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National convention W-B’s Romanelli, then Nader, criticize judges who stopped their bids to get on ballots

July 15, 2007

Green Party bashes the courts

READING – Forcefully gesturing and speaking with obvious frustration, Carl Romanelli arguably stole the press conference on ballot access away from an understated, though far more renowned, Ralph Nader on Saturday during the Green Party’s national convention.

Perhaps it was because Romanelli’s political wounds, stemming from a failed fight to remain on the 2006 ballot for U.S. senator, which Bob Casey ultimately won, are two years fresher than those of Nader, who lost a similar fight during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Whatever the reason, Romanelli was hot, adamantly defending the validity of the signatures he filed and accusing state courts of corruption. He announced plans to report two Democrat-affiliated Commonwealth Court judges, Judge James R. Kelley and President Judge James Gardner Colins, to the Judicial Conduct Review Board of Pennsylvania.

“Their partisan conduct … was reprehensible, and the courts should be held accountable for this hijacking,” said. Romanelli, a longtime political activist from Wilkes-Barre.

After being bumped from the ballot, Romanelli, along with his attorney Larry Otter, was ordered to pay more than $80,000 in various court-related fees. Romanelli has resolved not to pay the fees, despite the threat that he could be jailed for contempt.

“Though I am small, I am not weak, and I’m not finished and I promise you, my friends, we will prevail,” he said before abdicating the podium to Nader.

Nader painted a similar picture including Democratic Party determination to crush minor-party challengers, judicial corruption or ignorance and a broken system that punishes people for attempting to be part of the political process.

“Pennsylvania is now the King Kong of ballot-access busters in the 50 states,” Nader said. “Philadelphia is now the center of a judicially implemented strategy that can just about knock off any third-party candidate … so this is clearly a corrupt system. This is clearly an unconstitutional system.”

He, too, chided Colins, saying “a first-year law student wouldn’t have made the legal errors Judge Colins made” and “Judge Colins, if he’s capable of it, should be ashamed of himself.”

The ballot access issue is perpetuated, Nader said, by an unaware public, major parties unwilling to share power and media indifference.

“The first thing we have to do is generate a level of public indignation that is lacking now,” he said, noting that independent parties have played major roles in shaping America’s past. “If we liked that, we should like it in the 21st century as well.”

Nader called for a national ballot access standard for election to federal offices and appointing nonpartisan committees to check signatures instead of politically affiliated judges.

Nader didn’t commit to a presidential run in 2008, saying he’d had to line up volunteers and pro bono attorneys for the expected challenges.

He predicted many more failed attempts before the issue receives the attention it requires, such as a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, but noted “it’s really an educational process.”

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