Seth Williams Out of the Phila D.A.'s Race

Seth Williams, the highest profile candidate in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s race, has been booted from the May primary ballot. KYW 1060 reports this morning that Common Pleas court Judge Allan Tereshko is out of the race because the democratic D.A. candidate failed to report more than $10,000 he recieved from his campaign committee as income.

Williams’ campaign manager Dan Fee says the ruling is just “plain wrong” and the campaign will file an appeal on Monday.

Williams was one of five democrats running to succeed D.A. Lynne Abraham who is not seeking reelection.

4 Responses to Seth Williams Out of the Phila D.A.'s Race

Timothy Cole
March 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
The Court’s decision concedes that Williams did not “receive” money from his former campaign, he was paid back for expenses he incurred. The Court ruled that expense reimbursement is income, which not how the IRS or the PA Department of Revenue views expense reimbursement. Radio Times should do a show on this case and the campaign for District Attorney.
Alan Tu
March 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Thanks, Tim I’ll pass your suggestion on to Marty and her gang. Do you think the judge was right in his ruling, but wrong to disqualify Williams from the May ballot? Could the judge instead have issued a fine?
W
March 29th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I applaud the court in booting Williams from the race. He’s fortunate that this discovery didn’t come out after the election (assuming he had won)–it would have put a possible resignation on the table. As it stands now, it will be all but forgotten in a few weeks.

-W
http://bill84121.blogspot.com
Timothy Cole
March 31st, 2009 at 10:56 am
The judge is wrong in the characterization of actual expense reimbursements as income under the law, this has never been the case and many candidates for office, including Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell (and Dan McCaffrey) have received reimbursement for expenses from their campaigns and handled the reporting exactly as Williams did. This part of the ruling was wrong and unprecedented. But the ballot removal was even more wrong and clearly against the law. While Judge Tereshko noted that recent cases, including Supreme Court cases frown on removal from the ballot for reporting errors, the court bent over backward to do just that.