Republican governor Tom Corbett is betting that Pennsylvania voters hate same-sex marriage more than they hate him, and to test his theory he’s willing to use taxpayer dollars to pay a top-level hand-picked private lawyer $400 an hour to defend his state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
It’s a pity Governor Corbett, who is up for re-election next year, doesn’t look at the polls, because he’s already lost that bet. 54 percent of Pennsylvania voters in May said they support same-sex marriage. That same poll (PDF) found that only 25 percent of voters support Governor Corbett.
But wait, it gets worse.
Corbett’s approval rating has since dropped to 17 percent, according to the same polling firm’s survey last week.
The embattled Pennsylvania governor is using an old playbook: when things get tough, attack a minority group. Just like Vladimir Putin, Corbett is playing the old game of “squirrel” — distract by ginning up anti-gay hate.
“Bill Lamb, a former state Supreme Court justice, was hired to be lead counsel at a rate of $400 an hour. His associates will be paid $325 an hour,” the AP reports:
The federal case, filed two months ago, seeks to overturn the state’s 1996 ban on gay marriage. It was brought by a group that includes the widow of a woman who died in May after they were legally married in Massachusetts, 10 couples and one of the couples’ two teenage daughters.
The defendants are Corbett, Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane, the state health secretary and two county officials involved with the issuance of marriage licenses. A legal response by the state is due Sept. 16.
Corbett, by the way, is being hugely hypocritical. He’s defending a ban on same-sex marriage — with taxpayer dollars — that his own Attorney General says is unconstitutional. Meanwhile, Corbett, as Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, joined other AGs across the nation who sued in the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act, claiming it was unconstitutional — and as we all know, it’s not, and he lost.
Here’s hoping he continues his losing streak.