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Comments from the Book Review Editor

This issue of COMMONWEALTH presents five book reviews, all 
concerning aspects of Pennsylvania government and politics. Two reviews 
deal with the state’s largest cities: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. From the 
Outside In: Suburban Elites, Third-Sector Organizations, and the Reshaping 
of Philadelphia, by Carolyn T. Adams, examines how Philadelphia managed 
to reverse its economic and social decline by engaging “third sector actors.” 
In Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its 
Region, the editor, Joel A. Tarr, gathered essays that review how Pittsburgh’s 
growth affected the city’s and the region’s environmental quality and the 
steps that were taken to reverse the terrible consequences of decades of air 
and water pollution from the coal, steel, and manufacturing industries. 

Three reviews concern the state’s politics and its tendency toward 
corruption. In Keystone Corruption: A Pennsylvania Insider’s View of a 
State Gone Wrong, Brad Bumsted reflects on his many years reporting from 
Harrisburg, where he observed too many of the state’s elected officials failing 
to serve their constituents honorably. On the Front Lines of Pennsylvania 
Politics: Twenty-Five Years of Keystone Reporting, another journalist, 
John M. Baer, covers much the same territory but from a somewhat more 
sympathetic perspective. William Ecenbarger’s Kids for Cash: Two Judges, 
Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million Kickback Scheme chronicles 
in great detail one of the state’s most tragic scandals. And finally, Harold 
Gullan’s Toomey’s Triumph: Inside a Key Senate Campaign offers a thorough 
account of the 2010 Senate race between Toomey and Sestak. 



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From the Outside In: Suburban Elites, Third-Sector Organizations, and 
the Reshaping of Philadelphia. Carolyn T. Adams. 2014. Ithaca, NY: 
Cornell University Press.  ISBN: 978-0-8014-7998-4.

Anyone who has lived in or studied Philadelphia long enough to see 
it transition from a large, severely struggling, shrinking, East Coast city to 
a growing, shiny, and lively cosmopolitan metropolis worthy of emulation 
today has to wonder: “How did they do it?” In her book From the Outside 
In: Suburban Elites, Third-Sector Organizations, and the Reshaping of 
Philadelphia, Carolyn T. Adams answers that exact question. She also 
explains that anyone studying Philadelphia’s revival should be careful 
about defining who they are when asking about those responsible for the 
city’s resurgence. Recent scholars and advocates for regional thinking have 
been shifting their sights away from metropolitan government and toward 
governance by coalitions, alliances, networks, nonprofits, public-private 
partnerships, subgovernments, districts, and special purpose authorities. 
This is the Third Sector of the title, outside the private and the public sectors, 
but still acting as change agents for the public at large. Adams refers to 
this process as a “stealth regionalism…increasingly incorporating outside 
interests into the process of restructuring the city” (p. 2). 

According to Third Sector actors, Philadelphia government is inefficient, 
corrupt, and slow; remove its influence and the trappings of machine politics, 
and the region can thrive. Politicians need to distribute as many benefits as 
possible to their immediate constituents, and as such, they operate on a narrow 
time horizon with a short-term goal of surviving through the next election. 
Of course, Philadelphia isn’t the only city to suffer from the by-products of 
nineteenth-  and twentieth-century party politics. Third Sector organizations 
experience no such shortcomings, which has led to a trade-off of comprehensive 
planning at the local level for other benefits better accomplished by outside 
forces. Two policy domains that are traditionally under local control have 
drawn a lot of outside interest: land use and public education. 

Undeniably, Philadelphia is important to the health of the region, and 
so it is no special curiosity that organizations and interests with access have 
seized the opportunity to influence its economic life. Yet, where does this 
leave city government and the preferences of the citizens who reside there? 
Do projects and revitalization that benefit the region as a whole improve the 
lives of everyday Philadelphians? In the case of immediate investment, yes; 
but as to when and where this investment takes place, not so much. 

In the first chapter, Adams explores the circumstances surrounding 
transportation in the region. The Vine Street Expressway eased the 
flow of traffic through the city, but removed sections of the surrounding 
neighborhoods against the desires of their residents, and served to wall off 
the northern boundary of the central city. The Southeastern Pennsylvania 



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Transportation Authority (SEPTA) directed investment to public transit 
within city boundaries, but at the expense of the city’s representation on the 
(disproportionately suburban) board that controls funding allocations. In a 
chapter dedicated to the educational landscape, she explains how suburban 
investment in the growth of charter schools (and to some extent, parochial 
schools) has removed financing from and sometimes the existence of the 
traditional neighborhood school itself, especially in predominantly poor and 
minority areas. In its place, these outside forces combine to dictate land use 
as well as education policy, with charter schools disconnected geographically 
from the communities of their students. In other chapters, Adams also 
explores large economic growth projects such as the Center City District, 
the Convention Center Authority, and community development nonprofits. 
Ultimately, the role of Third Sector organizations in combination with the 
city government must strike a balance between regionalism and the ability 
of citizens to direct their futures. The reader is left to decide whether growth 
and economic investment are beneficial, and for whom.

Adams’ book is vital reading for anyone interested in the economic 
development of cities, the potential for regional cooperation, and the role 
of politics in the process of both. Scholars and practitioners in politics, 
planning, education, nonprofits, and urban development will find this case 
study highly instructive and illuminating. 

Michelle J. Atherton, Associate Director of the Temple University 
Institute for Public Affairs

Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and 
Its Region.  Joel A. Tarr, ed. 2005. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh 
Press. ISBN: 0-8229-5892-9 (paper).

All cities as they grow and evolve will directly modify the surrounding 
landscape and impact their local and regional environments. Very few cities 
have had such a dramatic impact on their local landscape and influenced the 
environment to the extent that Pittsburgh has during its over two centuries of 
growth and evolution. Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History 
of Pittsburgh and its Region, edited by Joel A. Tarr, contains ten chapters that 
discuss how the landscape and location of Pittsburgh (situated at the confluence 
of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and mouth of the Ohio River) 
affected its development into a city that was a central link for trade between the 
coastal Atlantic cities and the western frontier during the 1800s. The city became 
an industrial powerhouse with its regional deposits of coal, oil, iron, and sand. 
But with the growth of trade and industry came destruction to the environment. 
While pollution was used as a measure of strength for an industrial city during 
the Industrial Era, pollution also impacted the health and welfare of people 
living in the city and its local and regional environment. The financial costs to 



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provide city residents with clean air and water and to reclaim and protect the 
environment from further pollution are considered in many chapters.

The book focuses on air and water pollution with discussion on how 
industrial, political and social decisions, land use, and waste impact air and 
water pollution. Specific chapters for water pollution include the historical 
development of the water treatment and distribution system that delivered 
clean water to city residents in the early 1900s and the decision to design 
a combined (storm water and domestic sewage) sewer collection system to 
treat wastewater in the mid-1900s. Another chapter provides a historical 
analysis of the environmental damage caused by acid mine drainage and 
how this drainage was ultimately regulated, not because of environmental 
harm or to protect citizens, but because another powerful industry was 
impacted, namely, the railroads, as the mine drainage polluted the railroads’ 
specifically designated water reservoirs.

Chapters on air pollution include environmental degradation to the 
surrounding area and decreased health of city residents due to industrial 
smoke. They describe how the city reduced smoke emissions mainly by 
creating smoke control ordinances from the early to mid-1900s to reduce 
industrial and residential pollution from burning natural gas as well as 
coal. By the late 1900s, the city recognized that it needed to improve the 
appearance of buildings by cleaning the smoke residues if it were to attract 
new businesses. One chapter provides an analysis of the 1948 Donora air 
pollution disaster when emissions from a zinc smelter were atmospherically 
trapped for several days, leaving hundreds of people suffering from 
breathing-related illnesses and causing twenty deaths. This disaster led to 
health-based regulations to control air emissions at the federal level. 

Another chapter offers a historical description of the transformation 
of the Nine Mile Run Valley. It was one of the last undisturbed areas in 
Pittsburgh with access to the Monongahela River and a vision of becoming 
a park, but it was ultimately used as a dumping ground for slag wastes 
produced by iron and steel manufactures. In the late 1900s, the Nile Mile 
Run slag piles were converted to residential areas and parks, but the valley 
is permanently transformed and scarred by the remaining slag. 

The final chapter is an essay by Samuel P. Hays, an environmental 
historian and long-time resident of Pittsburgh, on how city leaders overstate 
their environmental accomplishments, back legislation with limited power 
to regulate environmental issues, and have no holistic environmental vision 
for the city and region. To date, compromises have been made that balance 
economic, political, social, and environmental needs, which often produce 
less than ideal results.

Brian Whitman, Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences and 
Engineering, Wilkes University



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Keystone Corruption: A Pennsylvania Insider’s View of A State Gone 
Wrong. Brad Bumsted. 2013. Philadelphia: Camino Books. ISBN: 978-1-
933822-80-8.

Pennsylvania has a unique and impressive political history that includes 
such monumental events as the creation and signing of both the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution. While the Commonwealth will always 
be associated with these landmark political documents, Pennsylvania also 
has a legendary history in another realm of the political world—corruption. 
From the political machines that dominated both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh 
throughout much of the twentieth century, to scandals that rocked the state 
government in Harrisburg during the 1970s, the Keystone State has a long 
and inglorious history of governmental malfeasance. Unfortunately for 
Pennsylvania’s residents, corruption is not an artifact of a bygone era, but 
remains alive and well in the 15 years since the turn of the twenty-first 
century. Journalist Brad Bumsted deftly describes the sordid political events 
that have recently occurred in his book Keystone Corruption: A Pennsylvania 
Insider’s View of a State Gone Wrong. Bumsted, a veteran Capitol reporter 
for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, thoroughly unpacks the wave of political 
scandals that rocked the state between 2007 and 2015. Throughout this well 
researched and referenced book, Bumsted provides both a comprehensive 
description of the array of corruption that evolved during the turbulent five 
years that are examined as well as valuable insight about the underlying 
institutional and cultural factors that provided fertile ground for the growth 
of such abuses.

In Keystone Corruption Bumsted effectively uses his early chapters as 
a prelude to the more contemporary scandals that are his ultimate focus. 
He seamlessly reviews over a century of political corruption, highlighting 
some of the most egregious cases and ethically challenged characters of 
the twentieth century. While fans of political history may want even more 
detail about the events and players in these many scandals, Bumsted moves 
the reader quickly to his primary focus: the rash of serious corruption 
cases beginning around 2007. His best work comes when he is dealing 
with some of the most colorful characters of the era including Vince Fumo, 
Bill DeWeese, John Perzel and the imminently entertaining Orie family. At 
times the characters are so over the top that you have to remind yourself 
that the accounts are not fictional. Bumsted relies on both his own insider’s 
experience and solid research to explain how personal ambition and hubris, 
along with poorly designed institutions and a troubled political culture, 
can produce the intensity and scope of corruption that took place in the 
Commonwealth during this period.  

Bumsted’s concluding chapter calls on some of the state’s major political 
figures and good government advocates to offer prescriptions for decreasing 



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political corruption in the Commonwealth, and they deliver well-reasoned 
and largely attainable ways that Pennsylvania can begin to limit the abuses 
that have become a hallmark of its political culture. However, as one finishes 
Keystone Corruption, it’s hard not to think that the scandals chronicled in 
this impressive work may now serve as a prelude to yet another period of 
corruption and scandal that has transpired since the book was published. 
From statewide elected officials such as Rob McCord and Kathleen Kane, 
to city governments in Reading and Allentown, corruption appears to be 
alive and well in the birthplace of American democracy. While this may be 
good news in terms of material for Bumsted’s next book, the latest round 
of scandal certainly tears at the fabric of Pennsylvania’s already tattered 
political environment.

Christopher P. Borick, Professor, Department of Political Science, 
Director, Polling Center, Muhlenberg College

On the Front Lines of Pennsylvania Politics: Twenty-Five Years of Keystone 
Reporting. John M. Baer. 2012. Charleston, SC: The History Press. ISBN: 
978-1-60949-715-6.

Nothing and no one are beyond John M. Baer’s critique. A journalist for 
more than 40 years, Baer has written on disasters, terrorist acts, scandals, 
politicians, and sports figures. However, it is Pennsylvania politics where he 
excels, fitting for a man born in the state’s capital. His book, On the Front 
Lines of Pennsylvania Politics: Twenty-Five Years of Keystone Reporting, is 
one part autobiography, one part history lesson and all parts storytelling on 
Pennsylvania’s most prominent politicos. “Covering politics in Pennsylvania 
is like going to the circus every day,” (p. 13) and Baer introduces readers to 
the state’s political ringmasters, jugglers, and clowns.

Baer divides the book into seven chapters, beginning with his love 
for Pennsylvania and its politics and concluding with a reflection on 
Pennsylvania’s political landscape. In “The Keystone State I Know and 
Love,” he reviews the state’s “history and politics” (p. 15) and foreshadows 
the political foibles, tragedies, success stories, and corruption found in 
coming chapters. Baer also introduces readers to the dark cloud seemingly 
fixated over Pennsylvania that prevents its politicians from succeeding 
nationally. He recognizes the state’s idiosyncrasies, as well as a “custom 
of corruption,” and a “custom of being non-progressive, anti-reform and 
holding one of the nation’s worst records in terms of women in elective 
office” (p. 21).

“How Pennsylvania (and I) Got from Thornburgh to Casey” provides 
a whirlwind trip from the 1978 election of Richard L. “Dick” Thornburgh 
in the Republican gubernatorial primary through the 1986 gubernatorial 
race between Republican Bill Scranton and Democrat Bob Casey. In 



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particular, Baer highlights three items that helped elect Casey: eleventh 
hour advertising, broken promises, and a national media spectacle focused 
on Scranton’s admission of recreational drug use and his refusal to name the 
drug(s). Casey’s election leads to Baer’s heftiest chapter: “The Casey Years 
(and Lots of Political Doings).”

As a seasoned political reporter, Baer knows the players in 
Pennsylvania’s political game. “The Casey Years,” as well as “The Ridge 
Years,” read like a Who’s Who of modern Pennsylvania politics: H. John 
Heinz, Harris Wofford, Frank Rizzo, Mark Cohen, Arlen Specter, Lynn 
Yeakel, Mark Singel, Tom Ridge, Rick Santorum, Ernie Preate Jr…the 
list and accompanying stories seem almost endless. Were it not for Baer’s 
concise, narrative writing, a reader easily could become lost.

“Ridge to Washington; Rendell to Harrisburg” begins on September 
11, 2001. With Tom Ridge comfortably into his second term as governor, 
change was imminent. Less than two weeks after the terrorist attacks in 
New York City, Washington D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., President George 
W. Bush tabbed Ridge as the nation’s “anti-terrorism czar,” a “no-win job” 
but a “very big deal” nevertheless (p. 94). Ridge accomplished what few 
Pennsylvania politicians could achieve in all of U.S. history: ascend to 
global visibility. Ridge’s transition from Harrisburg to Washington was not 
without controversy. His security plans were vague; his family lived in the 
governor’s mansion—at the expense of taxpayers—after he was no longer 
governor; and the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System “was 
instant fodder for comics” (p. 100). Lieutenant Governor Mark Schweiker 
assumed responsibility for running the state, but not for long. Democrat 
Ed Rendell defeated Republican Mike Fisher to become the state’s next 
governor.

In the book’s final chapters, “The Rendell Years (and Other Fun Stuff)” 
and “Ed Departs, Corbett Arrives and 2010 Brings a Surprise,” readers 
again are privy to Baer’s wit and political acumen. Baer recalls Rendell’s 
notoriety as “an epic eater” (p. 116), but the commentary is not a personal 
attack. The governor had racked up nearly $76,000 in food bills during his 
first 11 months in office. Baer also addresses Rendell’s penchant for high 
speeds—some topping 100 mph—on the Pennsylvania turnpike, and several 
scandals and controversies that surfaced late in his tenure. Baer concludes 
with a brief introduction to Rendell’s successor, Republican Tom Corbett, 
whom Baer describes as “the anti-Ed (Rendell)” (p. 148).

On the Front Lines is neither a book simply on Pennsylvania politics, 
nor is it the musings of a veteran political journalist. Rather, Baer takes 
the best of both to create a witty, yet poignant retrospective of 25 years 
of Pennsylvania politics. Those familiar with the state will recognize the 
names and personalities and appreciate more fully, the sometimes-only-
alluded-to backstories of politicians and events. Yet even the unacquainted 



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can enjoy a glimpse into the circus and appreciate “the agony and ecstasy of 
covering Pennsylvania politics” (p. 7).

Kalen M.A. Churcher, Assistant Professor, Department of 
Communication Studies, Wilkes University

Kids for Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.6 Million 
Kickback Scheme. William Ecenbarger. 2012. New York: The New Press. 
ISBN: 978-1-59558-797-8.

In the fall of 2009, veteran journalist William Ecenbarger was asked 
to fill in for an ill Philadelphia Inquirer reporter at the first hearing of the 
Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice. The commission was created 
to investigate the “kids for cash” bribery and extortion scheme in Luzerne 
County, Pennsylvania, in which thousands of kids were sent to a private 
detention facility in exchange for millions of dollars paid to two county 
judges.

Ecenbarger stayed with the story for the ensuing two and half years, 
resulting in this riveting American tragedy, part true crime and part essential 
public policy debate. Faithful to his journalistic principles, Ecenbarger 
provides the facts and lets readers develop an appropriate sense of horror on 
their own. And that does not take long. 

The story starts with simple tales of everyday kids who made kid mistakes 
and who had to appear before Juvenile Court Judge Mark Ciavarella. Hiding 
behind a self-proclaimed “zero tolerance” policy, Ciavarella denied them 
due process, including the right to counsel, and ordered them to be shackled 
on the spot and hauled away to a for-profit detention facility. For that, he and 
his president judge were richly compensated.

How could this happen? Ecenbarger places some of the blame on the 
confluence of a corrupt political culture and a well-intentioned juvenile 
justice system that favors secrecy. Ecenbarger tracks the history of Luzerne 
County, home to hardworking immigrants with an old-country respect for 
politics and government. Public corruption and organized crime formed an 
early and comfortable relationship here, but regular folks chose to focus 
on the good and ignore the bad. It is a community where a politician can 
stumble, but still get a good word for a long ago kindness.

Ecenbarger also shows how the American juvenile justice policy has 
resulted in a more tolerant system for kids. Even the lexicon in juvenile 
court sounds not so bad. There are delinquents instead of criminals, hearings 
instead of trials, adjudications instead of convictions, and placement instead 
of imprisonment. And since juvenile court proceedings are not public, for 
the protection of the juvenile, hard facts rarely emerge.

The public policy discussion here is punctuated with additional examples 
of the evil in Ciavarella’s courtroom. These vignettes are reminders that this 



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is first a story about kids. And, ever the solid journalist, Ecenbarger follows 
through to the ongoing tragedy, the residual trauma suffered by kids and 
their families.

The development of the conspiracy is detailed at a deliberate pace, 
showing how even the most repugnant crimes often have a mundane 
beginning. But as the pace quickens, the end comes swiftly for the 
conspirators, with authorities, the press, and the judges’ cohorts and victims 
coming at them from every direction.

Ciavarella’s jury trial is described in detail, showing how a fair trial can 
be granted to someone who systematically denied others the same. When 
Ciavarella finally takes the stand, Ecenbarger wisely switches to the trial 
transcripts, letting Ciavarella’s own words sink him.

After his conviction, Ciavarella refused to accept responsibility, but he 
understood his standing in the community, as the leader of “cash for kids.” 
Lashing out at the prosecutor, he said, “Those three words made me the 
personification of evil. They made me the anti-Christ and the devil.” 

This book strikes a compelling balance between true crime and public 
policy, and Ecenbarger ends where he started, at the Interbranch Juvenile 
Justice Commission, and its proposed reforms.  And he closes with a 
discussion of public attitudes regarding juvenile crime, which Ecenbarger 
likens to a pendulum swinging between “the goals of child welfare and 
community safety.”

As for all those kids whose lives were easily traded for cash by an 
avaricious judge, Ecenbarger does not limit his criticism of criminal justice 
policy to Luzerne County or Pennsylvania, but he does blame “the pervasive 
belief that more people need to be locked up.” As he says, “Retribution 
trumps rehabilitation every election day. Thus it is that America, with only 
5% of the world’s population, is home to 25% of its prisoners.”

Joseph Sabino Mistick, Professor, Duquesne University School of Law

Toomey’s Triumph: Inside a Key Senate Campaign. Harold I. Gullan. 
2012. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN: 978-1-4399-0835-8.

The 2010 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race was a bittersweet moment in 
my life and career. Arlen Specter, the man who had long been my personal 
political hero, faced his Waterloo in the Democratic primary after nearly 
forty years in public service. I grew up in a house where my father—a yellow 
dog, McGovern Democrat—religiously crossed party lines every six years to 
return Specter to the Senate. As a junior at Thiel College in 2001, I interned 
for Specter on Capitol Hill, doing policy research on education and small 
business issues, answering constituent mail, and taking notes at hearings.

I penned a guest op/ed for the Philadelphia Daily News in the closing 
days of Specter’s Senate service about his illustrious and occasionally 



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controversial career. I wrote that “perhaps the most essential element 
of the Specter legacy is that he provided equal treatment for every 
Pennsylvania citizen, showed equal concern for each of the state’s 67 
counties and considered the importance of every citizen’s views regardless 
of his political party identification.”1 Like many Pennsylvania political 
observers, I anticipated a Specter versus Toomey rematch from the 2004 
Republican primary, which was one of the most dynamic political contests 
in Pennsylvania history. However, an historic electoral earthquake shook 
Pennsylvania on May 18, 2010, as the hard-charging Congressman, Joe 
Sestak, defeated Specter in the Democratic primary by approximately 8%.

The 2010 general election was set. In one corner was Sestak, who, in his 
initial congressional run in 2006 and during the campaign against Specter, 
demonstrated an indefatigable fighting spirit and an uncanny ability to appear 
to be in multiple places at once, crisscrossing Pennsylvania as if it were the 
size of Rhode Island. In the opposite corner was Toomey, a former member 
of Congress and Club for Growth CEO. No matter the occasion, Toomey 
always seemed to cautiously choose each word uttered during a speech as 
he carefully explained positions on major policy questions. Toomey is and 
was the quintessential conservative in both the pursuit of policy as well 
as temperament and personality, a cross between Cal Coolidge and Bill 
Buckley. John Baer, the dean of the Capitol press corps in Harrisburg, once 
observed that “Toomey is controlled, concise and sounds sensible. Contrast 
that with the angry-older-GOP of Mitch McConnell, John McCain and John 
Boehner.”2

Enter Dr. Harold I. Gullan, author of Toomey’s Triumph: Inside a Key 
Senate Campaign, a thorough and thoughtful appraisal of the Toomey-
Sestak race from the vantage point of a historian and political observer 
with unique behind-the-scenes access to one of the campaigns. Gullan has 
an abundance of experience in analyzing and writing about historically 
significant political campaigns as he did in The Upset that Wasn’t: Harry S. 
Truman and the Critical Election of 1948. 

In Toomey’s Triumph, Gullan dedicated many hours observing and 
interviewing the core of Toomey’s campaign team. This book isn’t so much 
an assessment of Pat Toomey and Joe Sestak as candidates as it is a careful 
documentation of Gullan’s encounters with the individuals charged with 
steering the ship for Team Toomey. His analysis of the central nervous system 
of the campaign itself takes readers far behind the scenes to understand why 
the Toomey campaign employed certain strategies and messages and why 
such devices were developed and deployed.

Among the many attributes that made Gullan’s The Upset that Wasn’t 
such an important contribution to presidential campaign history was 
the author’s attentiveness to the political strategies employed by each 



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candidate, the personal lives and political careers of the contenders, and 
his understanding of how often the most powerful explanatory technique 
for assessing campaigns requires peeling back the proverbial political 
onion to examine the behind-the-scenes calculations of the candidates and 
operatives. Readers of Toomey’s Triumph will be glad to know that Gullan 
brings the same focus in this book.

Gullan astutely noted that the 2010 U.S. Senate race presented 
Pennsylvania voters with a unique opportunity to choose between two 
candidates embodying a genuine devotion to policy goals and ideological 
commitments that went much deeper than basic partisan divisions. Neither 
Sestak nor Toomey attempted to sidestep their respectively liberal or 
conservative records, and both men presented themselves in starkly different 
terms as individuals and as policymakers. Gullan paints remarkable pictures 
of Toomey and Sestak who gave Pennsylvanians a crystal clear choice 
between candidates with divergent platforms lacking significant overlap. 
The critical lessons learned through Gullan’s behind-the-scenes access to 
Toomey’s organization is what makes Toomey’s Triumph so valuable for 
those interested in electoral politics, or as a supplemental text for a course 
in campaign and elections or Pennsylvania history and politics.

Perhaps the greatest weakness to Toomey’s Triumph is that Gullan did 
not devote enough time covering Joe Sestak. Despite the fact that 2010 
was a banner year for Republicans around the country and Pennsylvania, 
Toomey defeated Sestak by a mere 80,229 votes out of 3,977,661 cast 
(or just 1.02%). Meanwhile, Dan Onorato, the Democratic gubernatorial 
candidate lost to Republican Tom Corbett by 357,975 votes (or 8.98%).3 
At the end of the day, three main stories emerged from the 2010 senatorial 
race in Pennsylvania. The first was the close of the Specter era, second 
was Toomey’s victory, and third was Sestak’s narrow defeat in a year when 
Republicans rode an electoral wave across the nation. Gullan did well in 
covering the importance of the first two items, but perhaps shortchanged 
the final component of the story. Gullan’s readers are left with a fairly 
clear understanding of how and why the Toomey campaign’s strategy was 
determined and implemented. Given the nature of this race, readers would 
certainly benefit from a deeper analysis of how and why Sestak and his 
campaign came so close to realizing victory in a year that was historically 
detrimental for Democrats. Similarly, James Michener’s Report of the 
County Chairman presented an account of the Kennedy campaign in 1960 
in Bucks County that did not necessarily shine a light on the inner workings 
of both the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns, yet remains a crucial course 
for those seeking to understand Pennsylvania politics at the regional 
and grassroots levels. The absence of a detailed analysis of the strategy 
development and implementation by the Sestak campaign should not deter 



92

potential readers from assessing—and enjoying—Gullan’s work, especially 
since Pennsylvanians may get to experience a Toomey-Sestak rematch in 
November 2016.

Nathan R. Shrader, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, 
Millsaps College

Notes

1 Shrader, Nathan. “We’ll miss former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s clout and 
courage.” Philadelphia Daily News, 27 Dec., 2010.

2 Baer, John. “Is Toomey Mr. Demeanor?” Philadelphia Daily News, 4 March, 2013.
3 Pennsylvania Department of State. 2010. “2010 General Election: Official Returns.” 

http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us (accessed April 12, 2013). 




