Pennsylvania Senate Race Whittled Down

Judge Rules GOP-Backed Green Party Nominee Lacks Signatures

(CBS/AP)  The Democratic State Committee's lawsuit spawned a six-week review of tens of thousands of signatures. The lawsuit challenged about three-quarters of the 94,000 signatures Romanelli gathered, saying they included fake names, unregistered voters and illegible signatures.

Romanelli's lawyer had argued that many of the signatures were incorrectly invalidated because of problems with the state's computerized voter registry, but Kelley concluded that it was too late to take up that claim.

Kelley said during Monday's hearing he would grant the Democrats' request to set aside Romanelli's petition and would "quickly" issue an order and opinion.

Pennsylvania law requires minor-party and independent candidates to collect a number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the ballots cast for the largest vote-getter in the last statewide election. This year's threshold was based on Casey's record vote count in winning the treasurer's office in 2004, resulting in an unusually high number.

Lawrence Otter, Romanelli's lawyer, said he remained hopeful that the state Supreme Court would side with Romanelli in a challenge over how the signature threshold is determined.

Casey's campaign and the state Democratic Party have accused Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican, of engineering Romanelli's candidacy. Romanelli's support for abortion rights was considered likely to take away votes that would have otherwise gone to Casey, since both Casey and Santorum oppose abortion rights.

"Instead of Rick Santorum having two names on the ballot, we can have Rick Santorum and Bob Casey," said Larry Smar, Casey's campaign spokesman.

Santorum called Kelley's ruling "a wrong decision."

"I don't think the court has treated Mr. Romanelli fairly," Santorum said. "It's very, very clear that these are partisan Democrat judges who are doing what the partisan Democrat thing is."

Romanelli has acknowledged that Republican contributors, including people who donated to Santorum, probably supplied most of the $100,000 that he said he spent gathering signatures to qualify.

An analysis showed that at least $29,000 came from donors who also have given to Santorum's campaign, and nearly all the donors had given to Republican candidates in recent elections.

Recent independent polls have given Casey a lead over Santorum, with differing margins.

[drgoodwin12]

Do 2 things vote and For everyone that is against Bush because he deliberately mislead us into war in Iraq,go online and contribute $10,25 or any amount of money you can afford to the Democratic Party and do so before the elections.There are good republican senators like Specter and Warner however in order for this country to change course we have to change it's leadership first.It's crunch time for the elections and in order to restore this country we need new leadership in the house and senate.

[heresmy2cent]

Rick Santorum is getting desperate as his opponent Bob Casey currently has a 54 to 40 percent lead in the polls.

Santorum has been an embarrisment for the state of Pennsylvania for many years and it is time him to go.

The television commercials that his handlers have been running here in western Pennsylvania make him look foolish, especially his ridiculous "Champion" ad.

Pennsylvania will certainly survive without Rick Santorum's "leadership."