cited Corbett’s filings in two politically heated federal court cases. He has filed a brief supporting the Arizona immigration enforcement law and joined a challenge of the national health-care law.
Ongoing legislative corruption investigations that Corbett oversees were also mentioned by the Inquirer as a conflict of interest.
Corbett campaign spokesman Kevin Harley said the Attorney General doesn’t intend to resign.
A spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato said Corbett’s past actions should be a concern for voters.
“The bottom line is he has a history of politicizing his office and its something that is a concern for a lot of people,” Onorato spokesman Brian Herman said.
A Real Clear Politics poll, which averages three political poll results together, has Corbett ahead of Onorato by 9 percentage points, 45.7 percent to 36.7 percent, respectively.
The three polls used for the average were Rasmussan Reports, Quinnipiac, and Public Policy Polling.
• Republican candidate Pat Toomey was once the president of a “pro-growth” organization that former Republican presidential candidate John McCain has called, “A bagman for the ultra rich.”
The Sestak campaign is using Toomey’s position as president of the Club for Growth as a way to discredit what Toomey touts as his small business background. Toomey was president from 2005-2009.
The Club for Growth is an organization, with a political action committee arm, which advocates for economic freedom through deregulation of the financial markets, instilling free trade and replacing the current tax system with a flat tax system, among other fiscally conservative practices, according to the website.
The Toomey campaign has released several press statements which focus on his small business experience. In 1991, Toomey established a restaurant business with his two brothers in the Lehigh Valley area.
The latest Rasmussan Reports telephone survey of likely voters shows Toomey with 45 percent support, while Sestak earns 38 percent. Six percent prefer some other candidate, and 12 percent were undecided.
The statewide phone survey of 750 likely voters in Pennsylvania was conducted on July 14, 2010. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence. Field work for Rasmussan Reports is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
Honesdale, Pa. —
