PACleanSweep and its brethren failed in their effort to denude the judiciary of its experienced judges. They shot themselves in their collective foot by focusing on the pay raise issue rather than the actual merits of the judges.
In doing battle on KP with Russ Diamond and Co., it became clear to me that these so-called reformers are actually a bunch of populist, anti-intellectuals. Real reformers talk about issues — not just spew soundbites — and recognize that very few things can be broken down into matters of black and white.
It appears that Diamond, Stilp and Potts learned a very hard lesson on Tuesday — when trying to reform government, use a chisel and a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Though their “Vote No” campaign unraveled at the polls on Tuesday, government-reform groups insist that Nov. 6, 2007, will not go down as the day the reform movement died.

The groups had campaigned against the 67 judges up for retention, but awakened yesterday to dismaying results: Voters had overwhelmingly awarded the majority of judges new, 10-year terms.

Only one, Bradford County Common Pleas Judge John C. Mott, was tossed from the bench – and his loss was widely attributed to voter concerns about his wife’s legal troubles.

And the groups’ major target, Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor? He handily won retention.

But the coalition of government-reform groups that formed after the controversial pay raise of 2005 – and has been dogging public officials ever since – said yesterday that Tuesday’s judicial races were just one front in a larger battle to improve government and make it more accountable.

“We have never been in this for a body count. That is not how we measure success,” said Tim Potts, cofounder of the public-interest group Democracy Rising PA, a nonprofit that does not advocate for or against candidates.

The group’s overall goal, he said, is to engage voters in elections and to shed light on how government works in order to make it better, cleaner and more efficient. “We measure success by how much government is improving and whether more citizens are getting more involved in their government,” said Potts.

But in many ways, Tuesday’s election was a test of the reform coalition’s reputation, honed over the last two years, as a rabble-rouser with the growing ability to sway elections. Two years ago, largely because of efforts by Harrisburg-based reform groups such as PA CleanSweep, RockTheCapitol.org and Taxpayers and Ratepayers United, Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro was tossed out of office.

He became the first victim of what came to be known as the pay-raise backlash: voter anger over the hefty raises lawmakers awarded themselves, state officials and judges in the dead of the night, and without public input, in the summer of 2005.

The next year, reform groups took aim at lawmakers who were running for reelection. The result? Another two dozen incumbent legislators lost their jobs, again because of residual anger over the pay hike.

Many public officials were warily awaiting results from this year’s election to gauge both voter sentiment and the reform movement’s strength.

G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and political science professor at Franklin and Marshall College, said he believed Tuesday’s election results dealt a major blow to the reform movement.

“I don’t think reform is dead, but I think a lot of people are looking at what happened and saying, ‘Gee, they aren’t the giant killers everyone expected,’ “ Madonna said.

Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, added that Tuesday’s election results also showed that the pay raise, as a campaign issue, does not carry the potency it once did.

“We may have seen the end of the pay-raise chapter in the reform movement,” said Borick, “but I don’t think the entire book is closed.”

Gov. Rendell wasn’t as generous.

During a conference call with reporters, the governor said he believed the reform groups lost “all credibility” when it advocated voting against all judges up for retention who had accepted the pay raise.

“It was a stretch and, really, an unrealistic stretch,” to say ‘vote against all judges,’ “ regardless of their record, said Rendell. “That was a real reason behind their abject failure.”

Gene Stilp, a longtime Harrisburg activist who formed the group Taxpayers and Ratepayers United, acknowledged that Tuesday’s election results constituted a loss. But he pointed out that, for the first time in years, voters paid attention to judicial races – and judges had to actually work for their reelection.

Stilp added there is still much work to be done by his and other reform groups.

There are government-reform bills being considered by the legislature, including legislation to make government records more accessible to the public. The reform groups are lobbying to make them the strongest bills possible.

The groups are also keeping voters aware of the unfolding “Bonusgate” investigation into whether legislative staffers received taxpayer-funded bonuses last year as a reward for working on political campaigns.

And there are major elections next year. All seats in the state House of Representatives, and half of those in the Senate, are up for grabs.

Eric Epstein, founder of RockTheCapitol.org, put it this way: “This is a marathon. If people are going to change government, it’s going to take a number of elections, and there are going to be good rounds and there are going to be bad rounds.

“History is never kind to those who rush it,” he added.