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In the COMMONWEALTH

Gerard J. Fitzpatrick
Editor

Once again, this issue of COMMONWEALTH confirms the old adage
that “good things come to those who wait.” The number of manuscripts
submitted for review over the past two years continued to be low, while the
rejection rate remained high—a testament to the demanding standards of our
anonymous reviewers. Thanks to them, we can present a diverse group of
five scholarly articles. Two of them involve Congress, one concerns the
judiciary, one examines the electoral process, and one explores public
policy. Moreover, three of the five articles focus on Pennsylvania, as do all
seven of our reviewed books.

In our lead article, David R. White traces the ill-fated political career of
John Inscho Mitchell, the progressive Republican who represented
Pennsylvania in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate
during the Gilded Age. A reluctant “compromise candidate” who won his
Senate seat under the most inauspicious of circumstances, Mitchell served
his state honorably but unhappily, for he was an honest man living in an era
of rampant political corruption. White shows that Mitchell was much better
suited temperamentally for the judicial service he later performed on several
state courts in Pennsylvania.

One of the courts on which Mitchell served, the Pennsylvania Court of
Common Pleas, is the focus of Heather Frederick’s article, which explains
why women are underrepresented as judges on this level of the state bench.
Finding that neither incumbency advantage nor various methods of judicial
selection fully accounts for the gender disparity between male and female
judges, she emphasizes instead the adverse impact on women of basic
sexism in the form of stereotypes and tokenism. On the bright side,
Frederick notes that over the course of the past 15 years women have been
more likely than men to be appointed to the Courts of Common Pleas.

Blyden Potts continues the theme of injustice in Pennsylvania’s
governmental institutions, this time focusing on the discriminatory treatment
accorded by the state’s election law to independent and third party
candidates trying to get on the ballot. Drawing upon his direct involvement
in the failed U.S. Senate bid of Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli in
2006, Potts argues that state Democrats—aided by an array of state and
federal courts—used the letter of the law to sabotage Romanelli’s signature
petition, thereby undercutting the law’s spirit and along with it the rights of
the candidate and the interests of the voters.



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The theme of representation also pervades Robin Lauermann’s article,
which explores how individuals belonging to various demographic groups
perceive and evaluate the political behavior of their particular representative
in the U.S. House. She finds not only that various social and political
identities shape the ways in which different groups of constituents
understand and assess the actions of their representatives, but also that
politically savvy House members recognize the importance of the
demographic composition of their districts and cultivate personal, policy,
and electoral relationships with their constituents accordingly.

Shifting the focus from politics to public policy, Arthur M. Holst
examines the leadership role that local governments are increasingly playing
with regard to the adoption of “greening” policies in the realms of energy
use and environmental protection. With the advantage of proximity to
environmental problems as well as to the people who cause them and are
affected by them, municipalities across the nation have enacted in recent
years an array of policies, programs, and incentives that show how the
public and private sectors can work together effectively and why economic
growth and ecological health need not be in conflict.

In closing, I wish to acknowledge the work and dedication of several
people. First, Michael R. King, Executive Director of Pennsylvania’s
Legislative Office for Research Liaison (LORL), has widened our
distribution network and reduced our operating costs. Second, Michael E.
Cassidy, Executive Director of the Office of the House Democratic Caucus,
has proved that his gift for managing governmental affairs is transferable to
managing a journal as well. Third, the skills of copy editor Barbara C.
Stone have turned COMMONWEALTH into a work of art, visually. Finally,
my debt to associate editors Thomas J. Baldino and Donald G.
Tannenbaum can be simply put: Tom + Don = COMMONWEALTH.