Power: The Importance of Being Ernie
The Corbett inauguration is an early-afternoon affair in the Forum Building, on a frigid Tuesday in January. For some reason, Ernie’s not with the Lackawanna County contingent — Judge Michael Barrasse, Sal Cognetti and the gang. When Corbett’s honored guests start filing out onto the dais, lo and behold, there’s Ernie, grinning from ear to ear, looking around. He takes a seat between outgoing Attorney General Jerry Pappert and Ernie’s predecessor, LeRoy Zimmerman. Whoa! Ernie’s up on the dais. A whisper can be heard in the press section: What’s Ernie doing up there?
Wasn’t Corbett the man charged with cleaning up Ernie’s mess after he left office? The interim A.G., appointed by Governor Tom Ridge, who discovered that more than 80 percent of the $441,163 that Ernie’s lawyers at Philadelphia’s Morgan, Lewis & Bockius charged the state for representing Ernie during his ordeal should have been billed to Ernie? The interim A.G. who said when he left, “A year ago, people were ashamed they worked here. They would say they worked for ‘the Commonwealth.’ We had agents who … didn’t want Ernie’s name on their credentials”? The interim A.G. who found that Ernie’s political motivations even tainted the drug war, with disproportionate shares of money going to the northeastern part of the state, where Ernie enjoyed the most popularity?
So these two guys must have agreed at some point to let bygones be bygones. Why else would Corbett invite Ernie to sit in a place of honor on his big day? Why else would Ernie show up?
Then the inevitable happens. The third speaker, State Senator Robert C. Jubelirer, tells Corbett in a short speech he’s going to have to live up to the high standards already set by the elected A.G.’s who preceded him. He names Mike Fisher, and Zimmerman, and — oh no! — conspicuously ignores Ernie, whose smile fades, whose humiliation seems palpable.
The pain isn’t Ernie’s alone. Liz, who was in the audience, confronted Jubelirer afterward and gave him what for.
Ernie, a few days later, is philosophical: “Tom Corbett was very gracious; I want to focus on that.” He pauses for a few seconds. “I accept that people are going to do things, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I accept that. That’s part of the hurt that I still carry with me every day. That’s my punishment. It’s always going to be with me. When I die, they’re going to write in my obituary, ‘Ex-Felon Ernie Preate Dies.’”
Still: Ernie reports, a few weeks later, that he’s looking forward to the birth of his second grandchild in April. Then his voice changes a little; he’s really excited: Ernie says he may get involved in a murder case in Lackawanna County, where he cut his reputation as a tough-talking prosecutor. “It would be my first murder case as a defense lawyer!” he says. Guilt or innocence doesn’t seem to be on Ernie’s mind — but consider the publicity generated by his sitting at the defense table! He did, after all, seek the death penalty seven times while he was D.A. there, and got it in five cases.
Everyone, back home in Scranton, remembers D.A. Ernie.
