In historical accounts, little is more exciting or intriguing than eyewitness accounts—especially if the writer is, so to speak, a member of the story’s inner circle. The author of A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics, and the Making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania, not only witnessed critical moments in the Keystone State’s twentieth-century political history, but he also played a part.  

In his ringside seat as a member of the press corps covering the State Capitol—his first job on “the Hill” was with the United Press International’s Harrisburg bureau—Vincent P. Carocci worked alongside tireless and highly competitive reporters, some of whom he describes as real characters, “often crotchety, crusty—even cranky.” He worked…for the Associated Press, the public information office of his alma mater, the Pennsylvania State University, and the Harrisburg bureau of the Philadelphia Inquirer, before joining the Senate Democratic majority caucus as press secretary in 1971.  “If you happened to be a Democrat with an interest in public service, public policymaking, and politics, Pennsylvania was a good place for you to be in 1971,” he recalls.

 From there, the author served as chief of staff for State Senator H. Craig Lewis, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, director of government relations for the state system of higher education, and a member of Governor Robert P. Casey’s administration from 1987 to 1995, first as deputy legislative secretary, then as secretary for government operations and, lastly, as press secretary.

 During his fast-paced career in a heady era of politics—which eventually took him from the newsroom to the governor’s office—Carocci met the movers and shakers of his day—the good, the bad, and the ugly. He writes candidly about them and his relationship to them…Individuals interested in Pennsylvania’s chief executives will appreciate his frank impressions of six governors: David L. Lawrence (D), “the last of the old time pols to reach the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania”; William Warren Scranton II (R), “a class act from start to finish” who “served his Commonwealth and his nation with great skill and distinction”; Raymond P. Shafer (R), who “lived in the shadow of William Warren Scranton from the first day he took office” and “never quite emerged in his own right”; Milton J. Shapp (D), “an outsider in state Democratic politics from the day he began his pursuit of public office in Pennsylvania”; Richard L. Thornburgh (R), “a paradox: a man with impressive, yea impeccable public service credentials, yet a man whose private actions often belied the public image he presented”; and Casey (D), an individual who remained “true to his commitment to the forgotten communities of Pennsylvania and the people who called them home…”

 A Capitol Journey…overflows with nearly forty years worth of memories, and takes a retrospective look at the non-political types who also occupied center stage at various times, particularly the writers of the capital press corps who made up the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association, the oldest organization of state house reporters in the nation, organized in 1895. Along the way, readers will find themselves accompanying the author to the bottom of a coal mine, the annual Christmas party in the capital newsroom (which he characterizes as “a shakedown of the Pennsylvania political community by the capital press corps”), city halls and county courthouses, hotel rooms for covert meetings with political bosses, prison riots, even to the witness chair before a federal grand jury in Philadelphia. A Capitol Journey: Reflections on the Press, Politics, and the Making of Public Policy in Pennsylvania is a journey to a time that can never be repeated but only recalled by such honest, poignant and, at times, bittersweet, recollections of an eyewitness and participant.    

                                                            –Pennsylvania Heritage  June, 2005 Edition