Dear PACleanSweepers:

Election Day has come and gone, and although we didn't get the results we wanted, we have made some strides for change in Pennsylvania.

No more will retention elections be taken for granted. Instead of judges sailing through by 3-1, 4-1 and even 5-1 margins, we've narrowed the gap to 2-1. And there are some bright spots in the Commonwealth: In Lebanon County, a majority of voters saw fit to vote NO on all seven statewide appellate court judges. Dauphin County voters did the same.

We have made some inroads and friends in Philadelphia. More Philadelphians are subscribers to our PACleanSweep Alerts than ever before. Getting Philadelphia involved in state-level reform is critical to bringing honor, dignity and integrity back to Harrisburg.

Without our Vote NO campaign, would people still be talking about reform and the Constitution at all? Perhaps, but maybe it wouldn't be as far in the forefront.

Some analysts are claiming that PACleanSweep overreached by targeting 66 of 67 judges on the ballot instead of targeting only the appellate court judges or just Supreme Court Justice Tom Saylor. But a campaign against just a handful of judges or a single justice without applying the same argument to every judge up for retention would have been intellectually dishonest. The fact remains that all of them - except Joan Orie Melvin - accepted a pay raise that most Pennsylvanians who understand the issue agree was blatantly unconstitutional.

PACleanSweep ran the campaign that over 85 percent of respondents to our judicial retention poll wanted it to run. In the end, we just didn't get our message across to enough Pennsylvanians. And let's not forget that the entire Political Class and the legal profession teamed up against us. That's a lot of money to compete with.

So the $64,000 question is twofold: What does this mean for reform? And what do we do next?

What the results of the November 6 election mean for reform is that roughly one out of three Pennsylvanians understand where we're coming from. All we need to do is convince another 18 percent to see the light.

As for the future, we now turn our attention back to the legislature to continue the work we started in 2006. Twenty-five Senators have not yet faced the voters since the 2005 pay raise. They, and all 203 members of the House of Representatives, will need to compete in an election in 2008. Who will challenge them? Will you?

Signature gathering for Republican and Democratic legislative candidates begins in approximately eleven weeks.

Thank you so much for the effort you put forward during the past few months! Onward and forward we go...

Russ Diamond, Chair
PACleanSweep

PS: Please make sure any yard signs you've placed in any location that is not your private property are promptly removed. (Save them for 2009!)

PACleanSweep is a non-partisan effort dedicated to reforming state government in Pennsylvania. For more information, please visit www.PACleanSweep.com.