Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidates say negative attacks distort their real views
HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA) -- It's been one of the most contentious election battles on television: the race between two judges for a spot on the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court. Both candidates say the negative attacks distort their real views.
If you only watched and believed the attack ads, nobody would vote for either state Superior Court Judge Daniel McCaffery or Montgomery County Judge Carolyn Carluccio.
"I feel really strongly the negativity is a disaster for both of us. One of us is going to be up on that Supreme Court, and we're both going to be bloodied at that point," said Carluccio, the Republican candidate.
"I am 100 percent appalled by the tenor of this particular campaign and the negative advertising that came about in this particular campaign," said Democrat McCaffery.
Both Democrat McCaffery and Republican Carluccio say the ads -- which call each other deceitful, dishonest and disgusting -- are often the product of special interest groups trying to influence the outcome.
"What you now have are billionaires and corporations that are trying to buy seats on our courts. I saw this happen early on. As far back as August, there was over $2 million on negative mailers that was sent out by this group, the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, that is directly funded by Pennsylvania's richest billionaire," McCaffery said.
The fund denies this much was spent, saying it has the support of thousands of contributors.
Carluccio says it's not the campaigns themselves that are negative, it's these independent groups, but she says her opponent sometimes crosses the line.
"I'm not accusing either campaign of doing it. There are third party groups that are getting involved. I will say my opponent has jumped on and attacked me in certain ways in interviews. And it's just not becoming of us. I think we should be above it," she said.
The attack line seems to be that Carluccio scrubbed her website clean of her reported pro-life positions, while McCaffery is being linked to a pornographic email scandal that involved his older brother Seamus, not him.
"Right away they tried tying me to an email scandal my brother, Seamus McCaffery, was involved in over ten years ago that I had nothing to do with. That continued unabated, and I think you had people on the Democratic side retaliate," McCaffery said.
"I'd love to see what I scrubbed because I've never had pro-life language on my website, never. What I will tell you is that a month and a half before the election I changed political consultants who came in, and we didn't like the website. So we updated it. That's the only thing that occurred. Nothing was scrubbed," Carluccio said.