On Nov. 7, Election Night, Senator-elect Bob Casey joined thousands of supporters at the Scranton Cultural Center on the campus of Lackawanna College to celebrate his victory. Rick Santorum lamented his loss at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh. And Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli chowed down on herb-infused chicken at the Hard Rock Caf‚ in Washington D.C. At 4:59 p.m., after an arduous ride through downtown Washington, just seconds before the end of the business day, Romanelli filed a brief at the United States Supreme Court arguing that a Pennsylvania trial court judge and the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court shouldn't have tossed him off the ballot. Romanelli made history by collecting 99,802 signatures on petitions to become a candidate in this year's Senate race. His hard work became null and void because of challenges put forth by Bob Casey and his Democratic Party - taking full advantage of state laws that are specifically designed to inhibit the growth of third parties.
Robert Casey Jr. is the next anointed king in a Pennsylvania political dynasty. But Carl Romanelli doesn't come from that type of political pedigree. For the past seven generations, tracing their roots back to the "old country," Romanellis have been sculptors. Carl's brand of sculpting isn't the one that you'd expect: he's carved out settlements as a Family Court Officer at the Luzerne County courthouse, where he worked for 25 years until his retirement three years ago. And now, he's the creator of a failed bid for the United States Senate, as the Pennsylvania Green Party's nominee.
Until his long shot chance at becoming an elected official ended with a tap of Judge James E. Kelley's gavel, Carl Romanelli was the only pro-choice, pro gay rights, and openly anti-war candidate in the Pennsylvania race for the U.S. Senate. Romanelli believes in the core values of the national Green Party, which include grassroots democracy, feminism and diversity. This party is unique because it takes no financial contributions from corporations, relying only on individuals for donations. But Carl Romanelli wasn't always a Green.
"The two things in my life that I'd never thought I'd change were my religion and my political party. I went from being a Catholic to a Presbyterian in 1985 and I've been a Green since the day after Election Day in 2000," Romanelli explains. The Democratic Party was never able to knead Romanelli into a loyal partisan. He often supported candidates who weren't endorsed by the masses, like Gary Hart in the 1984 presidential primary against Walter Mondale. However, on Election Day 2000, he concluded that the Republicans were going to steal the election and that the "Democrats would let them get away with it, and I didn't want to be a part of it." And thus Carl Romanelli the Green was born.
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, two hours north of Philadelphia, has been Carl Romanelli's home since his family packed their bags from a small town in the Poconos in 1965 when he was six. And Romanelli's views haven't been considered traditional since he was a first grader at St. John the Evangelist Elementary School. He laments, "I was hit by the nuns every time I had a dirty fantasy about a night alone with Nancy Sinatra. I thought I was going to hell."
Romanelli claims to stand at 5'6", 135 pounds. But the casual observer would say he's much closer to 5'3". He rocks cheap sunglasses that were likely a party favor from a wedding in the early 1990s, black with a purple tint.
"I have a nice black leather Senator bag for when I'm Senator, but if I want to be Green Party Carl, I can always use this trusty old briefcase." He pulls an old leather bag covered with stickers that have sayings like "Got Pot?" and "HEMP" from his trunk. "I've had that briefcase since 1978. It was really expensive, even in those days, but I got it on sale for 30 bucks." He started putting stickers on it in 1984, while working for Gary Hart.
For Romanelli, politics used to be one of many endeavors. "When I went to school, I was working full time days at the courthouse and going to school full time nights," Romanelli recalls. "I took on other projects like doing some theater, trying to save a theater, working on the Gary Hart campaign; all of that was while I was being a father, husband, breadwinner and actor." He goofily chuckles.
But it was his work in 1984, as the Luzerne County Coordinator for Gary Hart's ill-fated campaign, that spawned this activist's political involvement. In 2001, Romanelli became the chairperson of the Luzerne County Green Party. His involvement in politics grew rapidly, as he was selected to represent the United States Green Party at the Global Green Summit in Bogotá, Colombia in 2005. But he's still upset that he hasn't been able to testify before the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee about his trip. His mission in Colombia was to free hostages who were being held by guerilla warriors. They're still being held today.
The competitiveness of this year's Senate race in Pennsylvania spawned Democratic fears that Romanelli could be a spoiler for Casey in '06, much like Ralph Nader was for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Romanelli has no patience for those rumblings: "Those perverted spoiler arguments, I turned those right around to raise the money and find the resources to qualify for the ballot under the unreasonable and hideous standard they put in front of us. And to their dismay, we raised a little bit of money and we qualified."
Pennsylvania election law states that non-major party candidates must obtain signatures amounting to 2 percent of the ballots cast for the largest vote-getter in the last statewide election race. That number was set, ironically enough, by Romanelli's opponent Bob Casey in his 2004 race for Pennsylvania State Treasurer, when Casey received 3.4 million votes. Romanelli needed to obtain more than 67,000 signatures to achieve ballot access whereas Casey and Santorum needed a mere 2,000 signatures. Compared with other states, Pennsylvania's laws present the most formidable challenges to third party candidates. And such obstacles can't be overcome without cold hard cash.
To obtain ballot access, Romanelli used grassroots fundraising, but the Green Party's national and local supporters could not provide him with the financial resources he needed. So Romanelli accepted thousands of dollars from a couple of dozen individual Republicans to fund his petition drives. Democrats have raised questions about the motives behind these Republican donations. Some Democrats demonized Romanelli as a tool of the Right, saying that the Republican support was designed to divert voters from Bob Casey and send Santorum back to Washington. Romanelli counters these beliefs when he says that many of the people who funded his campaign are personal friends who happen to be Republicans, female Republicans and pro-choice Republicans who disapprove of both major party candidates' pro-life stances.
Romanelli further asserts that he will maintain his radical liberal values, regardless of who donated to his campaign. The "hullabaloo," he says, is unwarranted because all of the money he raised was through donations to the Green Party. Contrasting his donations with those that were given to Bob Casey, Romanelli says, "Look where he gets his money from. People like Blank Rome LLP have given him like $68,000. They do a lot of legal advance and PR work for oil interests here in America."
But Romanelli also has some business ties, albeit ones that are easier to stomach. Romanelli hired the political petitioning firm JSM Inc. to collect the signatures he needed to get on the ballot. JSM has come under fire as people have alleged workers for this firm doctored petitions in the Ohio elections of 2004. During the summer, workers throughout Pennsylvania were paid a living wage of $11 per hour to gather signatures for Romanelli and other Green Party candidates for Congress. Romanelli collected nearly 100,000 signatures, about 50 percent more than he needed to qualify for the ballot. Having complied with state law by gathering the requisite signatures, Romanelli wasn't at all prepared to deal with the troubles that began shortly after he submitted them. The Democratic Party and the Casey campaign formally challenged the validity and legality of Romanelli's signatures. Though it is common practice to challenge petitions in Pennsylvania, Romanelli disagrees with such accusations: "To anyone who would criticize that choice, I would say 'Bite me!' I had the best in the business."
Romanelli is proud of what he did accomplish, because it's more than anyone thought he would do. "And I still did it by taking less Republican money than Bob Casey," he retorts.
As a result of these Democratic challenges, an unlikely alliance has developed between Romanelli and lame duck Republican Senator Santorum. Though critics of Romanelli maintain that he was only a pawn in Santorum's failed chess game, Romanelli jokes, "I'd like to make bumper stickers that say, 'Lord Almighty, Santorum's the lesser evil!' I never thought I'd see the day where I would say something like that." This is because Santorum encouraged participation by Romanelli in the candidate debates. The two were able to debate on statewide TV in a forum organized by the Pennsylvania Cable Network on Sept. 25. But 20 minutes before the debate was to begin, Commonwealth Court Judge James E. Kelley decided that Romanelli did not have enough valid signatures to qualify for a place on the ballot. The PCN studios were full of tension that day. Representatives of the Casey campaign pushed their way into the studio, and tried unsuccessfully to convince the network not to air the debate. The debate went on as planned, and Romanelli is convinced that he emerged the stronger candidate.
The Sept. 25 Quinnipiac election survey showed Bob Casey with 51 percent of the vote, Rick Santorum with 39 percent of the vote, and Carl Romanelli with 4 percent of the vote. This would have equated to roughly 200,000 votes for Romanelli, had he not been removed from the ballot.
On Nov. 1, The Daily Pennsylvanian received a call from West Philadelphia resident Solange Chadda. Chadda claimed to have incriminating evidence that alleges members of Bob Casey's campaign tried to bribe her to drop her Independent candidacy for U.S. Senate. When Chadda refused to submit to these requests, she claims that her petitions for ballot access were stolen from her by Casey's henchmen.
When Carl Romanelli first heard of this case, he brushed off Chadda's allegations. But upon speaking with her, Romanelli decided to join forces because, as he says, "My campaign and my rights will be irreparably harmed if the election goes forward without me on the ballot."
Within hours of speaking on the phone, Romanelli and Chadda started preparing the brief that Chadda was granted to file before the United States Supreme Court before the deadline of Nov. 7, Election Day. Though Chadda's evidence is speculative and much of it would be found inadmissible in court, Carl Romanelli kept all of his documents and signatures. There were also incidents during his campaign of petitions being ruined or stolen in random acts of violence. Romanelli alleges that Democrats planned the sabotage.
On November 7, Romanelli and Chadda were were supposed to head to D.C. in the morning, but delays in filing papers in Philadelphia caused the ragtag duo to miss the train they needed to get to Washington before the Court closed. With Romanelli speeding down I-95 after departing Philadelphia at 2:30 p.m., it was a race to the finish. And the pair lacked directions or maps, so when they arrived in Washington they became caught in the grid-on-grid maze of D.C. streets as they tried to find the Supreme Court. Chadda and Romanelli were bickering over his driving and the situation became dismal. But, at 4:59 p.m., one minute before the Court was scheduled to close, the two Pennsylvanians arrived to file their briefs, without the help of any lawyers.
And this is where Carl Romanelli stands today: he is waiting for a ruling from the High Court about Chadda's case, while preparing to file an appeal of his own with the same nine justices that is due on November 20.
"I'm the martyr who comes with the great ideas, who just gets crucified for all to remember at some point in the future. But, I didn't come to be a martyr, I came to play. I wanted to talk about the issues. And I thought that if I were given a fair opportunity to go in front of the voters, that I was a better choice than Senator Santorum or Bob Casey."
Carl Romanelli will likely never be a household name. He'll never make it to the political graveyard, since he was barely even a blip on the election radar. So what's next for Carl Romanelli? With his uncompromising values-driven challenge to the unprincipled two-party system, this sculptor is hard at work to chisel himself out a piece of American history. He'll continue to make a name for himself as a self-described "maverick among candidates"
