Capitolwire: From daycare to Legislature, Jennifer Mann follows her own path.

By Erin Halasz
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire

HARRISBURG (July 6) - Jennifer Mann did not want to take a nap. She wanted to go outside and play. She was 4 years old and at daycare, and as an all-day kid, she was required to nap. But the half-day kids didn't have to. They could play or watch TV. That, Mann thought, was wrong.

A strong-willed negotiator from toddlerhood, Mann, now a state representative and the majority caucus secretary, talked her way out of naptime.

She came up with a little white lie: Naptime was interfering with her nighttime sleep, she told her daycare instructor. She said her mother had given her permission not to nap.

The plan worked.

"It was great. I didn't have to nap for weeks," Mann said, recalling the incident.

She got caught when the daycare instructor, chatting with Mann's mom, asked her if her daughter’s sleep had improved.

"I knew I was fried," Mann said. "I didn't get my snack that day."

But her battle against naptime was far from over. On her fifth birthday, she asked for and received a watch - a Timex with a brown strap, she said. At daycare she told her teacher she was not going to nap, but would feign sleep for 10 minutes - the minimum mandated naptime.

Actually, she would lie awake on her mat, looking at the watch, counting the seconds until 10 minutes had passed. Then she went out to play.

"What would really get me mad is when I'd fall asleep," she said. "It did happen. It was a little humiliating."

She added: "I think that shows some control issues."

Mann demonstrated her strong will in other areas, too. She was the only girl on a boys' baseball league, and she played pitcher, usually the job of the best player. She excelled at the role and was named team MVP.

Years later she is a member of leadership in the male-dominated House Democratic Caucus, where she is the first woman in her lifetime to hold a leadership role, she said.

At age 11, when her parents were planning a trip to Florida, she persuaded them to let her and her cousin Kelli, then 11, fly on their own.

Her parents drove more than 1,000 miles from the Lehigh Valley to Orlando and picked the kids up at the airport.

"Somehow, someway, Jenn finagled that she and I would fly and her parents would drive," said Kelli Corman, Mann's cousin, who is now married to state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre. Mann, a Lehigh County Democrat, introduced the couple when she and Jake Corman were both freshman legislators.

"Jennifer had a mind of her own when she was younger," Kelli Corman said. "Not too much stops her, and she’s always been that way."

’Regardless of political consequence’

Mann, now 40, continues to blaze her own trail in the state House of Representatives, breaking with Democratic leadership and some traditional Democratic supporters on contentious issues - even when her stance has hurt her politically.

Earlier this decade the Pennsylvania General Assembly was debating a plan to reduce personal-injury court awards in the state. Mann supported the efforts, spearheaded by Republicans, to change the laws regulating medical malpractice and similar civil lawsuits. Leaders of the House Democratic caucus actively sought to defeat or dilute the changes.

Also opposing the effort was the state's AFL-CIO president, Bill George. He, along with other labor leaders, was pushing lawmakers to oppose the proposed changes. He argued that they would limit an individual's redress when they were wrongfully harmed by a business or doctor.

When labor's attempts to sway Mann proved futile, George tried a personal touch: He called Mann's father, a former Mack Trucks employee who had also worked on the international staff of the United Auto Workers. As a former labor leader himself, Dave Mann, George hoped, would be sympathetic and influential with his daughter.

"He called me up and asked, 'Can't you talk to her?'" Dave Mann said, in an interview this spring. "'Did you talk to her?' I asked. Bill said, 'Yeah, we talked to her. She told me that she wasn't going to vote with us.' And I said, 'So what the hell are you calling me for? That's what she's going to do.'"

Like George, Dave Mann had disagreed with his daughter about tort reform, but after discussing the issue with her, he understood why she chose to vote the way she did. Her district contains three hospitals, and the proposed changes would have lowered doctors' costly malpractice-insurance payments and helped shield them from big lawsuit losses.

"Jenn’s got three major hospitals in Allentown. All of them happen to be in Jenn's district," Dave Mann said. "Look at it from the stance of those hospitals and you tell me how she should vote?"

He also understood that his daughter, whose overdeveloped debating skills he sometimes yielded to when she was a preteen, would not be swayed so easily.

Mann also voted against the 2005 midnight pay raise, even as legislative leaders rallied behind it.

Two weeks after the offending vote, she and 15 other pay-raise naysayers lost their committee and subcommittee chairmanships, replaced by lawmakers who voted with their leaders. Former House Democratic Majority Leader Bill DeWeese's former spokesman, Michael Manzo, said at the time that the promotions were rewards for voting with the party.

DeWeese, now the House Majority Whip, said in a recent interview that Mann and "a dozen or so" subcommittee chairmen lost their posts because they "came forward and indicated to our leadership team that they would voluntarily relinquish their assignment because others were enthusiastic about the issue and they were not," adding that Mann "was exceptionally congenial, and in retrospection our leadership team made a mistake. We should not have done that."

DeWeese now calls Mann a "cherished companion and a fervent ally," saying she was influential in developing and implementing the ethics reforms that followed the pay-raise fiasco.

Mann said that when determining her stance on an issue, she gives more thought to her constituents than to Harrisburg's power brokers.

"I’m going to make a decision regardless of political consequence," she said. "If it's politically popular - great. If it isn’t, then I’m going to justify the reason for my votes to my constituents in hopes that they will respect that and understand where it was coming from."

So far her constituents seem to have understood, re-electing her five times, by large margins. And despite having angered some in the upper ranks of her party, her colleagues elected her caucus secretary last year. That made her the third woman in history to hold a formal leadership position in the House Democratic caucus.

She is also one of several Lehigh Valley politicians whose increasing clout and steadfast dedication to Allentown some observers say could help Pennsylvania’s third-largest city shed its rough image, attracting more businesses and families to establish roots there.

In part because of Mann's efforts, Allentown has acquired state funding for a new minor-league baseball team and stadium, improvements to its parks and museums, new buildings for its colleges and a face-lift for its farmers market.

"I think more than anything Jenn’s been a very strong advocate for revitalizing Allentown in the statehouse," said Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham, who has known Mann since she first ran for state representative. "The nature of the way the Harrisburg Legislature works… so much is decided by a relatively small group in leadership that having Jenn there will pay dividends for the area."

Allentown roots, Reagan remorse

Mann grew up in west Allentown on a kid-filled, tree-lined street where her parents live to this day. Her family has been in the city since her great-grandfather Harry Mann settled there after running away to Philadelphia from Maryland with dreams of playing for the Phillies. Instead he played catcher in the minor leagues for a few years and, after marrying, moved to the Lehigh Valley.

Mann’s mother, Gloria, worked for Mack Trucks, and her father, Dave, worked for Mack Trucks and the United Auto Workers while raising their two daughters, Jennifer and her older sister, Lori. Dave Mann was also involved in local politics, serving on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee and as a ward captain in the city's 18th Ward.

He had an enthusiastic campaigning buddy in his daughter Jennifer. Enamored of government and politics from a young age, Mann started accompanying her father to the polls to pamphleteer for Democrats when she was barely out of Kindergarten.

"From the time she was 6 or 7 years old, she would hand out cards and encourage people to vote for Democratic candidates," Dave Mann said. "It never surprised me when she went into politics."

She made her first bid for office as a fourth grader at Union Terrace Elementary School, running for class representative on the slogan, "Don’t vote for the rest. Vote for the best." She lost, but the loss did not discourage her - she ran again in fifth grade, and also in subsequent years, and in her senior year at William Allen High School, her classmates elected her class president of the class of 1987.

Mann says she developed a strong sense of obligation to her community during her childhood, and that in part later drove her to seek public office.

"I know some people might think that’s kind of corny, but it is really true," Mann said. "I'm very proud of where I come from and have always had a desire to be part of moving that community forward."

Determining how best to do that was more challenging. Although raised in a strongly Democratic family, Mann registered as a Republican when she was old enough to vote, and says she admired President Ronald Reagan as a teenager.

The economic successes of the mid-to-late 1980s formed her political views at the time, but she said she later came to believe self-sufficiency and self-reliance are not enough – that the government should have a role in providing for the less fortunate.

"With some folks, they think, ‘I take care of me, you take care of you, and that’s it. That’s the end of our obligation.’" Mann said. "I don’t believe that. I believe that’s the beginning of our obligation, and I believe we should all be concerned with the well-being of others in our community, whether it’s a family member, a friend, a neighbor and even complete strangers, because I think that is a reflection on all of us."

She also said: "I feel very strongly in the role of an activist government, and I think that is not something that too many Republicans would say."

Of Reagan, she said: "In hindsight, I’m not a fan."

Mann said she became a Democrat again in college, when she also focused her aspirations in the Lehigh Valley. She attended American University and interned on Capitol Hill, but did not find American’s academics challenging enough and also missed her home. She transferred to Lehigh University and graduated in 1991.

She set the statehouse as a goal the next year and, after a few years in the private sector running Instant Access, a communications business in Allentown, ran for office at the age of 28.

In the years since she has focused on bringing investment back to her home city.

"There's a very regional mindset here, and Jenn is a very active part of that," said Sen. Pat Browne, a Lehigh County Republican who, like Mann, is a native of Allentown. He defeated Mann in a special election to win his current post. "She’s been a champion in urban education and urban renewal, and she's been a real strong advocate for the city that she grew up in and the city she loves."

Investing in Allentown

The J. Birney Crum Stadium in Allentown recently acquired a new set of bleachers. Perched above the main stands along West Turner Street and stretching between the football field’s two 25-yard lines, the sports fans lucky enough to find seats on the new bleachers get a panoramic view of whatever event is taking place below, be it a 100-meter dash on the newly rubberized track or a football game on the recently renovated artificial-turf field.

Seats in the upper bleachers are the most coveted in the stadium, Mann said, while giving a tour of her hometown. On weekend nights, teenagers from nearby high schools hang out there, just like she did when she was a teen.

Renovating the stadium cost approximately $5 million, about $325,000 of which came from a state Department of Community and Economic Development grant, which Mann helped the Allentown School District obtain. She also had a hand in determining the scope of the improvements, urging school-district officials to construct the all-weather, eight-lane track, sow the field with artificial turf and build the field wide enough for soccer.

The investment, Mann said, helped bring more events to Birney Crum Stadium – meaning more money and jobs for Allentown.

"Kids have to have a safe place to compete, but it’s also an economic driver," she said. "Public support for these projects is so vital because these institutions have such an impact."

Driving around the city, Mann pointed out project after project that the state had helped finance, with money she had helped secure: $500,000 for a new science building at Muhlenberg College; $3 million to build the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum; $17 million to build Coca-Cola Park, the new 8,100-seat stadium where minor league baseball’s IronPigs are now playing their second season.

Coca-Cola Park lies outside of Mann’s district, but for her what’s important is driving development anywhere in Allentown, a small city of about 110,000 that, in recent years, has taken on many of the problems of a bigger urban area.

"I do my best for the city," she said. "You can’t be parochial to the 'point of being] ridiculous."

Mann also strongly supports the city’s bid to bring the American Hockey League’s Phantoms to Allentown, saying her hometown needs the economic boost the team could provide more than neighboring Bethlehem, which is also jockeying for the Phantoms.

Bethlehem's median family income is $17,000 more than Allentown's, and its violent crime rate in 2007 was less than half that of its neighbor to the west. Bethlehem has less poverty and a more educated populace, and the Sands Bethworks Casino opened there in May, promising more revenue for the Northampton County city.

"It almost seems redundant," Mann said, of Bethlehem’s bid for the Phantoms. "It should really be a catalyst for additional development rather than just a part of a big scheme."

Once a small but thriving industrial city, with foundries and manufacturers producing iron, silk and furniture, Allentown in recent decades has fallen on hard times. Many of the manufacturers that had been the city's lifeblood began to shut down, taking jobs and money to other states and countries.

Last year Mack Trucks, Mann’s parents’ old employer, announced they would be relocating their international headquarters to Greensboro, N.C., taking hundreds of jobs with them.

To make matters worse, weak political representation in Harrisburg has exacerbated local problems, some observers said. Without strong politicians in Harrisburg, state investment was going elsewhere.

"Why it hasn’t gotten its due is beyond my comprehension.... Even Reading gets more money than we do," said Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, a Democrat, about what he described as an undeservedly low statewide status. "Because of a lack of 'strong] representation in Harrisburg, we’ve really gone unnoticed for a long time."

Mann hopes projects like the baseball stadium and improvements to the city’s colleges will attract young, educated professionals to establish themselves in the city – something she said the majority of her high school friends did not do.

Community involvement is key, she said, citing a study that showed people are far more likely to stay in an area if they have invested time to help improve it.

"What you want is for them to have kids, and then they’re stuck," she said.

She sees sports, arts and grants to fix the facades of some of Allentown’s old homes as part of that effort.

"It’s all economic development," she said. "It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Keep throwing us money 'just] because we want money.’"

Seeking more relevance

When Mann first ran for the Legislature in 1998, she went door to door through Allentown, knocking on doors and introducing herself to her future constituents.

Her father was by her side the entire time, meeting voters along with his daughter.

"We must have knocked on every door in Allentown," Dave Mann said.

Mann was 28 at the time, a few years out of college and the owner of a small business specializing in mobile communication, which, in the late ‘90s, for Mann, meant pagers.

Dave Mann said he thinks people saw in his daughter sincerity and an awareness of the issues, and those traits helped her defeat her opponent, veteran politico Dave Bausch, an Allentown city councilman and former Lehigh County executive.

During her first campaign, Mann also had to convince Democratic insiders suspicious of her Republican past and small-business background that she was the right candidate to support, said Alan Jennings, a progressive activist from the Lehigh Valley.

"Labor and environmentalists and activists like me were a little nervous," Jennings said.

But Mann, he said, is "justice-oriented" - a rare trait in politicians, he said - and in government because she wants to make a difference. Those qualities won over local leaders, Jennings said, and Mann has since become a "pretty solid" progressive vote.

When she arrived at the statehouse, she quickly made an impression there, too, and soon gained a reputation as an up-and-comer in the Democratic party - nationally as well as statewide. In 2000 the national Democratic Leadership Council included her in their list of 100 Democrats to watch.

"She really understood the whole process very quickly. It was like a natural thing for her," said Karen Ritter, a former state representative who ran Mann’s first campaign and counseled her on everything from which lobbyists she could trust to how to deal with Harrisburg’s old boys’ club.

"She was such a quick learner," Ritter said.

Six years after her first bid for office, her rising-star status growing, Mann entered another race - this time a statewide nod for auditor general.

She dropped out before the primary, conceding to Jack Wagner, who went on to win the general election.

Gov. Ed Rendell and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. and auditor general at the time, both backed Wagner, and so did DeWeese and the leadership of the state Senate Democratic caucus.

Mann said at the time that she dropped out for reasons of party unity, but others speculate finances and political calculus figured in as well. As a Lehigh Valley politician, Mann’s name was not as well known as Pittsburgh-based Wagner’s. She also announced her candidacy late in the game, giving her a fundraising disadvantage.

"My guess is that 'Democratic insiders] felt that she didn’t have enough name recognition and she wasn’t from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh," Jennings said. "They probably just did the math."

Also, Rendell's active support was important to her success in that race, and his muscling her out of in favor of Wagner dramatically lowered her chances.

Mann had backed Rendell in 2002 for governor while Wagner ran for lieutenant governor with Bob Casey Jr., but that, she learned, did not guarantee her the governor's support.

The following year she experienced another political setback, this time in a special election to fill the state senate seat vacated by current U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, a Republican.

Her opponent was Pat Browne, and the race became heated when Browne’s campaign sent direct-mail ads attacking Mann for having voted to raise income taxes in 2003. Mann’s campaign fought back by reminding voters that Browne had twice been arrested for drunken driving in the 1990s.

Mann counts Browne as a friend, and said the campaign was not a pleasant experience.

Observers at the time pinned Mann’s loss on the direct mail and Mann’s tax vote.

Mann's profile as a comparatively pro-business Democrat hadn't stopped her from winning her House seat, but it did not help her as much as many insiders thought it would against Browne or Wagner.

It also hurt her within the House Democratic caucus. In 2006 she launched a third unsuccessful bid to increase her political prominence, this time for a leadership role within the caucus. Frank Dermody of Allegheny County had the support of Democratic leaders, and he beat Mann to become caucus secretary.

Two years later she tried again for that post, and won.

She said she continues to bid for office because of "a desire to be relevant in this process, to expand that role," an urge she said is "normal for folks to want to do."

For now, she said, she is committed to staying in the House and helping to lead the Democratic caucus.

"I’m very pleased with that opportunity," she said, "and so in my mind I’ve reached that goal of being in a position to be more relevant – to have a bigger hand in what happens."

Cunningham, the Lehigh County executive, said her leadership role will allow her to do "more direct good" for Allentown and her district than she could have done as auditor general.

"The way Harrisburg works… is that quite frankly in the Legislature - in the General Assembly - leadership decides a lot of the agenda," he said, "so having someone from your own county in a leadership position is going to give you ultimately more influence over outcome."

She bounced back quickly after her electoral setbacks, Cunningham said, and that bodes well for what lies ahead.

"She’s resilient. She takes defeat and victory kind of in stride, and that’s a good way to be in politics and life," he said.

He added: "I think she’s got a bright future."

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