A colorful race for auditor general

HARRISBURG - It may have the lowest profile of the statewide row office races, but the contest for auditor general features two candidates with intriguing life stories.

The incumbent, Jack Wagner, 60, a Democrat from Pittsburgh and a decorated Vietnam veteran, says his achievements in his first term as the state's top fiscal watchdog merit his re-election.

Republican candidate Chet Beiler, 45, a businessman with roots in Lancaster County's Amish community, contends that his private-sector skills in running the nation's leading gazebo sales company will help energize the office.

Libertarian Betsy Summers, a veterinary-supply saleswoman from Wilkes-Barre, also is running for the $141,565-a-year-post.

Wagner is raking in union endorsements and was sitting comfortably with $512,000 on hand in mid-September, compared with Beiler, who had $122,000 in his coffers.

The fund-raising disparity doesn't faze Beiler. He contends that Wagner - who has spent almost half his life in politics, including 10 years in the state Senate before being elected auditor general in 2004 - is too entrenched in state government to be an effective overseer of the public's tax dollars.

"I believe taxpayers deserve a watchdog and not a lapdog in economically changing times," he said. "The current auditor general does not fit the bill."

Wagner disputes that contention, saying his office has undertaken a number of important audits - some of them unprecedented - that have detailed wasteful spending by the state's student-loan agency; shortcomings in enforcement of the state's sex-offender registration program; and suspected fraud in applications for the state's home-heating program for the poor.

To argue, as Beiler has, that the office hasn't been aggressive enough "is simply not accurate," Wagner said.

"We have taken on issues that no one has talked about publicly," he added, pointing out that he has long called for legislation to eliminate bonuses for state government workers.

Summers, who has done no fund-raising and estimates that she will spend $250 on her campaign, also stresses her independence.

"The current auditor general has so many ties to his former colleagues in the Senate and others," she said. "As a Libertarian, we have no ties to either Democrats or Republicans."

Beiler is likely the first Amish-born candidate for statewide office in Pennsylvania, political historians say. Beiler's parents left the faith when he was young, but they remained in Gap, where they ran a dairy farm.

"When I was 4, we sold Buster the horse and bought a Rambler," recalls Beiler, who said the family remains close to Amish relatives.

Beiler received a scholarship to Pepperdine University in California, where he was elected student body president and became involved in Republican politics. He later returned to Lancaster County, where he started Amish Country Gazebos with the help of Amish craftsmen. Beiler built a national company that has plants in Lancaster County and Southern California.

In 2001, when Beiler was chairman of the Lancaster County Republican Party, he was charged with election fraud for paying voter registration workers illegally. The charge was dismissed after Beiler agreed to perform community service as part of a probationary program for first-time offenders.

Beiler said he was unaware of the law, which requires registration workers to be paid by the hour and not by the signature. But he said in an interview last week that he took full responsibility.

"We didn't know [the law] and got bad information," he said, calling it an "embarrassing episode."

Wagner's foray into politics was more split-second choice than studied decision.

After graduating from high school, lacking the finances for college, he worked for Duquesne Power & Light in Pittsburgh before joining the Marine Corps and being sent to Vietnam.

As an infantryman, he survived a 1968 attack that wounded him and killed seven of his squad members.

"Looking back, I tell people the good Lord was with me," Wagner said in an interview last week. "I was fortunate to be wounded, because I probably wouldn't have survived a whole year there."

After graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and working for an insurance company, he joined his brothers in running a restaurant.

Wagner caught the political bug in 1980, when a cancer-causing substance was found in his community's water system. He helped organize a meeting to which he invited all of Pittsburgh's elected officials. None showed.

"I walked out of that meeting saying I was going to run for office," he said.

That spur-of-the-moment decision led Wagner to 10 years on the Pittsburgh City Council and another decade as a state senator.

In 2004. Wagner took office as auditor general. He said he ran because he "realized the importance of the office: being the fiscal watchdog of taxpayer money."

"I thought it would be a fascinating, challenging position," he said.

Beiler claimed that Wagner has been ignoring the activities of the state legislature, particularly in light of the attorney general's probe into current and past legislators and staffers on allegations of paying publicly funded bonuses for campaign work.

"He has been silent on many major issues facing state government," said Beiler.

Wagner says state law prohibits him from auditing the legislative branch, but says he would do so if changes were made to the law. Both Summers and Beiler say they think the auditor general has the authority to audit the General Assembly.

Wagner said that with a second term, he would focus on the bigger state agencies, including the Departments of Education, Public Welfare and Transportation.

For his part, Beiler said he would focus on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and executive branch no-bid contracts.