Farnese lawyer: If $6K payment harmed rival and consultant, where's their outrage?

If, as prosecutors tell it, State Sen. Larry Farnese stole a 2011 election for ward leader with a $6,000 bribe, two men at the center of the alleged scandal don't seem particularly aggrieved.

Not Ted Mucellin, Farnese's longtime political consultant, who coordinated the payment from the senator's campaign fund to aid Ellen Chapman, the Democratic city committeewoman whose vote Farnese was courting.

Not Stephen Huntington, Farnese's rival in the race to become leader of the Eighth Democratic Ward.

In fact, both men testified Wednesday in the second day of Farnese's federal fraud trial that the person who seemed most upset by the whole affair was Chapman herself, the woman charged alongside Farnese with his alleged crime.

"I picked up the phone and Ellen was crying," Huntington testified, recounting a call five years ago in which Chapman explained that she was switching her support to Farnese. "She was very emotional. It was a very unusual call."

Farnese, 48, and Chapman, 62, face charges of conspiracy and mail and wire fraud stemming from what prosecutors have described as a quid pro quo arrangement.

The absence of outrage on the part of those seemingly most affected by Farnese's alleged misdeeds formed the basis Wednesday of defense efforts to beat back the prosecution's case.

Farnese - whose Senate district includes Center City and stretches from South Philadelphia to Brewerytown and Port Richmond - is accused of buying Chapman's vote with a promise to find $6,000 to cover tuition costs for her daughter's study-abroad trip to Kyrgyzstan.

Defense lawyers maintain Farnese's act of largesse was simply a good deed on behalf of a deserving constituent and came with no strings attached.

Prior to Farnese's payment, Chapman had been supporting Huntington for the Eighth Ward leadership post, an internal position at the Democratic City Committee responsible for organizing get-out-the-vote efforts in the vote-rich western Center City ward.

But Huntington, a retired lawyer and cochair of the Eighth Ward committee, told jurors Wednesday that his first concern when a tearful Chapman informed him she felt bound to withdraw her support was to calm her down.

"I tried to convey that she shouldn't be upset about this. That I wouldn't hold it against her," he recalled. "She stated that the financial arrangements [she had discussed with Farnese] would not be there if she voted for me."

Huntington acknowledged, under cross-examination by Farnese lawyer Mark Sheppard, that Chapman never informed him of the details of whatever financial agreement she made with Farnese and could not say whether Farnese had offered the tuition payment in exchange for Chapman's vote. He had never discussed the alleged deal with Farnese himself, Huntington said.

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kravis said during his questioning that the committeewoman's emotional reaction in her phone call with Huntington suggested she understood Farnese's payments to be more than just a generous gesture.

He and cocounsel Robert Heberle, to bolster their point, brought up another 2011 phone call - between Chapman and Mucellin, Farnese's political consultant.

Testifying under a grant of immunity, Mucellin said that Farnese asked him to follow up with Chapman after she had agreed to switch her support in the ward leader race.

"It was a somewhat angry phone call," Mucellin recalled, noting that Chapman didn't seem particularly happy to be supporting the senator. And yet, Mucellin said, "she said something to the effect of, 'I have a deal with the senator, and I'm going to honor it.' "

When he told Farnese that Chapman had reiterated her support, Farnese replied in an email: "OK. Good. Did she get mad?"

Mucellin later arranged the payment to the school administering the study-abroad program, but told jurors that he did not think anything was amiss in the senator's willingness to financially support Chapman's daughter, who had volunteered in Farnese's first campaign for the state Senate.

Farnese "comes from a family of educators," Mucellin said. "Education was always something that was important as to how it affected economic development in the lives of his constituents."

What's more, Sheppard noted in his cross-examination, Chapman's vote was hardly crucial in the ward leader race. In his opening argument Tuesday, the defense lawyer had questioned why his client would go to the trouble of bribing one committeewoman when he already had rallied overwhelming support for his election.

Mucellin testified Wednesday that within days of considering a run for the position, Farnese reached out to most of the Eighth Ward's 52 committee members and determined that 27 - about half - already supported him.

Huntington later would drop out of the race, and Farnese eventually won the ward election unanimously. Chapman did not cast a vote.

"I would think he had enough votes to win it" without her, Sheppard said.

Mucellin responded: "With room to spare."

Testimony in the case is scheduled to resume Friday.

With the government nearly finished with its case, lawyers for Farnese and Chapman are expected to renew their calls to have the charges thrown out in a hearing Thursday before U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe.

jroebuck@phillynews.com

215-854-2608 @jeremyrroebuck