Dogged…there’s just no other way to characterize it.  Robert P. Casey of Scranton simply was dogged in his pursuit of the Pennsylvania governorship.  It’s all a matter of record…old history to most folks, but still bears some repeating here.  Three times between 1966 and 1978—1966, 1970 and 1978, to be exact--Bob Casey sought the gubernatorial nomination of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.  Three times he was denied. 

 But, as Casey was fond of saying frequently, in private and in public, in paraphrasing legendary Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi:  There was no crime in getting knocked down; the crime was in not getting back up.   Casey had been knocked down a couple of times in his public career…not to mention several times in the case of his personal health.  But he never, ever failed to get back up. 

Let’s be clear at the outset.  I was privileged to have served on the Governor’s staff under Bob Casey from 1987-1995.  He was a man to be admired in so many ways…admired for the commitment and conviction, the vision and passion he brought to public service; admired for his personal integrity; admired for his indomitable strength of spirit; but admired most, in my humble view, for his role as a husband and a father.  I was and remain to this day, I confess, an unabashed admirer.    

Politically, there’s always been something puzzling about Bob Casey’s electoral record.  While Pennsylvania’s  Democratic voters rejected him for Governor on three occasions, they and the electorate at large embraced him totally in his races for auditor general.  He first was elected Auditor General in 1968 by a plurality of 444,000 votes, exceeding Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s victory margin over Richard Nixon in the state that year.  In 1972, he won re-election by 531,000 votes while Nixon was sweeping George McGovern in Pennsylvania’s presidential balloting by 917,000 votes. “The Best Auditor General Pennsylvania Ever Had,” was the slogan of his re-election campaign.  To which Democrat State Treasurer Grace Sloan, whom Casey succeeded in the office (and his running mate on the ballot), retorted irritably:  “I don’t know about that!”

Every election is different, of course, and in his races for auditor general, he was not confronted 1)--with Milton Shapp’s money and television assault in his first run for governor in 1966; 2)—the shifting political alliances within the Democratic Party in his re-run against Shapp in 1970; and 3)--the Pete Flaherty/Pittsburgh Bob Casey gambit in bid number three when he finished second in a three-man field that included Lieutenant Governor Kline (Flaherty—574,889; Casey—445,146; Kline—223,811).  That might explain it.   

When his second term as Auditor General ended in 1976, he returned to the private practice of law (which he interrupted that one time in 1978 to challenge Flaherty and Kline) and by all accounts, he was pretty good at it.  But he never quite shook the gubernatorial bug.  After an eight-year hiatus during the Republican reign of Richard Thornburgh, he announced in 1986 that he would seek the Democratic nomination governor for the fourth time.  (In his moving autobiography, “Fighting for Life,” Casey writes in more intimate detail about what motivated him to re-enter political life when he did.  I recommend it for those interested in pursuing the subject further.) 

His announcement was greeted with some restraint within Democratic Party circles.  After all, he had been away from the political arena for eight years.  What made him think 1986 would be any different than 1966, 1970 or 1978?  (I must confess, I wondered about that myself.)  His skeptics quickly derided him as the  “three-time loss from Holy Cross (his college alma mater).”   But Casey in that dogged, persistent way of his persevered.  First, he dispatched former Philadelphia District Attorney Ed Rendell in another contested Democratic primary by 164,000 votes.  (Rendell, incidentally would 16 years later, in 2002, successfully resurrect his own gubernatorial ambitions by beating none other than Bob Casey’s son, Auditor General Robert P. Casey Jr., in a Democratic primary by upwards of 90,000 votes.)  Casey Sr. went on to edge Richard Thornburgh’s lieutenant governor, the aforementioned Bill Scranton Jr., by 86,000 votes in the Fall.  After the scandals of the second Shapp term and eight years of Republican rule in the Governor’s Office, Pennsylvania Democrats were ready to rally around a winner.  Bob Casey of Scranton was the guy.  He was about to fulfill the longest quest of his adult life.