The Judge Makers
It was inevitable that all the money floating around would bubble up into shenanigans; a state grand jury report in 2001 dipped into legendary political operator Buddy Cianfrani’s methods. Back in 1997, Cianfrani worked as a consultant for six Common Pleas candidates, to the tune of $24,500. The candidates also gave Cianfrani 121 checks totaling $128,250, ostensibly to pay ward committees or leaders for their Election Day help — so far, nothing illegal. Except there was a small problem. Cianfrani had his candidates sign the checks but leave the recipient’s name blank; it turned out that 30 checks, for a total of $49,500, were made out to fictitious names: “Frank Schmitz,” for example, got $2,500 from Joyce Mozenter’s campaign. Frank lived at 1736 South 10th Street, which is the address of St. Maria Goretti High School. Cianfrani, who got immunity for his testimony, squirmed out of this one by claiming he had been furnished the unlikely names by other ward leaders, and it never came to light exactly where that $49,500 ended up.
Oh, Buddy, we miss you terribly. And what a tough act for The Kid to follow. But the real point of the Cianfrani story is that it barely ruffled a feather, and nothing has changed. The worst vestige of the system Cianfrani and operatives before him scammed isn’t candidates’ cash finding its way into pockets instead of paying for field workers to get out the vote. No, the bigger problem is the demand that our prospective judges — our judges — dive into a deal-making election process that becomes a test of whether they can close their eyes and hold their noses long enough to resurface with any moral equilibrium.
Benjamin Lerner, universally regarded as a smart, thoughtful, balanced judge, has an election story — every judge does. After 15 years as head of the Public Defender’s office, Lerner was appointed by Governor Ridge to fill a vacant Common Pleas spot in 1996. That meant he’d have to run for a seat the next year, but candidate Lerner got some bad advice from a political operative: Since he was already on the bench, was well-known, and had the support of the Democratic city committee, he didn’t need to spend much time going around to ward leaders to woo them individually.
Turns out this was a big mistake. Ward leaders don’t take kindly to appointed judges to begin with, since they have no say in those picks. Lerner still paid to get on sample ballots, but ward leaders need to be personally feted, assured their one-69th chunk of political Philadelphia is important. “So they took money,” Lerner says, “then cut the shit out of me.” One tactic they used against him, in the Northeast and elsewhere, was to “sticker over” his name on sample ballots with the names of other candidates who’d also paid up — thereby collecting two checks for one ballot spot.
