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closeThe Centre County Republican Party over the weekend distributed campaign literature supporting District Attorney Michael Madeira that says "groups like ACORN have registered 15,000 new Democrats in the State College area alone."
County Democratic Party officials said ACORN did not register voters in Centre County and called the implication on the Republican literature a falsehood designed to appeal to anti-minority sentiment.
“ACORN does not operate here,” Democratic Party Chairwoman Dianne Gregg said. “The bulk of this registration was handled by Penn State Students for Obama.”
“ACORN and no group like ACORN registered the new voters,” said Greg Stewart, a Ferguson Township Democrat who was a leading Pennsylvania volunteer in the Obama campaign last year.
“The voter registration drive was conducted by Penn State student volunteers, not ACORN or any group like ACORN,” Stewart added. “Have the Republicans name the group that they claim registered the voters.”
ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — represents many minority groups and the poor. It has been the subject of public controversies that include voter registration fraud and a video exposé on employee misconduct.
The literature referencing ACORN that the Republicans introduced in the district attorney campaign over the weekend has a virtually identical two-paragraph statement from various Republican Party officials, including county Chairwoman Jennifer Myers, Ferguson Township Republican committee member Brent Pasquinelli, Halfmoon Township committee member Doug Hartman and College Township committee member Sally Schaadt.
The only difference is the introductory first sentence, which varies in accordance with which Republican official the message is from. The rest of the message is the same, including these two sentences:
“Your vote means more now than ever since groups like ACORN have registered 15,000 new Democrats in the State College area alone. We cannot permit outside groups to take control (sic) our local and state government.”
Myers, Pasquinelli and Hartman could not be reached for comment Sunday, but Schaadt said she had not known that her name was being used on campaign literature.
“I don’t know anything about this — I didn’t write anything like that,” Schaadt said.
Schaadt said she doubts the ACORN implication is accurate. She said she recalls Joyce Haas — vice chairwoman of the state Republican Party and chairwoman of the Madeira campaign — saying that ACORN had been associated with registration fraud in Philadelphia.
“I do remember Joyce Haas saying that ACORN had dumped 15,000 registrations in Philadelphia,” Schaadt said. “I don’t know that that was the State College area.”
Neither Madeira nor Democratic district attorney candidate Stacy Parks Miller could be reached for comment Sunday.
Haas responded to some questions Sunday about the campaign literature but did not address the Democrats’ rejection of the claim that “groups like ACORN” registered Centre County voters. She said that starting in January 2008, “the ACORN push happened for Obama all across the state including Centre County.”
“Over the last few months, ACORN has been exposed as a corrupt organization and the fact they registered thousands of Democrat voters last year in Pennsylvania is undeniable. We know many of these registrations were not valid,” Haas said.
“The public has serious concerns about ACORN and their activities and we are raising those questions,” Haas added. “The question from the Democrat officials about race is insulting and offensive.”
Haas said the Republican Party did not distribute the Madeira campaign material in State College borough because it did not have enough.
“We distributed literature in the highest Republican registered precincts,” Haas said. “I do not believe the borough qualifies for that. If we had more literature, we would have done it everywhere, including the borough.”
Stewart said the Republican campaign literature implies that ACORN registered voters in Centre County.
“The Republicans know this is a lie,” Stewart said. “They know that it was student and community volunteers who registered the voters between March of 2008 and October of 2008. They know this because there were numerous reports about the voter registration drive in the Centre Daily Times and The Daily Collegian.”
William Hughes, 22, a 2006 State College Area High School graduate, now a Penn State senior, was vice president of Penn State Students for Obama. He coordinated voter registration on campus from January 2008 through the March deadline for submitting registration forms.
Hughes said he also spent a lot of time at campaign headquarters on South Allen Street and saw no ACORN involvement at all.
“I was down in the Democratic office all the time, every day, all day,” Hughes said. “It was pretty much just students and community members. There was no mention of ACORN at all while I was in the office. We were all volunteers, except for the campaign staff that came in later, but they were not from ACORN.”
Jared DeLoof, a 2008 Penns Valley Area High School graduate and now a Penn State sophomore, quit his job in a sandwich shop in June 2008, lived off his savings and did volunteer work to register voters until the election.
DeLoof said the claim that “groups like ACORN” registered people is false.
“Absolutely not — not on the Penn State campus, not downtown, not with registering voters. As far as I know there was no connection with ACORN at all — there was no nothing,”
The suggestion that ACORN was involved, DeLoof said, “is a total slap in the face to me and some of the other people who worked really hard.”
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