Republican candidate for D.A. touts law, business experience

There's a formula to winning public office in Philadelphia: Start young, in your 20s or 30s, work on a couple of campaigns, introduce yourself to the city's Democratic ward leaders, begin building a network of potential contributors and wait years, if necessary, for an opening.

You get bonus points for becoming a Democratic ward leader or committeeperson, doing chores for Democratic City Committee or providing loyal service to an elected official. You can skip several steps if you're blessed with influential parents - think Rizzo, Green, Goode or Tartaglione.

The name Untermeyer is not on that list.

But at the age of 58, Michael W. Untermeyer, the Republican candidate for district attorney, looks to beat a 6-to-1 Democratic registration edge and become the city's top prosecutor when incumbent Lynne Abraham retires in January.

It's Untermeyer's second run at public office, after running for sheriff two years ago, as a Democrat. It's a measure of the long odds against him that Republican leaders were willing to give the nomination to someone who was registered Democratic in January.

Untermeyer says it's something he has thought about since then-district attorney Ed Rendell hired him as an assistant D.A. in the mid-1980s. He got serious about it, Untermeyer says, when he met most of the Democratic candidates last December, at the annual Pennsylvania Society event in New York City.

"I would say, anyone who becomes an assistant district attorney in this city thinks about one day becoming the district attorney," Untermeyer said. "I wasn't focused on it. But when I met these other individuals face to face, I started to think, with my experience in law and business, I'm more qualified."

A native of New York City, Untermeyer went to law school at Rutgers-Camden, living near the Jersey end of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and decided to settle in Philadelphia.

After four years as a city prosecutor, he went to the state Attorney General's Office for 11 years, specializing in tracking the money of suspected drug dealers.

On the side, Untermeyer was making a small fortune for himself as a real-estate investor, starting in 1982, when he bought a small rental property near Rittenhouse Square.

"It was just smart investing," Untermeyer said. "I looked for roughly one deal a year. You do that over 30 years and it adds up." He declined to estimate his net worth, but said he now owns about 20 buildings, mostly in Philadelphia.

Untermeyer, who lives in a riverfront condominium in Old City, says the D.A.'s office needs the kind of business acumen, and persistence, that he would bring.

"You've got a department with roughly a $32 million budget, and you've got a budget crisis in the city," Untermeyer said. "I've come up with a series of ideas that can help. They're practical, tangible and realistic, and they're things that the D.A. can do," without going to Harrisburg for new legislation or to City Hall seeking more money.

Untermeyer's top law-enforcement priority is a tougher stand against illegal handguns. Currently, he said, close to half the people charged with carrying a concealed weapon get off with probation. He says anyone caught carrying a gun without a permit should be sent to jail, no compromising, for as long as a year.

At first blush, that would add hundreds of people to the city's already overcrowded jails. But Untermeyer has a plan for that, too: increased use of electronic monitoring equipment to enforce home-confinement sentences for nonviolent criminals.

He sported an ankle bracelet himself for a month this fall, allowing voters to track his whereabouts through a link on his campaign Web site.

Untermeyer said the D.A.'s office should become more aggressive about municipal corruption, establishing a telephone hot line for tips and complaints.

And he wants to expand the D.A.'s economic-crime unit to provide more consumer protection - a move that could generate money for the office, Untermeyer says, if the new D.A. is aggressive about seeking to fine businesses that defraud consumers.

He promises to appoint a top aide as the D.A.'s chief financial officer, to pursue grants from foundations and other government agencies - something Abraham has already been doing successfully.

Untermeyer says the office also needs to focus more on helping crime victims.

Like Seth Williams, the Democratic candidate, Untermeyer proposes a vertical prosecution system in which criminal cases would be assigned to prosecutors who would stick with them from beginning to end, sparing victims from having to re-explain the facts to a series of different assistants.

Untermeyer also would staff a hot line, around the clock, that victims could call to get advice on continuing problems or to check on approaching court dates.

Unlike the spirited five-way Democratic primary last spring, the fall campaign has been a sleeper, with just a couple of joint appearances by the candidates.

Untermeyer lent $200,000 to his own campaign to buy some advertising, and says he's prepared to spend more if it looks like a smart investment.

Even one of his friends has called Untermeyer's campaign "quixotic," he acknowledged. But the city's voters have a history of crossing party lines to elect a local prosecutor - with Arlen Specter in the mid-1960s and most recently, with Ron Castille, elected in 1985 and re-elected four years later.