Our view: Failing the courage test

- CDT editorial/Thursday

It’s a simple question: Are you as a candidate willing to tell the voters where you stand on issues that are important to them, such as the employment of undocumented aliens, the death penalty, a national identity card, access to health care and gun licensing?

Remarkably, only 12 percent of the candidates for state General Assembly in Tuesday’s primary election and 29 percent of those running for Congress from Pennsylvania answered yes.

It’s called Project Vote Smart’s Political Courage Test, and it’s hardly partisan. Among the project’s founding board members are George McGovern, Barry Goldwater, Geraldine Ferraro, John McCain, Michael Dukakis and Bill Frist.

Yet, fewer and fewer candidates are passing the test each year — and to pass, all you have to do is hand in your answers. But Project Vote Smart has found that party leaders and consultants are advising candidates not to respond because they say it will limit their ability to control their campaign message and it will expose them to opposition research.

“If candidates are afraid of letting their opponents know where they stand on key issues, how can they possibly let the voters know how they will handle the job if they are hired?” Project Vote Smart President Richard Kimball asked in releasing the abysmal results of this year’s test.

Of the 12 candidates for Congress from the 5th District, only four — Republicans Chris Exarchos, John Krupa, Matt Shaner and Glenn Thompson — were willing to take the test. Their answers can be found at www.vote-smart.org.

Democrats Bill Cahir, Mark McCracken and Rick Vilello and Republicans Lou Radkowski, Keith Richardson, Jeff Stroehmann, John Stroup and Derek Walker refused to take the Political Courage Test.

Among state House candidates in the 171st District, only Democrat Joanne Tosti-Vasey took the test. Republican incumbent Kerry Benninghoff and Democrat Tim Wilson refused.

Only in the 76th state House race did both candidates — Democratic incumbent Mike Hanna and Republican Harold Yost — take the test.

Both candidates in the 77th District — Democratic incumbent Scott Conklin and Republican Tom Martin — refused to provide information, as did both candidates for the Pennsylvania Senate from the 35th District,

Democratic incumbent John Wozniak and Republican Joseph Veranese.

Veranese did not even respond to the League of Women Voters of Centre County’s request for information for the voters’ guide published this week. Neither did U.S. House candidate Krupa or state House incumbents Conklin and Benninghoff.

Are they too busy going about the people’s business to tell the people their positions on important issues or, as Project Vote Smart’s Kimball suggests, do they think it is politically inexpedient to be forthright?

No one is saying, but their silence speaks volumes — as does their refusal to take a simple test of political courage.

It is something for voters to keep it in mind when they go to the polls on Tuesday and in November.