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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. The 1970 General Elections had been particularly kind to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. It’s candidate for governor, Milton Shapp, was elected the state’s new chief executive, ending eight years of Republican rule in the Governor’s Office. The State House of Representatives remained in Democratic control, and for the first time in almost a half-century, 1937-38, to be exact, Democrats won majority control of the Pennsylvania Senate. As political trifectas go, they don’t come any better. Now came the hard part. It was called governing. “More important than winning the election is governing the nation," Democrat Adlai Stevenson had said in accepting the presidential nomination of his party in July, 1952. “That is the test of a political party—the acid, final test.” Pennsylvania Democrats were about to find out for themselves how they would meet the Stevenson test because governing in 1971 was not going to be easy, certainly not going in… The Senate of Pennsylvania, for all its protocols and traditions, is what it is because of the members who serve there. They give it its life and blood, they chart its course at every moment in its history. Some members, like Marty Murray and Tom Lamb, are to be remembered for the influence they exerted on the body simply by the way they conducted themselves as public officials. Others who served in the three-decade period between 1970 and the turn of the 21st century deserve recognition for other reasons…reasons such as the contributions they made to public policy, or reasons such as their unique personalities or political style. Senators like Franklin L. Kury of Sunbury in Northumberland County; or H. Craig Lewis of Bensalem in Bucks County. Senators like Henry Messinger of Allentown in Lehigh County, and Gene Scanlon of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County; and Joseph Ammerman of Curwensville in Centre County. Or Senators Ed Zemprelli of Clairton in Allegheny County and Buddy Cianfrani of Philadelphia. Each through the years stood out in his own way… American editor and essayist Charles Dudley Warner had it exactly right. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, he opined over a century ago. It certainly does. No more so, perhaps, than in contested reorganizations of the Pennsylvania legislative caucuses where the machinations that come into play in contests for leadership positions would make even Machiavelli proud… When the Senate Democrats assembled after the 1970 legislative elections to select its leadership for the 1971-72 session of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, they met for only the second time in the 20th Century (1937 being the other) as the true majority party of the chamber. They had true political control, control in the ability to organize the standing committees; control of the committee process itself; and control of the agenda and the timeline to pass legislation on the party’s own initiative. It was a new experience for most of the Democratic members… When Tom Lamb retired in 1974, his departure confronted the Senate Democratic caucus with its most serious reorganization decision in four years—who would replace him. The stakes were a little higher this time because the November elections had been very good again to the party. Pennsylvania Democrats not only retained political control of the chamber; their majority grew to 30-20. As political riches go, this was an unheard of alignment for the time, one that is probably never achievable for this party in this state again. But the first consequential business with this unprecedented political prosperity was to select a new Senate Democratic floor leader for the 1975-76 session…Lamb’s retirement came as no surprise since he had shared his intentions with any number of people over the course of his tenure. The question was who from Allegheny County or elsewhere would emerge to replace him. And in this pre-reorganization maneuvering, Senator Murray found himself at odds with the two most powerful delegations in his caucus—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh… Every reorganization within the legislative caucuses presents its very own unique set of circumstances. There are no set formulas to apply, very few precedents to guide. This is particularly true when an incumbent caucus officer is challenged by a member of the rank-and-file. In most cases, the caucus leadership, if they’ve been effective and choose to get involved, can prevail in favor of the incumbent. Sometimes they do not. This was the case in 1980 when Craig Lewis ousted Philadelphia’s Joe Smith as minority chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Smith had replaced Buddy Cianfrani as the minority chair when Buddy was forced to resign in 1977 in the wake of his payroll-padding plea. Joe Smith may have been from Philadelphia but he was no Buddy Cianfrani—or Ben Donolow, for that matter. His standard modus operandi was to keep fiscal information and strategies very, very much to himself—so much so that he became known as “Whispering Smith,” to many members of the caucus. His old-school style, frankly, rankled a lot of the newer members of the Senate. Senators like Fayette County’s Bill Lincoln and Philadelphia’s Jim Lloyd were principal among them. It was Lincoln, I believe, who was, if not the first, certainly among the first to approach Lewis about challenging Smith for the Appropriations post. Others, while not drivers behind the challenge, supported it nonetheless. And new freshmen like Senator-elect Mark Singel of Johnstown (later to be lieutenant governor) were wooed to Lewis’ corner very aggressively—and with some success. Contested caucus elections are very much like political campaigns for the inside maneuvering and horse trading that goes on. But on occasion, the issue is very fundamental. This was one of those occasions. Those who encouraged Lewis to make the run, and those who ultimately supported him, really had only one objective in mind. They believed the Democratic Party in the Senate had to present a more substantive and aggressive alternative to the policies and priorities of the Senate Republican majority and the Republican Thornburgh Administration. They also wanted someone who could articulate the case in public forums like the Senate floor and the press. Smith, an insular politician, could not. Lewis could. So the choice was very clear…Going into the reorganization, the vote was thought to be close, perhaps closer than it should have been. Conventional wisdom held that if the leadership supported Smith, the challenge would be turned aside. Conventional wisdom was wrong…
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