Township flier flap has been long haul

In a leafy Montgomery County township just weeks from a November election to elect supervisors, a three-front legal battle from the May Republican primary is still raging.

A campaign mailer sent out shortly before primary day has sparked a city-caliber political feud in Lower Providence, a township bracketed by the hillsides of Evansburg State Park and Valley Forge National Historical Park.

Two candidates who went on to win the GOP nominations wrote to voters that 72 percent of their opponents' campaign donations had come from people connected with four township vendors. Most of the donations, the candidates wrote, were connected to J.P. Mascaro & Sons, the Lower Providence-based garbage hauler with an exclusive contract in that township and many others.

To the company, that meant war on its home turf.

"They just cannot go around saying things about individuals or business entities by smearing them in the municipality," said William F. Fox Jr., attorney for Mascaro, "and then not worry about the consequences."

Over the last few months, the company has unleashed a barrage of legal weaponry against the two candidates, including a libel suit and other actions, in confrontations likely to extend well past the November election.

"We're in a position that we're able to afford the cost of trying to protect the process, and we're doing so," Fox said. "The average person wouldn't have the time or the money to do it. It's not inexpensive."

The family-owned waste hauler's red trucks with blue-elephant logos roll through 100 locales in 10 Pennsylvania counties, according to its Web site.

The two Republican candidates, both in their first run for public office, said their campaigns for the $4,125-a-year supervisor seats had been somewhat overshadowed by the courthouse maelstrom. Both said they stood by the flier's accuracy.

"Everybody wants to know about that end of it," said Don Thomas, 49, who works for a heating-supply business.

"I'm afraid to turn around without talking to a lawyer," Colleen Eckman, 38, a landscape architect who led the Republican supervisors' primary, said last week.

The nominees' legal fees are partly covered by insurance policies, Eckman said.

Shortly before the May 19 primary, Thomas and Eckman mailed a flier that said two opponents - Supervisor Craig Dininny and James E. Dougherty, a former supervisors chairman - had collected "over 72 percent of donations from township vendors."

The flier singled out the trash hauler as being responsible for 59 percent of Dininny-Dougherty campaign money and said "employees or related parties of J.P. Mascaro & Sons" had given thousands.

"Corporations cannot make political donations," the mailer added.

To the Mascaros, the flier insinuated the corporation had made the donations.

In the primary, Eckman and Thomas together got 594 more votes than Dininny and Dougherty. James R. Keenan Jr. ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for supervisor.

Less than a month later, the company and two officers filed a libel suit in Montgomery County, contending the flier contained "false assertions of criminal conduct and corruption." The suit, seeking $50,000 plus punitive damages, is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday.

The county Election Board was asked to have prosecutors look into another aspect of the primary.

When his campaign began in March, Thomas committed an error that he has since acknowledged. He did not file the required organizing papers with the county before he started raising money.

The county's director of voter services, Joseph Passarella, said that in his 15 years in the job, "80 to 100" candidates, mostly in local elections, had made the same mistake. Most corrected it, as Thomas thought he had, by filing the forms upon learning they were required.

Historically, this had satisfied the Election Board enough to prevent referral to prosecutors.

But Fox wrote to the board that along with Thomas' admitted filing omissions, the Republican supervisor nominees should be investigated because the mailer "most likely did prevent a free and fair primary election" - a felony under a state law.

Election Board attorney Joseph Bresnan replied by letter that the statute focuses on "literal interference" with an election, such as barricading the polling place or ballot-box stuffing.

After a 2-1 September vote, the Election Board referred the campaign-finance issues and the fliers to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, a Republican. She said the issues were under review and declined to comment further.

Ferman's involvement probably renders moot a third legal effort, filed by the Mascaros and defeated candidates Dininny and Dougherty requesting a legal audit of campaign finances for Thomas and Eckman. That case remains open, though.

Dininny did not return a call seeking comment. Dougherty said he and Dininny had joined the fight at the request of company president Pat Mascaro, who also did not return a call.

"He came to us and told us what he was going to do," Dougherty, 64, a retired highway-equipment salesman said. "I thought he was right. He was hurt. They slandered his family."

Gregory M. Harvey, one of Eckman's attorneys, called the tactics a "legal blitzkrieg" timed to the February expiration of the company's waste contract.

"In my view, they're doing it in an effort to intimidate people so they can renew the monopoly contract," Harvey said.

During the primary campaign, the two candidates had said they wanted to reexamine the township's waste-hauling options once the Mascaro contract expired.

The hauler has a deal to collect garbage for almost all of the township's 7,000 households, under a contract that can bill each household up to $415.80 a year.

Fox said the company was only looking to settle the score for the flier. Any damages from the libel suit, he said, would be donated to charity.

"It's very detrimental to your business' reputation," Fox said. "People have to be held accountable."

The mudslinging has one apparent casualty already: Republican solidarity in Mascaro's hometown.

Dougherty, a longtime Lower Providence Republican committeeman, declined in an interview to say he supports Eckman and Thomas, even though they are his party's nominees.

"I guess the thing that bothers me the most," Dougherty said, "is you see politics going in this direction where the end justifies the means."