Nov 1, 2018 3 min read

Less than a week before the election, James Craig’s lawyer said his client wasn’t the subject of a probe involving allegations the Washington County Democratic state Senate candidate’s campaign had relied on forged signatures to get him on the ballot.

“He is not personally under investigation, there were some issues that had arisen, he’s being cooperative and he will continue to be cooperative,” said Craig’s attorney, Phil DiLucente, on Wednesday. “I’m not going to attempt to discuss what they’re investigating, who they’re investigating, why they’re investigating, but I can sit here today with James Craig and tell you that he is not the target of any investigation.”

Craig, a 29-year-old real estate attorney from North Strabane, faces incumbent GOP Sen. Camera Bartolotta, 54, of Carroll in Tuesday’s election in a bid to represent the 46th Senate District. The zone is made up of Washington and Greene counties, plus parts of Beaver.

The accusations by Bartolotta’s campaign about the purported discrepancies in the nomination filings first became public in September in a flurry of stories that appeared on television and in print media.

DiLucente chose his words carefully for much of a briefing in his Pittsburgh office on Wednesday, streamed on Facebook, but said investigators weren’t focused on his client. He gave few other details but said he and his client had cooperated with authorities to clear his name, and would continue working with them.

Bartolotta and other local Republicans questioned the similar handwriting used to fill out many of the names on nomination filings apparently circulated in Beaver County, saying they’d referred the matter to law enforcement. Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier had previously described the matter as an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

Those circulating petitions in question by Republicans included the candidate, and Justin L. Young, Robin L. Young and Kierran Young, all of the same address in Pittsburgh.

Kierran Young was Craig’s campaign manager when his candidacy was announced.

The extent to which there’s any investigation into the matter remains unclear.

“We’ve had no contact with any law enforcement,” said Chuck Pascal, the Leechburg, Armstrong County, attorney representing Kierran Young. “Nobody in the Young family has been contacted by law enforcement.”

Republicans raised no issues before the March 13 deadline to challenge candidates’ petitions to have them stricken from ballots in the May primary, when Craig was unopposed for the party nomination.

A handwriting expert who examined Craig’s petitions concluded in an Aug. 31 report that “signature line after line … have been completely filled out by the hands of a small group of individuals.”

Even if a judge had stricken the questionable signatures, it’s unlikely such a challenge would have been fatal to his candidacy. Of the 1,200 signatures his campaign had gathered, he only needed 500.

Pascal said the “pages that were printed out by the Bartolotta campaign campaign – it’s not material to anything. It wouldn’t have any effect.”

“I just think it’s much ado about nothing, and it’s an attempt to get a story by the Republican Party,” Pascal said.

DiLucente said his client had “three times the amount” of signatures required to secure the nomination.

“He would not compromise, nor would he sabotage his own campaign,” DiLucente said.