The common opinion from the barstool next door is that politicians are two faced.
“Ah, they’re always saying hello with one hand and finding your wallet with the other.”
Two faces of former Mayor Rick Filippi are on trial this week in a Washington County courtroom.
Which face the jury sees could go a long way in determining Filippi’s finances, and maybe even his freedom in the months to come.
Deputy Attorney General Margaret Cassidy sees the face of a politician looking to line his own pockets.
She is working to convince the jury that Mayor Filippi knew about a proposal to move a race track to the former I.P. paper mill property, and threw in with fellow attorneys to buy neighboring properties before private developers got wind of the deal.
“Insider trading, government style,” Cassidy called it.
Defense attorney Len Ambrose paints a face with far different features. He points out that Filippi is one of the youngest mayors in Erie history, a lawyer and businessman who ran as an outsider.
A reformer who upset the apple cart of the status quo, quickly generating private resentments and political enemies.
The final straw, according to Ambrose, was Filippi’s refusal to sign off on a 50 million dollar subsidy give-back deal for the proposed track and local developer Greg Rubino.
“How would feel about someone who killed your 50 million dollar deal?” the jury was asked.
Rubino is the key witness facing Filippi and his two business partners.
Contrary to that mouthy guy on the next barstool perch over, not all lawyers chase ambulances, not all cops eat doughnuts and not all politicians are two-faced.
But two very different portraits are being painted of a former Erie politician this week, of public servant or private manipulator, of kid mayor or Boss Tweed, of reformer or crook.
Who among those really is Rick Filippi?
It doesn’t matter what we think and it doesn’t matter what the guy keeping the stool warm thinks.
In the end, it only matters what 12 strangers in Washington County think.