Race for governor get dirty

It could be "Willie Horton" revisited as the Pennsylvania governor's race degenerates into the muddiest election fight in the state. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mark Singel is on the defensive after a man, whose sentence he voted to commute earlier this year, was arrested in New York Friday on charges of rape and kidnapping. The man, Reginald McFadden, is also suspected in another murder case. Singel, already under attack from his Republican opponent Tom Ridge for being too lenient with criminals, is trying to control the political damage. In 1988, George Bush used a similar incident, involving a furloughed Massachusetts inmate named Willie Horton, to paint Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis as weak on crime. "It is a decision I will regret for the rest of my life," Singel said at a hastily called press conference late Friday night. "It was the worst decision I ever made in my career." In an ad the Singel campaign released earlier in the week, Singel acknowledged voting 60 times in the last four years to release prisoners serving life time sentences after they had already spent significant time behind bars. But Singel said he is proud of his record and that the 60 prisoners were only a small fraction of the total number who came before the Board of Pardons. The Ridge campaign quickly seized on the apparent turnabout. "Last week Mark Singel defended his record and said he didn't regret the decisions he'd made," a Ridge spokeswoman said yesterday. "It is unfortunate that it takes two terrible crimes for him to admit his mistake." McFadden could prove to be Singel's Horton, but Ridge must be careful that his use of the issue does not cause a backlash. When Ridge ran a television spot featuring a woman who had been raped by a juvenile and attacking Singel for opposing adult sentences for minors who commit violent crime, Singel countered that Ridge was exploiting a rape victim for his own political gain. Ridge has also avoided criticizing the retiring Casey, who actually commuted McFadden's sentence, because Casey is popular among the conservative, working-class Democrats the Ridge campaign is targeting. Ridge has expressed his sympathy to McFadden's victims and he has not decided whether to make the convict the focus of his next political ad, his spokesperson said yesterday. In 1988, Bush was accused of divisive racial politics for using Horton as an issue in his campaign. In the Pennsylvania race, both sides have engaged in mud slinging. Singel, criticized by some in the Democratic party for being slow to respond to Ridge's attacks, recently ran a television ad accusing the Congressman of missing votes. Before McFadden's arrest, Singel and Ridge were neck and neck in the polls, with some indicating that Singel had a slight, but slipping, edge.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.