Convicted of, will that impact the next attorney general . In other words, are people in the state of pennsylvania so disheartened by the continuing corruption issues that they will vote one way or the other based on running against corruption . What do you think . Well, i think certainly its an issue. And i think but neither of the two candidates were touched at all by the scandal. And so i dont see a direct connection between her and the two candidates who are running. So i dont think that thats going to be an issue. I do, though, want to just mention the idea that she was sentenced to jail time. I think a lot of people believe that she needed to be punished. But im still on the side of, you know, nonviolent crimes, for people going to jail for that, its still a tough decision to make. She was an interesting figure, a rising star, nelson. Four years ago, really an unheardof person outside the political realm, who was able to get a mainstream job, and many thought there would be a stepping stone to the governorship, for a possible race for her down the road. And she did some things she forced the ouster of a couple of state Supreme Court justices, no small feat, prosecuted some government officials. Do you think, though, the downside of her legacy is too far down . Well, this question, because a judge sentenced her not only to the jail time, but also to eight years probation, which means that shes under the thumb of the same judge for over 10 years. And so if she violates any portion of it, she could get more jail time. And its sad whats happened to her because no only did she lose her husband, she lost her job, she lost her license, and now shes going to spend time in jail. I thought it was a pretty harsh sentence, and i felt that there should have been some consideration. And the question is whether it was payback because of the judges that she got. She got two judges one democrat and one republican as a result of the scandal, with regard to the emails. And there were other judges that could have fallen. And so, you know, it stopped at one point. And shes not the first and shes not the first person, by the way, to have leaked that kind of information from grand juries to the press or to other folks. And she really was made somewhat of an example. Well, i guess it was also lying to the second grand jury about what the leak was from the first grand jury that got her the perjury and obstruction of justice. Is it also, though, that josh shapiro, democrat county commissioner from montgomery county, whos running for attorney general, has been saying he wants to clean up corruption . Thats one of his planks in his campaign. And senator john rafferty, of course, republican running as well, trying to do the same, im sure. I go back to what sharmain said. I dont think that this has any effect on the current race, nor do either of the candidates have an effect on what happened to her. And that brings me to what nelson said, the last thing about making an example. Theres a concern, monica, that the powerful get away with things. And we can name a number of people, most prominently the whole question of whether james comey would have treated anyone else differently than he treated Hillary Clinton. Thats a hot controversy. And in this case, because youve got the top lawenforcement officer who is engaged in this kind of activity, i think very much the judge decided, we have to send a very firm example, especially given public discontent and the perception that the rich and powerful, the connected, get away with things that we mere mortals wouldnt. Because theyre connected, or because they have money and influence campaigns, allegedly, and other things theyve been accused of doing. All right, lets move on to the senate race in pennsylvania, an interesting race, and its going to depend a lot on the national top of the ticket, in many peoples minds. So, pat toomey is the incumbent. Katie mcginty is the challenger, democratic female would be the first female in that role if she wins. What do you thinks going to happen, val . Very close race. You could flip a coin at this point. I think and im not just saying this pats the republican i think Katie Mcginty is totally out of her league on stage with pat toomey. We saw that in the debates this week, and then she was called on the carpet again for lying. Shes been lying since the beginning of her campaign when she said she was the first person in her family to go to college. And then she put out this ridiculous commercial about the use of confession of judgment. And pat owned a bank pat toomey owned a bank and they used confession of judgment to, you know, kick little old ladies out of their homes. Pat didnt own the bank. Hes a 1 owner of the bank. Confession of judgment, i can tell you im a banking lawyer is used daily in commercial transactions, only commercial transactions. And Katie Mcginty used it in her own dep, in her own department. Some would say, after you mentioned the debate last week and our jim gardner moderated, that toomey had a strong performance, that hers was good, but many people felt his was stronger among the analysts i spoke with, but in fact he did not say if hes voting for the top of his ticket, donald trump, or not. Do you think distancing himself or failing to mention that hes going to support or not going to support is going to hurt him ultimately . Because it doesnt look loyal or because hes smart not to . Which way . Yeah, i think there is a problem with regard to the fact that hes being coy. And being coy, with regard to being a republican, not supporting the top of the ticket, or at least saying what hes going to do with regard to the ticket, i think those that are going to be supporting trump are going to be very angry at him, and he may lose that relationship. But i think its a very, very close race, as val indicated, but it all depends on what happens in the hillary race. If hillary wins by more than 6 , shell have coattail effects and shell get into the senate. If its less than 6 , i think then it gets a lot closer in terms of that election. So even though House Speaker paul ryan has sort of given license to republicans down the ticket that they need to save themselves, do what they want to do, need to do, for their own races, not necessarily look to the top of the ticket, you dont think that gives him the ability pat toomey to sort of be coy about it . I mean, if you look at i mean, and, again, you know, polls weve seen many of them, but theres another poll out this week that came where the poll was actually in the field before and then right after the debate this week, which i thought was very good, and i thought katie did a really good job of talking about issues and positions. And they have her up three points now. So if hillarys doing great in the state and shes making some inroads on her own name and really pushing some issues that people really care about, i think she has a really good shot. All right, meantime, we are hearing differences on the issues between these two for the Senate Differences on prolife and proabortion stances, or at least pro using the federal dollars to pay for abortions, corporate taxes or not corporate taxing millionaires, black lives matter. Those are the three big topics that they differ markedly on. Do you think those will be key when people are pulling the lever . I think people are going to go into the booth and theyre going to look at their economic situation. I think this is very much going to be an economic race. In terms of mcgintys vote, a sizeable portion is going to be driven by the fact that she is a woman and that she is supporting someone whos not donald trump. So its not a vote for her necessarily, its a vote against trump and for hillary, which no, i wouldnt go that far. But im just saying, the way the data points line up, i think that when it comes to black lives matter and any number of other issues through all peripheral, i think people are looking at their pocketbooks. And right now, everyones getting the bad news about their premium increase in terms of healthcare. That, i think, is something that has not been captured by polling because its occurring in real time. Well see how that plays. Could be double the premium, val. The premiums are going to dramatically go up. Yeah, but i would push im sorry, val, but i would push back on that. I mean, i think the initial story of, theres a 25 increase, is not absolutely accurate. Most of the people who are going to see an increase have subsidies and then those subsidies will cover the increase. Thats an average. Thats really spurious. Is there anybody at this table who buys their own . I do. Its killing small businesses. Go ahead, val. Obamacare is killing small bus those are the guys and gals getting crushed. Those are the ones who buy their own health insurance, and theyre not subsidized. And those are the people who sometimes are swing voters. And its not captured in the polls. Right. The other thing about the poll, im going to say, is donald trump consistently, throughout the primary and in pennsylvania, was under polling by 6 points in a lot of states, including pennsylvania. So the polls are not right. Theyre not capturing the obamacare issue. Theyre no capturing people who dont want to admit theyre voting for donald trump, just like in the frank rizzo years. So i dont believe the polls. I think hillary is winning, but not by the margin they say. There are two issues that i differ. One is, theyve spent 121 million on this election the most Expensive Senate race in the history of the country. Cities united is an issue with many of the voters, and that may help mcginty. The second issue is, when toomey said that black lives dont matter thats not what he said. He said, all lives matter, which is to encompass more. You know, its a bigger umbrella, if you will. Whatever he said, that was offensive as it was to our community because of the police issue that has occurred throughout the country. He said, yeah, there have been some offensive issues, but i got backed, he says, by the police. And to some extent, there is a real the american bar association, right now, has put a study group together, nationally, to look at the dishonest relationship that exists between the police and the community. And so to some extent, particularly the minority community, the black community, and so i dont think, in our community, we dont think that toomey gets the issue on the black lives matter issue because, yeah, all life matters, no question about that, but he doesnt get the question that theres a historical discriminatory practice that needs to be understood by our representatives. Meantime, lets go back to the national aspect, because it does affect the senate race. Lets talk about it. Donald trump has specifically said that he believes pennsylvania might get stolen from him because, he says, theres historically been some issues with voter fraud, with people who have passed away still somehow magically being able to vote. And a rigged system, if you will, is what he has alleged, specifically about the keystone state. Pedro cortes is our secretary of state pennsylvania chief election officer, and he obviously disagrees vehemently with that, saying, its not only unpatriotic to say such a thing about the keystone state, but, in his mind, disqualifying. And do you believe thats stepping over the line . Its questioning the democratic system. Its absolutely nonsense. I mean, across the country, secretaries of state have consistently talked about the fact that there is no evidence that there is any kind of widespread, or even small neighborhoodbased, issues around voter fraud. As a matter of fact, on friday of this week, the Philadelphia City commissioners opened up all the voting machines, invited people to come in, take a look at the process, take a look at the machines. Theres a lot of oversight that is there. Absolutely not widespread fraud. Its just another set of lies and issues to try to keep people from voting. Having seen it happen, as a Committee Man in philadelphia, its not a lie. Ive witnessed them actually shutting the doors and voting people who are not coming out. Thats why they dont want to purge the voter roles. It takes four election cycles before you can purge a voter role. The dead are voting. Channel 6 reported it today, abc channel6. Com whatever our website is. Yep. 6abc. Com. It happens. Ive seen it happen, and ive called the da. Ive called the police as a Committee Man. Ive called committee of seventy. No one will do anything about it. Bruce marks wrote an oped this week on how he got robbed, and a federal judge said he got robbed, when he ran. This happens over and i was involved in a race for mike fisher. There was literally when he was running for governor a bus going polling place to polling place. We saw it. We witnessed it. The police could do nothing. The da couldnt get out there in time. They were going from polling place to polling place voting. Now, was it democrats or repu i dont know who it was, but ive witnessed this. Well, we do know, in 2015, four democratic Election Officials were prosecuted for adding six votes to the ballot to equal out the number of people who had stood in line and registered because of some, i guess, miscommunication or of failure on that part. So they were prosecuted. And in 1994, there was a federal court case overturned that did overturn a state senate race because of absentee ballots being fraudulent. But is it predominant . It does happen. But they had a lot of other stuff that happens, too. The intimidation issue happens also in the voting places. Ive seen dead people vote, no question about it, in south philadelphia, particularly. But youre saying its not rampant. Its not widespread enough to nelsons right about intimidation because the new black Panther Party came out. And that was intimidation, when they were standing there, as people were coming in. Look. Donald trump will not lose because of this issue. This will not be material. But i would commend people at home, google john fund of the wall street journal. Hes written extensively about this problem, nationwide. All right, were gonna take a break. Inside story continues right after this. Dont go away. Well be back. Inside story is presented by temple university. Remarkable change isnt easy, but for those who take charge, it comes naturally. Explore temples impact. Visit temple. Edu impact. Hillary clinton far too many families today dont earn what they need and dont have the opportunities they deserve. I believe families deserve quality education for their kids, childcare they can trust and afford, equal pay for women, and jobs they can really live on. People ask me what will be different if im president . Well kids and families have been the passion of my life and they will be the heart of my presidency. Im Hillary Clinton and i approve this message. Welcome back to inside story. Pension reform has been a hot topic in harrisburg. Four years now, theyve been trying to reform two different pension systems. And the current idea would have saved, they said, 2. 6 billion over 32 years. It didnt happen. The legislature recessed and did not pass this controversial bill. Do you think thats going to impact, obviously, workers who are currently working . This bill would have impacted future workers, for sure, but theres a big issue with how much pension reform is really hurting the budget. Monica, it is the largest driver of spending, looking into the future. There is no way that we can do what is necessary in government without reforming the pensions. The political will to do whats necessary. Because its going to impact their own careers, obviously, in a future reelection. Its going to cause pain. And those who are currently receiving are concerned that after the game has started, youre changing the rules. But the debate has gotten to the point where you cant even draw the line and say, this isnt about you. This is about the next person to come in. People arent even buying that. And at some point, were going to have a collapse, pensions will not be paid, and then, i suppose, well deal with it, but its really a shame. This has gone on too long. Well, then, val, how do we attack this issue . Nobody wants to do it, but its one of those where you have to just get in there and we wanted to do it. I mean, senator jake corman wanted to do it. Mike turzai wanted to do it. We had 100, and we had 99 votes in the house, of the 119 republicans. Not one democrat would Cross Party Lines for it, in the house or the senate. We were ready to go. The governor i think if the governor if it had gotten to the governors desk and he had signed it, it would have pretty much reassured his reelection. The governor not only didnt help get one democrat vote, he actually, we think, may have worked against getting some republicans to vote for it. And its a shame. Its a missed opportunity. In my estimation, the bill didnt go far enough, but it was at least a step in the right direction. We couldnt even get this incremental change done. So where does that leave us . The next time that the legislature meets, theyll have to tackle it again in a different way, i suppose. Its an issue thats going to have to be tackled. I mean, some of the argument on the other side was, this is the end of the term. Why are we doing this, rushing it through . Did we have enough time to really review it . Do we understand the unintended consequences . I dont think that its going to go away. Were going to need to come up with pension reform. But i think we need to do it with a lot of public input and certainly public hearings and a lot of review. Were going to talk about Atlantic City. Sorry, nelson, were going to move to another topic. But ill let you have first crack at this one. Atlantic city obviously has financial issues. And now the city leaders are trying to prevent a state takeover, so they have pitched what they call a Financial Recovery plan. They would be selling off land, laying off about 100 workers, paying down 500 million of debt, they have slashed expenses things they think they can handle to get them back on track. But it matters whether the states going to buy into it or not and if folks, residents, who are angry that their taxes, by the way, have doubled in the last six years, are going to be interested and find it palatable, as well. What do you thinks going to happen, nelson . I would like to see Atlantic City really taken over and not allow the continuation of the local legislation, because they dont have the funds, and youve got to receive the funds from the state and federal government to be able to make that as destination location. I mean, theyre closing. Theyre losing jobs. Theyre closing a lot of the casinos. I think theyre in dire need of some real receivership so that we can get that going again and not