por-au-prince

You’ve seen it on the news, Rendell and Altmire at the press conference in Pittsburgh talking about the safe arrival of orphans from Haiti.

However the Post Gazette reports that there may be more to this story than meets the eye.

The early stages of efforts to rescue 54 Haitian orphans and bring them to Pittsburgh turned into a competition with political undertones, secret meetings and a possible foretaste of a coming congressional race.

Mary Beth Buchanan, the former U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, opened a bid to extract the children and the sisters from Ben Avon who ran the BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince. [...]

She said the organizer of the other rescue attempt, Leslie Merrill McCombs, a senior consultant for UPMC, phoned and grilled her for information, obtained a list of the children and ended up shipping medical supplies gathered as part of the Buchanan effort on the plane that carried Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Mr. Altmire.

However the successful rescue was organized, it had the effect of short-circuiting Ms. Buchanan’s effort and shifting attention to Mr. Altmire, a former UPMC lobbyist.

Read the full post here. h/t grassrootsPA

2 Political Junkies asked the question of Bram Reichbaum who was helping Buchanan with her rescue effort,

Bram Reichbaum of The Pittsburgh Comet blog was assisting Mary Beth Buchanan last night. I asked him (via email) if the two factions were working at cross purposes or if it’s just a matter of everyone attacking the problem from different angles with their own resources (which could maximize the chances of pulling off a rescue). Bram answered as follows:

It was DEFINITELY different channels and not cross-purposes. We definitely got the impression that some Dems weren’t thrilled with our attempts, but I never once got the impression either effort was screwing up the other one. If anyone succeeds in getting some aid thru it’ll all be worth it.

For the record though we didn’t know about what Jason Altmire was doing any more than he knew about our effort. Cong. Tim Murphy was our man on the inside, called us every hour or so.