One might place Allegheny County Councilman Bill Robinson’s nominating petitions among the great works of political fiction were they not so unimaginative and repetitive.
For campaigners too lazy to comb the streets gathering signatures, the time-honored shortcut always has been to copy names from a list of registered voters. Maybe you switch hands as you copy the names to mask their single source, but you just hope that nobody checks back with these people and that they’re not dead.
We’ve seen the occasional forgery conviction for such trickery, but at least those showed real effort.
What Mr. Robinson turned in, however, is downright embarrassing for someone with more than 40 years in politics. The Hill District Democrat has served on city council, in the state House of Representatives and on county council, so he’s a veteran of dozens of campaigns. Yet he turned in sheets, endorsed with his signature, that are so clearly fictional that one can only look at them in awe.
Three district voters are contesting 343 of the 358 signatures. The challenge is financed by Better Jobs Better Future, a political action committee supporting DeWitt Walton and other county office seekers. Mr. Walton is challenging Mr. Robinson in District 10, which stretches east from the Hill District through seven city wards to Wilkinsburg and Forest Hills.
Do the challengers have a strong case?
I don’t know. Is the Monongahela damp? Are there any deer in Mt. Lebanon?
It’s hard to know where to begin. One is tempted to start with the Australian-born actors, Naomi Watts and Russel (sic) Crowe, whose names stand amid the muddle of signatures on Mr. Robinson’s petitions that appear to have been written by a single hand. We might also note that his own name appears at his address on four different pages.
But it was Sam Hazo’s name that jumped out at me — at two different addresses in Mr. Robinson’s district. I happen to know the former poet laureate of Pennsylvania lives miles away in Upper St. Clair. So I called him to see whether, in his 86 years, he’d ever run into any other Sam Hazos in Allegheny County. I also emailed Mr. Hazo copies of Mr. Robinson’s petitions.
“My dad, my son and his son,’’ Mr. Hazo said, when I asked whether he’d met any other Sams with his surname. “We ran out of names. It’s a good thing [my son’s wife] didn’t have another boy.’’
So he’s not living at 820 Clarissa St. in Pittsburgh, which Mr. Robinson lists as his own home address?
No, there may be a remake of “The Odd Couple,’’ but this isn’t it.
“I don’t know this guy at all,’’ Mr. Hazo said.
Mr. Hazo is one of the chosen few, but not the chosen Fu. That would be Dr. Freddie Fu, the pioneer in sports medicine. His name appears at an East Liberty address right under “Jerome Bettis’’ on page 4 of the petitions.
No, that wasn’t his signature, Dr. Fu said. John DeFazio, county council president, also said that wasn’t his signature on the petitions. He’s not eligible to sign anyway, as he doesn’t live in Mr. Robinson’s district, he said.
I left phone messages with Mr. Robinson last week at his home, his office and on his cell, but they were not returned.
Maybe if he’d tried “John Smith” or more Flahertys, the holes in his petitions would be harder to trace. Cliff Levine, attorney for this court challenge, said he’ll have a handwriting expert at a hearing Wednesday afternoon “to ascertain the obvious,” but if Mr. Robinson withdraws from the race, it’s over, at least as far as his case is concerned.
Whether this is a matter for the district attorney is another question. Forgery is illegal. If Mr. Robinson manages to come up with a reasonable explanation for these petitions, it could be the greatest political escape act since President Bill Clinton got America to ponder what the meaning of “is” is.
I’m sure rooting for a surprise ending to this story. Meantime, though, I have this old Simon & Garfunkel song going around in my head, with the words slightly altered.
What’s that you say, Mr. Robinson?
Sam Hazo resides 10 miles away
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.
First Published: March 22, 2015, 4:00 a.m.