Li'l Ricky Goes Green

Inky:

When Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) encouraged everyone in state politics to help the Green Party earn a spot on the November ballot, at least one group answered the call: Santorum donors.

Fourteen Santorum supporters gave $40,000 to fund a petition drive that has allowed Carl Romanelli to collect about 100,000 voter signatures to qualify for the Senate race. That's 33,000 more signatures than required, and double what independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader gathered here in 2004.

But Romanelli and the Green Party of Luzerne County, which collected the money, might have violated federal election law in the process.

In his latest campaign-finance reports, Romanelli listed $66,000 as an in-kind contribution from the Green Party. Such donations cannot exceed $5,000, said Ian Stirton, a Federal Election Commission spokesman, who spoke generally about election law and not about this specific case.

Romanelli said if he and the Green Party didn't follow federal rules, it wasn't intentional.

I used to have a measure of respect for the Greens - I've voted for a few, in fact - in their efforts to shake-up the corporate domination of the two major parties but in one election cycle after another they've willingly been used by the GOP to split the liberal/progressive vote. The Greens cannot be considered to be anything more than an arm of the Republicans anymore.

(As a side note: Why is it necessary to go to a Philadelphia newspaper to see coverage of PA's senate election? The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette apparently doesn't care about actual news anymore.)

[Via Keystone Politics.]


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