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Big names aided Torsella’s first fundraising haul

Gov. Ed Rendell is on the list. So is Susan Rice, the Ambassador to the United Nations. Ditto Rhonda Cohen, the wife of Comcast executive and political bigwig David Cohen. Big-money names from Philly like Ken Jarin, Arthur Makadon and Peter Buttenweiser all make appearances. Restaurateur Stephen Starr is thrown in for good measure.

All gave money to Democrat Joe Torsella’s nascent Senate campaign.

Torsella has never held elected office, losing in his only attempt at a Congressional seat in 2004. But his career—from Philadelphia Deputy Mayor to National Constitution Center CEO—has yielded a well-documented list of political connections.

A detailed look at his recent campaign finance report provides the first glimpse of how Torsella hopes to parlay those connections into a political campaign. In the course of about six weeks, Torsella hit up dozens of contributors across the country and across professions. He reached out to donors from Beverly Hills and Seattle to Chicago and Miami. He hit up executives in a wide variety of industries, from energy pharmaceuticals to legal and financial services.

But more revealingly, he tapped deep into the well of Rendell allies and confidantes that have come to know him. And he got more than a few donors to max out early, giving the federal limit of $2,400 apiece for the primary and general elections. With little time between his declaration of candidacy and the end of the first-quarter reporting period, the push allowed him to report a haul of almost $600,000.

“I’ve been humbled and energized by the response to my candidacy, both the visible response and our early numbers,” Torsella told pa2010.com in a recent interview.

Torsella, who served in Rendell’s mayoral cabinet in the 1990s and was later appointed by him to chair the State Board of Education, is clearly poised to capitalize on his relationships with the Governor and those close to him. In addition to the $500 check Rendell wrote, Torsella also received money from Makadon, Rendell’s old mentor and longtime political advisor; Rhonda Cohen, the wife of Rendell’s former mayoral chief of staff; Leslie Anne Miller, the Governor’s former General Counsel; Kevin Feeley, a former Rendell spokesman; and at least a few lawyers from Rendell’s former law firm.

Party insiders have said Torsella wouldn’t be running without the assumed support of the Governor. And while he wouldn’t address that question directly, the names on his 144-page April quarterly report make clear Rendell’s friends are behind Torsella. His new Finance Director Michelle Singer has done the same job for Rendell. After taking the maximum allowed amount from many of them to pile up impressive numbers early, his next challenge will be to expand that on that fundraising base.

He also got significant support from Neil Oxman, a political adviser to Rendell since before his days as Mayor, and Doc Sweitzer, with whom Oxman founded The Campaign Group. But Oxman and Sweitzer stand to make that money back and then some—The Campaign Group has been retained to the Torsella campaign’s media strategy.

April 27, 2009 at 5:35 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Ed Rendell, Joe Torsella

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