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Robert Patrick Casey, Sr. (January 9, 1932–May 30, 2000), also known as Bob Casey, was an American politician who served as the 41st Governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995. He was a Democrat.
Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, Casey grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He turned down an offer to play for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1949, opting to go to college instead. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross with a B.A. in 1953, and received his Juris Doctor from George Washington University in 1956.
Casey made three unsuccessful bids for governor, in 1966, 1970, and 1978. Each time, he lost the Democratic party primary election. Despite his frustration with Democratic Party voters, Casey spurned Republican offers to run on the Republican ticket. Casey remained active within state politics, though, serving as an officer of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1967-1968, and serving as Pennsylvania's auditor general from 1968 to 1977. As the auditor general, he was credited with actively combatting fiscal waste and corruption within the state. To help put his eight children through college, Casey maintained a law practice while serving as Auditor General.
The high reputation he had earned as auditor general was obvious. After he declined to run for State Treasurer in 1976 (the Pennsylvania Constitution term-limited his service as Auditor General), a country official named Robert Casey won the primary, spending almost no money and doing virtually no campaigning, against future State Treasurer and Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll. The other Casey then won the general election.
Similarly, in 1978, still another Robert Casey, a teacher and ice cream parlor owner, won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor, again with a no-spending, no-campaigning strategy, to run with Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Pete Flaherty. The Flaherty-Casey ticket was then narrowly defeated for Governor and Lieutenant Governor by Richard Thornburgh and William Scranton, as Thornburgh made an issue out of the lack of qualifications of nominee Casey. This laid the groundwork for State Treasurer Casey to be defeated for re-election in in 1980 when voters were led to realize by an extensive advertising campaign that he was not the popular former Auditor General.
After a decade solely in private practice, Casey made his fourth bid for governor in 1986. Billing himself as "the Real Bob Casey" to distinguish himself from his imitators who had won "sleeper campaigns", and dubbed "the three-time loss from Holy Cross" by his detractors, he hired the then generally unknown strategists James Carville and Paul Begala. Casey defeated former Philadelphia District Attorney and future Mayor and Governor Ed Rendell in the primary election, and, in a general election described as a "coal town contest" by TIME, squared off with fellow Scranton native William W. Scranton III, himself the son of a former Republican governor. Casey defeated Scranton by a 79,000-vote margin. He won re-election in 1990, with the greatest landslide of any Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania history, carrying all but one Pennsylvania county, heavily affluent and pro-choice Montgomery County.
Casey brought what he called "an activist government" to Pennsylvania during his terms as governor. He expanded health-care services for women, introduced reforms to the state's welfare system, and introduced an insurance program for uninsured children. Casey also introduced his "Capital for a Day" program, where he conducted his official business from eighteen communities across the state. He repeatedly said that "What did you do when you had the power?" was the key test of any public official.
But Casey was not without his critics. He was a staunch pro-life advocate, and refused to actively campaign for some candidates who supported abortion rights. This included his lieutenant governor, Mark Singel, who lost to Tom Ridge in the 1994 gubernatorial election. Some Democrats blamed Casey for Singel's loss, which sent the state Democratic Party into disarray. He also refused to endorse 1992 Democratic nominee for President Bill Clinton, before Clinton's nomination, and was in turn denied the opportunity to speak at that year's Democratic National Convention on behalf of restricting abortion.
In 1990, Casey was diagnosed with Appalachian familiar amyloidosis, a genetic condition where proteins invade and destroy bodily organs. To combat the disease, he underwent an extremely-rare heart-liver transplant in 1993.
After his operation, he decisively supported legislation backed by State Senator Michael Dawida of Allegheny County and State Representative Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia which encouraged organ transplants by guaranteeing access to the families of potential organ donors by organ recovery organizations, providing driver's license identification of potential organ donors, and setting up an organ donation trust fund from voluntary donations to advertise the benefits of organ donation. As a result of legislation introduced by Rep. Cohen after Casey's death, the organ donation trust fund is today named after him.
Casey announced he would not seek another term as governor in 1994. He considered a run for President of the United States in the 1996 Democratic primaries, but his failing health and general lack of party support for the Presidency in Pennsylvania and elsewhere prevented him from doing so.
Robert Casey died from the long-term effects of his disease on May 30, 2000. He was survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Ellen, as well as numerous children and grandchildren. Casey's son, Robert Patrick Casey, Jr., is now Pennsylvania's auditor general and will be sworn in as State Treasurer in 2005. The younger Casey lost the 2002 Democratic nomination for Governor to Ed Rendell, whom his father had defeated in 1986. "I could be the first candidate in Pennsylvania history defeated for Governor by both a father and his son," Rendell quipped during the 2002 campaign, but it did not happen.
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