PA Clean Sweep: RIP

PA Clean Sweep is no more. The organization Russ Diamond formed ostensibly to defeat the incumbents who voted for the pay raise was dissolved this month. The Patriot News has a pretty good eulogy of the recently deceased group here. There is more to the story, according to my sources. The final demise arose from political infighting over power and control. There were some brutal exercises of power which led to the lawsuits and bad publicity which then led to its downfall.

Russ Diamond's force of personality drove the organization and killed it, at the same time. Had he not launched his bid for Governor I believe they might have held on through the fall election. In any case it's reason for existing would have expired then anyway.

Clean Sweep did accomplish some goals and it did one major thing: it kept the issue in the public consciousness through the critical primaries.