Clout: Kane team shows Harrisburg can be a small circle

 KATHLEEN KANE, the first Democrat and first woman elected as attorney general of Pennsylvania, announced her executive team Thursday in advance of taking office Tuesday.

Her selections demonstrate how the state's governmental and political community can be a small circle.

Kane and her new righthand man go back two decades.

Adrian King Jr. will be her first deputy attorney general.

The pair met and dated while attending Temple University's School of Law (class of 1993).

King was deputy chief of staff and then head of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency when Ed Rendell was governor. He was Rendell's go-to guy for several state public-safety and law-enforcement agencies.

John Estey was Rendell's chief of staff. King, who is married to Estey's sister, worked with him at the Ballard Spahr law firm after leaving Rendell's administration.

Estey left the firm in 2011 to become the top attorney at the Hershey Trust, which has been the subject of a long-running investigation by the charitable-trusts and organizations section of the state Attorney General's Office.

Which means Estey will play a role in dealing with the Attorney General's Office with the Hershey investigation moving forward.

King said that procedures have been set up to "ethically screen" him from any Hershey actions, keeping him out of the loop.

"We have hired an excellent team," King said. "There's no need for me to be involved."

State Rep. Dwight Evans admires persistence in people.

He knows a thing or two about that subject.

Evans is talking with political allies in Philadelphia about running for mayor in 2015. It would be his third shot at the executive office on the second floor of City Hall.

Obviously, the first two campaigns fell well short. And, just as obviously, the political fortunes of the 17-term state legislator have been on the wane as of late.

Evans was considered a serious contender for the office early in the 1999 race, but finished far behind in a crowded field, with less than 5 percent of the Democratic-primary vote. And that was after he ran for governor in 1994.

Things weren't much better in the crowded 2007 field, when he collected just 7 percent of the primary vote. And he was at the height of power then, as chairman of the House's Appropriations Committee.

Since then, Democratic colleagues in Harrisburg have removed him from that leadership post, relegating him to backbencher. And he has been in a swirl of controversy, accused of bully tactics in Philadelphia School District decisions and under a microscope for how the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corp., which he started in 1983, spent state money.

State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams already has the support of U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of the city Democratic Party, if he runs as expected in 2015. Williams and Brady know that Evans is looking at the race.

Williams backed Evans for mayor in 2007, raising campaign cash and stumping for him in the city.

Is this tactical?

Is Evans trying to manufacture leverage for a deal to stay out of what once again is expected to be a crowded field? Maybe that leverage could lead to support for another job or elected post?

Time will tell.

For now, Evans points out that many things can change between now and the 2015 Democratic-primary election for mayor.

"Races like this are going to be determined by people and votes," Evans said. "That's been my experience. I have a little bit of experience with this."

Vito Canuso, chairman of the Republican City Committee, fell victim this week to a common electronic scam known as the "stranded traveler" email.

A computer hacker accessed Canuso's email contacts, sending everyone a bogus plea for help.

The email said Canuso was mugged at gunpoint during an "unannounced vacation" to the Philippines, had no money, credit cards or cellphone, and could not get help from the U.S. Embassy.

The email also said Canuso's hotel would not let him leave the country until he paid his bill.

Canuso, safe at home here in Philadelphia, started to get calls from concerned friends. But the email also went to an email chat room run by the Loyal Opposition, a group backed by the state Republican Party that wants to reinvigorate the GOP here.

The Loyal Opposition is in a political civil war. Canuso is on the other side. The group even elected its own Republican chairman.

I asked Canuso if the Loyal Opposition would help him get home from the Philippines or pay to keep him hostage there.

"I don't know," Canuso said, without missing a beat. "We'll see how much money they send."