Throwing the bums out: how a small-town businessman sparked an anti-incumbency movement in Pennsylvania--and what it means for national politics.

• Author: Toeplitz, Shira
• Position: Russ Diamond

RUSS DIAMOND, a businessman from Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, put up just $182.47 last year to launch PACleanSweep. com, a site dedicated to defeating every single incumbent in the Pennsylvania legislature. It's safe to say his money has been well spent. During the previous decade, no more than five legislators had been voted out of office in any election year. But in this year's May primary, 17 sitting lawmakers, including two Senate leaders with more than five decades of experience between them, were denied the chance to stand for re-election. The 17 defeated lawmakers, plus the 30 members who announced their retirement following the same wave of public outrage, added up to almost a 20 percent turnover for the next legislative session. And there's still the general election in November to come.

The precipitating event happened in the wee hours of the morning on July 7, 2005, when state lawmakers voted themselves pay raises of up to 34 percent. Since that bill was passed, Diamond, a former Libertarian Party candidate for various offices who runs his own sound engineering business, has recruited almost 100 candidates, all of whom signed a pledge that if elected they would not take the pay raise. Diamond, an average-sized man in his early 40s with a thick Central Pennsylvania accent, decided to run as an independent for the governor's mansion.

Diamond's gubernatorial campaign turned out to be a bust, but his larger crusade has been a tremendous success. His efforts show that even if a third party is doomed to failure, a third political brand can work wonders. Diamond's campaign has run candidates in both parties' primaries and as independents by staking out a single-issue identity. With that small initial investment of $182.47, he successfully built a political identity and sold it to working-class Pennsylvania voters. Nationally, Diamond's campaign could serve as a model for others trying to overturn entrenched incumbents and bring fresh faces--and fresh ideas--into politics.

Jubelirer's Jubilee

Plans for a salary increase had been circulating in the Harrisburg Capitol long before the summer 2005 vote. In November 2004 Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, was stuck in a legislative battle with a Republican legislature that complained he had yet to deliver on a pay raise. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the disagreement culminated in a meeting in Rendell's office, during which Senate President Pro Tempore Bob Jubelirer--whose wife, a judge, also would have benefited from a pay raise--angrily confronted the governor. Rendell replied that he would not sign a pay raise unless the GOP agreed to spend more on his pet projects. Whether or not it was a quid pro quo, he got at least some of what he asked for: Among other things, the legislature passed emergency spending for mass transit, and the final budget included money to implement environmental bonds.

During budget discussions the following summer, legislative language for the pay raise came in the form of Act 44, which made congressional salaries the benchmark for state lawmakers' salaries. Under the act, state representatives and senators would get a base salary half that paid to U.S. representatives, who currently receive about $165,000 a year. Act 44 also increased pay for judges and other high-level government officials. Because the state constitution says lawmakers may not accept pay increases in the middle of a session, members took their raises in the form of "unvouchered expenses," which don't require receipts.

When Rendell signed the bill into law, he hailed it on the grounds that it took the power to increase salaries out of lawmakers' hands by tying their pay to the salaries earned by members of Congress. He also argued that to keep bringing bright legal minds to the statehouse and the courts, salaries had to be in the range of what law school graduates could earn at private firms in their first year. The defense went over well in urban Philadelphia, but not in the conservative midstate area, where both the cost of living and constituent salaries are much...