D.A. candidates' attacks get personal

Angered that some of his opponents seemed to use his absence from a debate Wednesday as a safe occasion to slam him, Dan McCaffery, a candidate for Philadelphia district attorney, returned fire yesterday.

McCaffery, one of five former assistant district attorneys running in the May 19 Democratic primary, did not attend the debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Committee of Seventy because his 81-year-old father, who had cardiac-bypass surgery in March, is gravely ill with complications.

"As I was at my father's hospital bedside as he continues to recover from a stroke, two of my opponents conspired to gratuitously attack me," McCaffery said in a statement. He accused the men - Dan McElhatton and Seth Williams - of having "reached new lows" in political behavior.

At the debate, Williams had said that if he lost, he would be comfortable with the win of any of the other three men on the panel because they are good lawyers. He implied in an aside that he would not be comfortable with McCaffery. Later, he posed a question to McElhatton that opened the way for McElhatton to criticize McCaffery over a questionable real estate deal.

McElhatton said the deal showed that McCaffery lacked "the judgment and ethical foundation" to make decisions as district attorney.

"I will not get lectured on real estate issues or ethics by either Mr. Williams or Mr. McElhatton, two individuals who face serious questions about their own personal and professional conduct," McCaffery said.

Of McElhatton, McCaffery said: "I am not quite sure how he justifies his self-righteous piousness" given the coincidence of his contributions, in "the tens of thousands of dollars," to former Mayor John F. Street's campaign, and his subsequent appointment to Street's "do-nothing Ethics Board."

Reacting to the allegation, McElhatton said in a statement released by his campaign, "These juvenile smear tactics should be beneath anyone seeking public office, no less someone who wants to be our next district attorney."

Concerning Williams, McCaffery said he "engaged in fund-raising for his campaign committee while sitting on the city's payroll [as inspector general] thereby violating the letter and the spirit" of the City Charter.

Williams' campaign manager, Dan Fee, said the allegation was entirely off-base. He noted that Williams had an opinion from the city law department permitting him to raise money to retire his campaign debt. Any suggestion that Williams and McElhatton "conspired" at the debate, he said, was unsupported.

As for McCaffery's claim that Williams has a problem because his 2008 campaign-finance report shows he spent money on his new campaign months before he retired his old debt, Fee alluded sarcastically to McCaffery's earlier attempt to knock Williams off the ballot.

"This is the same legal brain trust that brought you 'reimbursements count as income,' " he said, "which was laughed out of court."

In addition to Williams, McElhatton and McCaffery, the other Democratic candidates are Brian Grady and Michael Turner. Michael Untermeyer is unopposed in the Republican primary.

The office of top prosecutor is in contention because District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham has elected not to run again after holding the office for 19 years.

In other campaign developments yesterday, McCaffery was endorsed by AFSCME District Council 47, and Williams by AFSCME District Council 33. The two public-employee unions represent thousands of workers in city government and the courts.