PA-Sen: Green approached GOP for donations

This is lovely.

The Green Party's Senate candidate in Pennsylvania doesn't mind that his candidacy is completely paid for by Republicans. In fact, he says he was the one who approached them for donations.

In an interview yesterday, the Green candidate Carl Romenelli didn't flinch when I noted his campaign was funded entirely by GOP money. "It's quite possible," he said. "We received a lot of money from Republicans." Romanelli made the ballot, you'll remember, due to a voter signature drive funded by $66,000 from 20 conservative donors. The private company he hired was able to roust up over 90,000 signatures despite there being fewer than 20,000 registered Greens in Pennsylvania.

But Romanelli disputed the notion that he was being used by supporters of incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in order to draw votes away from their Democratic challenger, Bob Casey. He said it showed that there was "enough mutual respect" between himself and his donors to have "a free and open debate."

"I respect the fact that people on the complete opposite side of an issue could respect my point of view," he told me. As Justin wrote yesterday, that respect came from an unlikely pool of GOP lobbyists and extremely wealthy donors.

I've been saying the Pennsylvania Green Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pennsylvania GOP, but it's even worse that -- the Green Party shopped itself to the Republicans. It wasn't a hostile or stealth takeover.

It was a marriage made in heaven.