Bob Casey Sr.
Robert Patrick Casey was an American lawyer and politician from Pennsylvania who served as the 42nd Governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania Senate for the 22nd district from 1963 to 1968 and as Auditor General of Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1977.
Casey was best known for leading the anti-abortion wing of the Democratic Party, spearheading the opposition against Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion. He championed unions, believed in government as a beneficent force, and supported gun rights.
His son, Bob Casey Jr., also served as Auditor General of Pennsylvania and went on to serve as Pennsylvania Treasurer and as a U.S. Senator, from 2007 to 2025.
Early life and education
Robert Patrick Casey was born on January 9, 1932, in Jackson Heights, Queens, the son of Alphonsus Liguori and Marie Casey. His family, of Irish descent, was originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, but his parents moved to New York in order for his father, a devoutly Roman Catholic former coal miner who began working as a coal miner at age 10, to attend Fordham University School of Law. The family returned to Scranton following Casey's birth.After attending Scranton Preparatory School, Casey turned down an offer to play for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1949, opting to go to college instead. He went to the College of the Holy Cross, where he was president of his senior class, on a basketball scholarship. He played on the same team as future NBA hall of famer Bob Cousy. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953, and received his Juris Doctor from George Washington University in 1956. Upon graduation and admission to the bar, Casey worked for the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling, where he remained until returning to Scranton in 1958 to enter solo practice.
Political career
State Senate
Casey served as a Democratic Party member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 22nd district from 1963 to 1968. He first sought the office of Governor of Pennsylvania in 1966, losing the Democratic Party primary to Milton Shapp. Casey was the candidate of the party establishment, but the independently wealthy Shapp ran a successful insurgent campaign for the nomination. Casey tried on two other occasions without success, in 1970 and again in 1978. Considered a moderate and despite growing frustration with Democratic Party policies, Casey rejected Republican offers to run for governor on their ticket on two occasions.Auditor General
In 1968 and 1972 Casey was elected to the post of Auditor General of Pennsylvania. Paul Beers in his 1980 book "Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation", wrote that Casey was "regarded as the finest auditor general the Commonwealth ever had." During his term as Auditor General, Casey was noted for feuding with then-Governor Shapp over Pennsylvania's pension system and exposing corruption. Before Casey, the Auditor General's office had no public accountants, who hired 24 of them. Beers notes that during his two terms, "Contracts for day care, Medicare, the Farm Show, highways, Shapp's pet dream of a Pocono Arts Center, and property leases were all investigated and audited thoroughly by Casey, with accompanying headlines when he uncovered mistakes or petty corruptions."Third gubernatorial run and mistaken identity
Restricted from seeking another term as Auditor General of Pennsylvania, Casey declined to seek the office of Pennsylvania Treasurer in 1976. Instead, a Cambria County recorder of deeds named Robert E. Casey won the Democratic primary and the general election, spending virtually no money and doing virtually no campaigning; voters merely assumed they were voting for the outgoing Auditor General.In 1978, another candidate named Robert P. Casey, this one a teacher and ice cream parlor owner from Monroeville, Pennsylvania, received the Democratic party's nomination for lieutenant governor, again with a no-spending, no-campaigning strategy. This Casey, who joined Democratic gubernatorial nominee Pete Flaherty, narrowly lost to Richard Thornburgh and William Scranton III.
There was also a Robert J. Casey who sought a congressional seat in Western Pennsylvania and a Dennis Casey who ran for Pennsylvania State Senate.
In 1980 the Republicans launched an extensive advertising campaign to clarify that "Casey isn't Casey," and the Democratic state treasurer was defeated for re-election, losing to R. Budd Dwyer.
Fourth gubernatorial run and election
After a decade practicing law, Casey made a fourth bid for governor in 1986, billing himself as the "real Bob Casey" to distinguish himself and make light of the mistaken identity follies of the past. Dubbed "the three-time loss from Holy Cross" by detractors, Casey hired two then generally unknown political strategists, James Carville and Paul Begala, to lead his campaign staff.Unlike his three previous tries, Casey won the Democratic primary, defeating Philadelphia district attorney Ed Rendell. He then faced Thornburgh's lieutenant governor, Bill Scranton in the general election. The race was considered too close to call until three weeks before the election, when a poster appeared statewide, depicting Scranton as a "dope smoking hippie". Casey condemned this poster in the Pittsburgh Press on October 18, 1986. On the Saturday before election day, however, Carville launched the now infamous "guru ad", a TV advert which attacked Scranton's practice of transcendental meditation. Casey defeated Scranton by 79,216 votes.
Governor
Inaugurated on January 20, 1987, Casey was immediately confronted with several serious issues. Budd Dwyer, the state treasurer who had been convicted on charges of accepting kickbacks, committed suicide at a televised press conference just two days into his term. Casey brought what he called an "activist government" to Pennsylvania, expanding health care services for women, introducing reforms to the state's welfare system, and introducing an insurance program for uninsured children. House Bill 20, entitled the Children's Health Insurance Act, created the Children's Health Insurance Program in Pennsylvania. According to PA's CHIP website, "Pennsylvania's CHIP program would later be used as the model for the federal government's SCHIP program. Legislation for the federal CHIP program was signed into law August 5, 1997, by former president Bill Clinton."Casey also introduced a "capital for a day" program, where the state's official business was conducted from eighteen different communities throughout the state. Despite charges that his administration squandered a budget surplus and ran the state into record annual budget deficits, Casey remained popular with voters, easily winning re-election in 1990 against abortion-rights Republican nominee Barbara Hafer. Polling data showed that abortion attitudes were a stronger predictor of vote choice than party affiliation.
Abortion
Governor Casey was well known as a staunch Roman Catholic anti-abortion advocate.In 1989, Casey pushed through the legislature the "Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act", which placed limitations on abortion, including the notification of parents of minors, a twenty-four-hour waiting period, and a ban on partial-birth procedures except in cases of risk to the life of the mother. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania sued, with Casey as the named defendant, asserting that the law violated Roe v. Wade.
The case went to the United States Supreme Court in April 1992. On June 29, 1992, in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld all of Pennsylvania's restrictions except one allowing states to impose certain restrictions, but still affirming the right to an abortion found in Roe.
1992 Democratic National Convention controversy
Considering abortion a key social issue for the 1992 presidential election, Casey tried to get a speaking slot to give a minority plank on the topic at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. He was not given a speaking slot and said in a series of news conferences the party was censoring his anti-abortion views even though he agreed with the party on nearly all other issues. And after a speech by another abortion-rights supporter from Pennsylvania, DNC supporters actually sent a camera crew in search of Casey to humiliate him.After the convention, convention organizers tried to say that Casey was not allowed to speak because he did not support the Democratic ticket. Al Gore called Casey the next day to apologize.
Casey in his memoir correctly claimed that convention speaker Kathleen Brown had not endorsed the ticket due to bitterness over her brother Jerry Brown's losing the nomination. Despite holding out for a while, and even vowing to promote his own party platform even a few days prior to the start of the convention, Brown had come to quietly support the Clinton ticket as the convention got underway.
Several anti-abortion Democrats such as John Breaux addressed the convention, though did not speak directly on the issue of abortion. After the convention, Casey went on vacation rather than campaign for Clinton in Pennsylvania, which was a key swing state. He also refused to say whether he would campaign for the Democratic nominee, though he told The New York Times, "I support the ticket. Period." Several anti-abortion Democrats spoke at the convention, but they did not focus their remarks on abortion, and the issue was not debated the way that Casey had wanted.
Death penalty
Regarding capital punishment, Governor Casey's administration came under much criticism. In an interview with C-Span in 1992, Governor Casey stated: "I support the death penalty." However, Casey was criticized as being "wishy-washy" on the death penalty. Governor Casey during his term signed 21 execution warrants, but none of those were carried out, and upon entering office in 1987, dissolved a death warrant signed by his predecessor Dick Thornburgh, five days before it was stated to occur.For a period of four years during his administration from May 1991 on, Casey refused to sign any death penalty warrants. In 1994, Casey vetoed a bill that would "require Casey and future governors to sign death warrants for condemned killers within 60 days after their death sentences are upheld by the state Supreme Court."
Casey would be forced to sign two death warrants after May 1991, after a lawsuit was brought by Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli. The court ruled in Morganelli v. Casey, that Casey did not have the power to ignore death warrants. Pennsylvania resumed executions once Casey's successor, Tom Ridge, took office.
On November 29, 1990, Governor Casey signed a bill that eliminated the electric chair as a method of executions in Pennsylvania and replaced it by lethal injection.