Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, left, with former Harrisburg receiver David Unkovic at a Harrisburg Hope forum at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in 2011.
City Council candidate Alan Kennedy-Shaffer is off the primary ballot, following a ruling on a petition challenge issued late Friday by Dauphin County Judge Scott Evans.
Kennedy-Shaffer “failed to act in good faith or due diligence,” Evans found, in notarizing sections of his own nominating petitions, a violation of state law.
Kennedy-Shaffer, a licensed notary, had affixed his seal on all but one of the 12 petitions he circulated in seeking a spot on the Democratic ballot. Specifically, he notarized the signatures of the people who circulated petitions on his behalf.
Ron Clever, Kennedy-Shaffer’s attorney, had argued in court last week that his client’s action did not violate the election code, but that if it did, it was an amendable error that the judge should allow him to rectify.
Any benefit to Kennedy-Shaffer from notarizing his own paperwork was indirect, Clever argued, noting that state law only forbids notarizing transactions in which the notary is “directly or pecuniarily interested.”
Evans ruled otherwise, finding that “not only is there a pecuniary interest,” insofar as council members earn a salary from the city, but also “most certainly a direct interest” for candidates in the success of their own candidacies.
Evans also discussed testimony from Gerald Feaser, director of the county elections bureau, that Feaser had advised Kennedy-Shaffer at a candidates’ night not to notarize his own petitions, or at the very least to consult an attorney if he was going to do so.
In his opinion, Evans relied almost entirely on case law from a 2009 Commonwealth Court decision regarding a Republican candidate for common pleas judge in Montgomery County. The candidate was struck from the ballot for notarizing the signatures of his petition circulators, an error identical to Kennedy-Shaffer’s.
Clever, in court, had acknowledged the 2009 decision but said he believed it was wrong.
Kennedy-Shaffer, reached Friday, also said he felt the decision ignored Evans’ own precedent in a case last month, in which he found that a Republican candidate for Middletown borough council whose petitions were challenged over notarization issues could remain on the ballot.
In that case, though, the question appeared to have been whether or not a district magistrate was empowered to notarize petitions. Though Clever raised this case as precedent in court, Evans did not address it in his opinion Friday.
“This is a sad day for Harrisburg,” Kennedy-Shaffer said. “This kind of dirty politics holds us back,” he added, referring to his prior allegations in court that a rival candidate and campaign manager were behind the court challenge.
He said he had not yet decided whether he would appeal the decision, nor had he yet given any thought as to whether to run as a write-in.
He also said he was unsure why Evans took so long to make his ruling, though Evans, in a footnote to his opinion, said the delay was a result of having to hear 17 other petition challenges.
