 
|
|
              
|
Race for Hart seat gets hot Rooney, Orie spending freely in Pa. Senate race Friday, March 16, 2001 By James O'Toole, Politics Editor, Post-Gazette
Tides of rancor and campaign cash are cresting in the state Senate election that pits state Rep. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, against Jim Rooney, a Butler County Democrat and son of Steelers owner Dan Rooney.
The special election to fill the unexpired term of Melissa Hart, the Bradford Woods Republican who won election to Congress, also includes independent candidate Jim Stefanick. But Orie and Rooney are the chief combatants in what is shaping up to be the most expensive legislative contest in the region in memory.
In an amply funded television campaign, Rooney has charged that the three-term legislator has failed to serve her constituents' interests, contending that she has been more willing to fund prisons than schools.
Orie has responded, in mass mailings and in a television commercial punctuated by an imploding Three Rivers Stadium, that Rooney is trying to buy the election by exploiting his family name and the contributions it attracts.
Orie's own fund raising is substantial. By midweek, she had collected more than $250,000.
But Rooney, including in-kind contributions, has reported receiving more than twice that sum. The biggest difference in their financial support so far stems from their party's political action committees.
Major Democratic campaign committees have invested more than $280,000 in Rooney's bid to recapture the seat, which includes communities in the North Hills and the Allegheny Valley, in Allegheny, Butler and Westmoreland counties.
By midweek, Orie had collected just over $100,000 from political action committees maintained by her party organization and by individual GOP lawmakers.
Rooney's two largest contributions -- $100,000 each -- came from the Democratic State Senate Campaign Committee, and from Campaign 2000, a political action committee that also supports Democratic legislative candidates.
His largest individual donor was his mother, Patricia Rooney, who, so far, has contributed $75,000 to the campaign. Other members of the candidate's family have added approximately $18,000 to his total.
He also received $10,000 from Charles J. Bidwell, whose family owns the Phoenix Cardinals; $5,000 from Pirates' owner Kevin McClatchy; $5,000 from A.G. Spanos, whose family owns the San Diego Chargers and $10,000 from Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell.
Orie's largest single contributions -- $25,000 each-- came from the Republican Senate Special Election Fund, and the Republican Senate Committee. Among the Republican's other larger contributions were $10,000 from Christine Toretti, the state's Republican national committeewoman; $5,000 from Greensburg publisher Richard M. Scaife; and $2,500 from the campaign committee of Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey.
Orie has tried to tar her rival with the controversy over the financing of the two North Shore stadiums and the convention center. Given his name, the Democrat is an understandable target, but the attacks ignore the fact that Orie herself voted to approve the state spending measure that provided a share of tax dollars to the projects.
"When I made that vote, it was for economic development," Orie said, rejecting the suggestion of inconsistency between her voting record and her campaign tactics. "That was to benefit the region. What has happened instead is the Rooneys have benefited. They have benefited personally as a family."
Ken Snyder, a spokesman for Rooney, said the Democrat's campaign was bracing for new attacks from the Orie camp over state grants to a failed business that Rooney was involved with in the mid-1990s. The firm, Chiloe Inc., received three state grants totaling $295,000 from the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Western Pennsylvania. Using technology licensed from Carnegie Mellon University, the firm attempted to interest the National Football League in a system that would provide digital recording and storage of images of NFL games. The firm, however, never became profitable and the grants were never repaid.
Earlier yesterday, Orie complained about Rooney's campaign tactics, maintaining that he had distorted her record in commercials and rhetoric that contends she favors prisoners over students -- a reference to the ex-prosecutor's support for an increased Corrections Department budget during her time in the Legislature. At a meeting of the Post-Gazette editorial board, Orie defended her support for prison budgets but also depicted herself as a consistent supporter of education.
"The things he uses against me, it's distortion," she insisted.
|
