Swamp Thing - Pat Browne Crawls Out Of The Ooze
Ousted by the PA Republican base,Browne now selected by new Democratic Governor Shapiro to be his Secretary of Revenue
You know the drill. Late in the movie, the hero appears to kill the monster. All seems well, then suddenly and unexpectedly the monster reappears and makes one last desperate attempt to kill the protagonist. The audience gasps.
It doesn’t just happen in the movies, unfortunately. It happens in real life. Witness the case of Pat Browne in Pennsylvania.
Pat Browne was up until recently the chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee in the Pennsylvania State Senate. He had been in office for 28 years. He held the purse strings. He was one of the most powerful men in Harrisburg.
Browne was also kind of a poster child for everything the base of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania thinks is wrong with state government.
Browne demonstrated a singular focus on enriching his friends and working the system. His personal behavior suggested strongly he considered himself above the law.
Browne was arrested at least three times while in office s for driving while intoxicated. Browne's longtime campaign committee treasurer, Michael P. Ellwood, was arrested in September 2019 on 179 criminal counts involving the embezzlement of $578K in campaign funds over 11 years. Browne was also accused of corruption with regard to legislation he wrote in 2009 which gave tax breaks to companies that made contributions to his campaign for reelection. On several subsequent occasions, Browne was again accused of doing the same thing, engineering tax breaks for friends and campaign donors.
Browne stood largely in opposition to the base of the GOP in Pennsylvania in regard to election integrity. He is on record as having said that he believes there were no irregularities in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. According to Browne, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania fair and square.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Browne did nothing to address any of the multitudes of problems with electoral integrity seen in 2020. He was far too busy milking the system for his personal benefit.
The voters in Browne’s district reacted. Enough. They organized. A challenger appeared, and Browne was defeated in the primary, tossed out on his ear. The implications were massive. Twenty-eight-year veterans of state legislatures who control the money in the state budget don’t lose. Browne going down was a huge signal to the establishment that the base of the GOP in Pennsylvania was serious about reform. The times were changing.
But the Swamp is deep in Harrisburg. Browne, freed now of even the pretense of representing his Republican base, resurrected himself. He crossed over to the other side fully and completely. Democratic Governor-elect Josh Shapiro on Thursday said he was nominating Browne to be the state’s next secretary of revenue.
Jarrett Coleman, the man who defeated Browne in the primary had this to say,
“The appointment of Pat Browne to this position indicates the governor-elect has no desire to depart from the policies that have put taxpayers in the commonwealth last for the last couple of decades,” Coleman said. “Policies such as the gas tax, that as a state senator, Pat Browne voted and vocally advocated for.”
Coleman’s comments hit the nail on the head. Browne was defeated because his constituents finally fully understood that he did not represent them and did not speak for them. Shapiro has recognized the same thing. Browne is now and always was a big government sell-out looking to milk the system at the expense of the average working man and woman. He will now, as part of the Shapiro administration, finally be where he is most comfortable, working on behalf of powerful special interests, the bureaucracy, and the elite – freed finally of the need to even pretend to care about the lives of Pennsylvanians.
Meanwhile, the state GOP, ironically enough, has announced that it is conducting a special study to determine why Republican candidates in the state are doing so poorly at the ballot box. We assume much money will be spent and a lengthy report compiled. We assume also that no one involved with the report will bother to talk to average Republican voters who have long since become completely disgusted with the disconnect between the Party and its base.
Want to know what is wrong with the Pennsylvania GOP? Take a look at Pat Browne. Take a look at Swamp Thing, crawling out of the ooze and back into public life.
Sam, I don’t know why you keep denying the existence of Sasquatch. These creatures appear formidable but, for the most part, aren’t corrupt in any way, and as bad as they smell, they don’t stink anything like the deeds of a swamp creature. I only wish I could capture a couple trailer loads of them, and drop them off in front the state Capitol building when they’re in session. I’m confident they wouldn’t tolerate swamp creatures like we do.
Few things define the legacy-building abilities of Josh Shapiro like an appointment of Pat Brown to handle money.
These articles need to be shared widely.