Trouble in the Lisa Paolino camp.With just days to go until Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, the Montgomery County Republican Party has won a temporary restraining order preventing Paulino from distributing campaign material the party says contains fraudulent claims.
"It's unfortunate that this candidate (Paolino) has stooped to this level to deceive the voters," Montgomery County Republican Committee Executive Director Athan Koutsiouroumbas told reporter Margaret Gibbons.
A full hearing will be held Monday.
This is not the kind of news a campaign needs on the eve of an election. The controversy centers on a sample ballot that the Paolino campaign mailed out. The ballot appears to mislead voters into believing that Paolino has the endorsement of the Montgomery County Republican Party, when in fact, the party has endorsed another candidate.
The endorsed candidate for the 17th state Senate seat is Lance Rogers. Paolino is challenging Rogers for the GOP nomination on Tuesday. The winner will face state Rep. Daylin Leach, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary. The incumbent, Democratic Sen. Connie Williams, is not seeking reelection.
"Republicans deserve a fair and clean election, and it is sad that Ms. Paolino is trying to steal an election by deceiving voters," Rogers said in a statement released after Friday's court ruling.
Paolino's campaign is also facing an investigation by the Pennsylvania Attorney General for previously reported illegal campaign activities.
The last thing Republican voters need is to give Leach, a very weak candidate who has little to show for his year in Harrisburg, ammunition against a potential GOP challenger.
7 comments:
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Check out Delco Story today - she got hands smacked in Delco Court as well.
Tony, if voters see fake ballots or other impropriety on election day, whom should they call?
Yeah, well, maybe. But the current attorney general owes his job to Bob Asher and so does Mr. Koutsiouroumbas. It smells like more of the crap they pull all the time over at State Committee.
Damn,"she's still getting my vote"!!
The tactics used by Lance Rogers and his committee are just plain manipulation of facts so he comes out always looking pure.
He creates his own headlines by having someone call the Attorney General's office to complain about one piece of advertisement, and suddenly there is a statement by the Lance Rogers's committee that Lisa Paolino is under investigation by the AG's office.
On a Friday before the election without notice he files an Emergency Temporary Restraining Order in Montgomery County. The judge issues an order that states that there was "no notice" and "no hearing", but in fairness to not cause damage, he orders the ballots not to be used.
The Montgomery County order does not contain any words such as fraud, guilty....but Lance Rogers and his campaign begin to immediately state that Lisa Paolino has been found guilty and her ballots are fraudulent. The judge did not say any of those statements in his order.
The Montgomery County order said that greater injury would be inflicted upon Plaintiff (Lance Rogers) than would be inflicted upon Defendant (Lisa Paolino) by granting such relief.. which was to prevent the use of the ballots.
Republicans are then overwhelmed with telephone calls from Lance Rogers and his supporters warning them that Lisa Paolino is dishonest, uses fraudulent methods to deceive voters, and has been found guilty by two judges....
Is this a way to win an election on the merits???
Issuing a Temporary Restraining Order until a full hearing where both parties can fully participate, is what both judges planned to do.
I have been a life long Republican and I am horrified by these defaming and manipulative tactics. If I had not found the Montgomery County order on a blog website, I would have believed all the powerful defaming phone calls about Lisa Paolino that I received all weekend and even until Tuesday, election day.
As far as I know, people in America still have a right to adequate legal representation and are not guilty until a trial of the facts or "complaint filed" has been tried before the court under the Rules of Civil Procedure - not a last minute Friday or Saturday hearing where the accused party has no opportunity to defend their position.
It is a shame that Lance Rogers and his committee with the help of the Montgomery County Republican Party has denied Lisa Paolino her basic civil rights to a fair trial BEFORE publicly advertising that she is guilty and fraudulent to all the Republican voters.
In plain terms an Emergency TRO is not a conclusion that the complaint filed has merit. It allows the judge to put matters on hold until a trial can be held where factual evidence and witnesses can be presented giving both parties the ability to present their case. The judge is basically trying to do "damage control for the moment" and tries to evaluate what decision will result in the least amount of damage to all parties involved.
Lance Rogers is an attorney and knows that granting of a TRO does not indicate or represent guilt.
It represents the halting of something that may cause damage.
The Montgomery County Court Orders reads-WITHOUT HEARING AND WITHOUT NOTICE.... this does not lead to a conclusion of being guilty especially when you have not had a chance to defend ones self.
The election is over and Lance Rogers won, but considering the magnitude of the smear campaign days before the election, with flyers, website Fraud Alerts, e-mails, thousands of phone calls all defaming Lisa Paolino, Lance Rogers may not have won....
I am surprised that she received as many votes as she did. She did win in Radnor.
Are there any other Republicans that feel this way?
3:25 AM
(This is now spell checked. Can you please replace the prior statement)
Why Lisa, why not just CONCEDE and SHUT UP? It is SOOOOOO obviously this is you posting! Yes, Lisa won in Radnor, but not by as much as she should have and some voting precincts went to Rogers 100%. Lisa lost every place else? What does that say?
I am not Lisa Paolino. I am a long time resident of Delaware County who believes in doing things properly. I will be asking Lisa Paolino as a resident in the 17th District who was responsible for designing, printing, authorizing these ballots and who did the research to assure that they were legal to use and send. She will not get any breaks from me in my search for the real truth, nor will Lance Rogers who I also view as a competent and a very skillful attorney. He should be able to explain why he felt he was able to publicly label Lisa Paolino as “guilty, fraudulent etc…. at such a critical time which was days before we all went to the polls. I also did not come up with these ideas myself. When I went to vote there were a group of neighbors standing outside talking about all the negative calls. Since I have more time since I am now semi-retired, I decided to take the opportunity to voice these feelings to see how others felt. From that discussion at the polls, there will be many more people asking the same questions. Both candidates should be prepared to explain their actions.
Personally, I want to know how one can get from a TRO to phone calls saying words such as fraudulent, illegal, dishonest etc…..
I believe if mistakes are made that there should be apologies made to the public. Once the facts start to unfold, we will see what actually happened.
I was upset to get so many phone calls with such hostile messages so close to the election. I believe in the Democratic system, and did not like this type of dirty campaigning.
What we need are good strong leaders in either party. If they make a mistake, no one is perfect, but we need to learn from our mistakes. If it affects the people you serve, you must come clean, admit the error and apologize. A mistake does not make you a bad leader, but too many of them may change the way people view you as a leader.
You can also tell that I am not Lisa Paolino and not used to these blog web sites. I now know that you need to spell check ahead of time. I apologize for any grammatical errors or if spell check missed anything. I do not have anyone proofing my writings as I said, I am now semi-retired and no longer have office staff to catch my errors.
I am a serious kind of person and would appreciate serious, sincere types of responses.
Thank you
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