Two Pa. third-party candidates pull out

HARRISBURG - Two third-party candidates for statewide office said Monday they were withdrawing in the face of all-but-certain rejection of their nomination papers in state Commonwealth Court.

John Krupa, whose claim to be the tea-party candidate for governor was questioned by other leaders of the movement, filed papers withdrawing from the race midway through a review of his petition signatures.

"He didn't have the requisite number," Krupa's lawyer, David Montgomery of Pittsburgh, acknowledged Monday after lawyers for the Lock Haven tavern owner and his challengers spent the weekend sifting through his petitions.

Mel Packer, the Green Party nominee for the Senate, said he decided to withdraw because he lacked enough surplus signatures to defend his petitions against a concerted challenge by Democratic nominee Joe Sestak, a member of the House who beat incumbent Arlen Specter in the May primary. Packer said he did not have a lawyer or the money or time to represent himself.

"I can't afford that," Packer, a physician's assistant in the emergency room of a Pittsburgh hospital, said in a telephone interview. "I'm 65 years old. I'm still working. I've got kids in college."

Pennsylvania law requires third-party and independent candidates for governor and Senate to collect 19,082 voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Major party candidates need only 2,000 signatures, but they must win often-contested statewide primaries to be nominated for the general election.

The major-party candidates for governor are Republican Tom Corbett, the state attorney general, and Democrat Dan Onorato, the elected Allegheny County executive.

Sestak faces Republican Pat Toomey, a former member of the House from the Allentown area, in the Senate race.

Meanwhile on Monday, representatives of the Libertarian Party candidates for governor and Senate - York lawyer Marakay Rogers and engineer Douglas Jamison - and their challengers began reviewing their petitions in a process that was expected to take days.

The challenges to the Libertarian candidates, who also include the party's candidates for lieutenant governor, Bucks County homemaker Kat Valleley, were all filed by three Republican voters with help from the state GOP.

Rogers, who monitored the review Monday, is a perennial candidate whose most recent efforts included unsuccessful bids as a Libertarian candidate for state Superior Court in 2009 and for attorney general in 2008.

She complained that political outsiders' signatures get a more rigorous review than those of major-party candidates and that many voters' signatures are rejected for technicalities, such as addresses that do not match their voter registration.

"That knocks a lot of legitimate voters out of the process," she said.

Krupa, 59, a former Republican, was nominated for governor by the Constitution Party in March, but he said that party joined forces with a tea-party group, so he used its label.

The tea-party movement is a collection of conservative grass-roots groups, but Pennsylvania does not recognize any of them as a political party.

Among the people who challenged Krupa's candidacy was Diane Reimer, the state coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, who said she did not know him and called him an impostor.

Several Republicans also joined the Krupa challenge, and GOP officials complained that Onorato's campaign helped Krupa gather signatures, an allegation the Onorato campaign did not deny.