Sheriff, lawyer, donor: How Sean Kilkenny became one of the most influential Democrats in the Philly suburbs

Sean Kilkenny wasn’t expecting to be involved in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race last year.

The Montgomery County sheriff had backed one of John Fetterman’s rivals in the primary and — like many elected Democrats — didn’t have much of a relationship with the state’s larger-than-life lieutenant governor, who fashioned himself an anti-politician.

But as Fetterman’s lead in the polls over Republican Mehmet Oz slipped amid an onslaught of ads attacking him as being soft on crime, the Democrat’s aides reached out to Kilkenny with an urgent message: The campaign needed someone with a law enforcement background to vouch for him.

Kilkenny was not only the first Democrat ever elected sheriff in the state’s third biggest county, he also shared Fetterman’s progressive views on criminal justice reform. Not to mention Kilkenny, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who’s built like a linebacker, looks the part.

Wearing his sheriff’s uniform, Kilkenny defended Fetterman’s record leading the state Board of Pardons. “John gave a second chance to those who deserved it,” he said in the ad. “John Fetterman has the courage to do what’s right.”

The Fetterman campaign found the ad so effective that it spent $2 million to air it statewide and on major events such as the World Series.

The 2022 Senate race marked most voters’ first introduction to Kilkenny, 50, of Jenkintown, who is now seeking a third term as sheriff. But over the last two decades, he’s quietly become one of the most influential political figures in the Philadelphia suburbs, helping build the Democratic Party and carving out a niche as a go-to lawyer for municipal governments. His clout has risen even more as the party has become increasingly reliant on suburban voters to win statewide elections.

This campaign season, Kilkenny is back in the spotlight again, appearing in ads in this year’s marquee race for Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In an era of populist angst on the right and left, Kilkenny is an old-school party guy. He toiled in the trenches of local government and politics when Republicans ran the collar counties. Kilkenny and other lawyers such as Josh Shapiro, now governor, and Matt Bradford, now state House majority leader, helped turn Montgomery County into the Democratic powerhouse it is today.

As a lawyer, Kilkenny and others close to him say, he’s worked to strengthen labor unions and advance progressive causes.

As sheriff, Kilkenny has touted his efforts to diversify the office, outfitted deputies with body cameras, and this year announced an initiative to regularly inspect gun stores — prompting a lawsuit from a gun rights group.

Yet to some of his critics, Kilkenny is a transactional politician who has used his influence, personal wealth and campaign cash to grow his business — a coziness that once gave him a front-row seat to a corruption scandal that brought down the mayor of Allentown. And some describe him as a bully willing to use the levers of government power against political foes — an accusation he denies.

Although Kilkenny has faced some challenges, his stock has continued to rise.

Kilkenny Law now represents about 30 local government entities, generating $2.4 million in revenue last year, according to financial documents obtained through public records requests. “He gobbles them up,” one competitor said.

Kilkenny owns 100% of the firm and employs nine lawyers, plus paralegals.

Many of those municipal governing boards flipped to Democrats amid the suburban backlash to Donald Trump’s presidency. Kilkenny’s political activity has helped fuel that shift, too. Kilkenny has personally donated about $930,000 to state and local political committees over the last two decades, including more than $220,000 in personal loans to his 2015 sheriff campaign. That makes him the sixth biggest Democratic donor from the Philadelphia suburbs over that time period, according to an Inquirer analysis.

Allies say he deserves credit for recruiting candidates, knocking on doors, and serving in local office himself as a Jenkintown councilman. “I consider Sean a workhorse, not a show horse,” said Ken Lawrence Jr., chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.

For his part, Kilkenny says that he contributes to candidates he believes in and that “many of them have nothing to do with my business or potential business or anything related to that.” His law firm does well because it has a track record of success, he said.

“I grew up in a blue-collar family,” he said in an interview from his law offices in Norristown, blocks from the county courthouse. “… I never forget where I came from.”

There were three pictures in the kitchen of Kilkenny’s childhood home on Long Island: John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and the pope.

Kilkenny’s father was a police officer, and his mother was a public school teacher. Both were members of labor unions.

“They were a very proud Irish Catholic labor family,” he said. “Those values are kind of what I hold today.”

He landed in the Philadelphia region in the 1990s when he got an ROTC scholarship to attend Villanova.

About that time, Kilkenny and other up-and-coming Democrats worked on congressional campaigns for Joe Hoeffel, where he learned “you need to raise money to get your message out.”

After getting his law degree from Temple and serving several years active duty in the Army as a lawyer, Kilkenny got a job at Lansdale-based Hamburg Rubin. He wanted to be a litigator, but the firm got him interested in municipal practice.

Kilkenny started his political career in 2004, when he was appointed to the Jenkintown Borough Council. That same year, he joined a new firm — then known as Jaffe, Friedman, Schuman, Nemeroff, Applebaum & McCaffery — and was named solicitor in Norristown.

There, Kilkenny helped draft first-of-its-kind legislation in Pennsylvania establishing labor standards for contractors bidding on public projects, he said. That helped “level the playing field for folks in organized labor to compete on bigger contracts,” he said.

Supporters say such local laws — known as responsible contractor ordinances (RCOs) — promote quality work. Opponents say the ordinances give an unfair advantage to unionized contractors at the expense of taxpayers.

When a construction industry trade group challenged the legality of several RCOs in the Philadelphia region in 2018, Kilkenny helped successfully defend their legality before a federal appeals court.

Building trades unions have helped fuel Kilkenny’s political rise, too, contributing $89,200 to his campaigns — or about 16% of the $542,000 he’s raised since 2014.

In addition to advocating for organized labor, Kilkenny in the 2000s helped draft some of the first local laws in Pennsylvania aimed at prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people. The laws “were very, very controversial at the time,” he recalled. “I’m proud of it, because they helped, I think, move the needle forward.”

Kilkenny rose to become chair of Friedman Schuman’s municipal law department and also led the firm’s political action committee, Pennsylvania Liberty Fund, to which he donated about $125,000 over several years.

In 2013 he partnered with a company called Northeast Revenue to compete for contracts collecting delinquent real estate taxes.

That’s how Kilkenny ended up meeting Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, a Democrat who was running for governor — and looking for influential allies to fund his campaign.

In October 2013, Kilkenny and a partner at Northeast were in an Allentown restaurant with Pawlowski to make a pitch to take over the city’s tax collection when the mayor complained about the lawyer who held the contract. Michelle Portnoff had “done nothing for me,” Pawlowski said, as Kilkenny later told a jury.

Not long after, according to testimony from Kilkenny and others, the city issued a request for proposals for the contract, and Kilkenny’s firm submitted a bid. In mid-December, while that proposal was pending, Kilkenny got a call from Pawlowski soliciting a contribution to his gubernatorial campaign. Kilkenny wrote a check from Friedman Schuman’s PAC — Pennsylvania Liberty Fund — for $2,500. Kilkenny later testified that he “felt pressure” to make the donation.

Later that month, Kilkenny got another call from the mayor’s political consultant, Sam Ruchlewicz, saying Pawlowski wanted to go to the upcoming Eagles playoff game. Kilkenny’s business partner obtained the tickets, and they treated the mayor to dinner at Del Frisco’s steakhouse in Philadelphia before the Jan. 4 home game against the New Orleans Saints.

Pawlowski didn’t say anything about the contract during the meal. But in the mayor’s presence, his confidant Ruchlewicz said he thought Kilkenny’s proposal “looked good,” according to Kilkenny’s testimony.

Because the contract was pending, Kilkenny later testified that he “felt uncomfortable” giving the tickets. So the morning after the Birds lost the National Football Conference wild-card game, Kilkenny emailed Ruchlewicz, offering to help the mayor report the tickets on an ethics form.

Behind the scenes, city officials later testified, the mayor directed them to rig the bidding process in Kilkenny’s favor — something Kilkenny has maintained he didn’t know about. No evidence emerged to suggest otherwise.

As the mayor pursued his gubernatorial bid, he saw Kilkenny as a valuable ally because he was considered the “heir apparent” to Montgomery County Democratic Committee chairman Marcel Groen. (Kilkenny ultimately decided to run for sheriff, instead.)

“The road to the governor’s house always leads to Montgomery County,” Allentown managing director Francis Dougherty later testified.

Kilkenny and his partners ended up getting the $1 million annual contract — with Friedman Schuman getting $100,000 of that for legal work.

The following year, 2014, the firm’s PAC gave Pawlowski’s campaign $10,000 — double the amount it gave the previous year. The contract was renewed at the end of 2014.

The FBI raided Allentown City Hall in July 2015 — armed with a subpoena seeking information about Kilkenny and two dozen other people and businesses.

The controversy came smack in the middle of Kilkenny’s first campaign for sheriff and just months after he’d left Friedman Schuman to start his own firm.

Pawlowski was indicted two years later on dozens of bribery and extortion charges in a sprawling pay-to-play scheme. Kilkenny, who wasn’t charged, said he cooperated voluntarily.

His testimony at the 2018 trial helped prosecutors establish what Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan called “clear circumstantial evidence of quid pro quo” — a legal standard required to prove bribery, according to trial transcripts.

“[Kilkenny] knew there was a connection being made” between Pawlowski’s request for contributions and the contract, Morgan said in her closing argument.

Pawlowski was convicted on dozens of counts — including two for soliciting bribes from Kilkenny — and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“I was happy to help the people of Allentown … bring Mayor Pawlowski to justice,” Kilkenny said in an interview.

Even as he testified against the mayor, Kilkenny maintained that he didn’t see an ethical problem with making the contribution while the contract was pending.

Pawlowski’s lawyer, Jack McMahon, portrayed this as typical politics, pointing to Kilkenny’s statements to investigators that his firm often donated to elected officials, in part, to generate business.

“So the contribution to the candidate is for the purposes of business development, right?” McMahon asked Kilkenny.

“Yes,” he replied.

Being associated with a high-profile corruption case might have derailed another politician’s career. Not Kilkenny’s.

He was reelected sheriff in 2019, and his law firm has continued to add clients across the suburbs — not just in his home county but in Bucks, Delaware, and Chester Counties, too. “I think that the fact that I was helpful to the prosecution, I was honest and straightforward — I think people know that there were dozens of witnesses in that trial and I was one of them,” Kilkenny said.

A person involved in suburban politics privately acknowledged an initial hesitance to work with Kilkenny in the aftermath of the Allentown case but found him to be a straight shooter. Fellow Democrats describe him as a savvy political operator who has worked to develop personal relationships and build good will.

Another factor that has worked in his favor: In former GOP strongholds such as Delaware County, Republicans held power for so long that the Democrats never developed a deep bench of legal talent. By the time Democrats started winning governing majorities there, Kilkenny had an established practice and developed relationships with local officials.

“He literally went out and knocked doors with candidates in Upper Darby and Haverford,” said Christine Reuther, a Democrat and Delaware County councilwoman. “It builds trust.”

Solicitors advise municipalities on land use, public records law, contracts, and more. It’s not glamorous work and involves often contentious municipal meetings stretching late into the night.

Kilkenny’s firm charged an average rate last year of $180 an hour — a low rate compared with private-sector lawyers. The average hourly rate for a Philadelphia litigator, for example, is $530, according to Legal.io, a legal tech company.

Kilkenny’s main pitch: “This is what we do — 99% of the legal work that we do is municipal, zoning work. So we’re not charging you a lot to get up to speed.”

“The other pitch is: we share your values,” he said.

Some Democrats privately say they also appreciate that Kilkenny reinvests some of his firm’s profits in the party.

His personal touch is evident in the way he runs the sheriff’s office, too, where he oversees a staff of about 130 employees and earns a salary of $79,200. The office provides courthouse security, transports prisoners, issues weapons permits, and conducts property sales.

Bill Galluzzo, a retired sheriff’s deputy, said Kilkenny told him he’d try to boost the deputies’ pay — and kept his word. “The guys are a lot happier now,” said Galluzzo, who retired in 2021.

To get raises for his employees, Kilkenny needed approval from the county commissioners — and gave them a heads up that he’d make his case at their public meeting.

Lawrence, the Democratic county commissioner, said he appreciated the tactful approach.

“Once Sean gets chewing on a bone, he’s gonna chew it,” Lawrence said. “We were actually the bone at that point. He got it done.”

Though Kilkenny has won praise from his deputies, some outside the office still question whether people with business interests before his municipal clients seek to influence government policy by contributing to his campaigns for sheriff.

His donors include lawyers, engineers, and developers.

Preservationists brought attention to this issue a few years ago when a developer proposed building 67 townhomes on a 10-acre farm in Plymouth Meeting that featured historic structures including a stop on the Underground Railroad and a gathering hall for abolitionists where Frederick Douglass once spoke.

The developer, K. Hovnanian Homes, had reached an agreement of sale with the heirs to the property. Hovnanian pledged to buffer the historic structures from the townhomes but needed a permit from the Whitemarsh Township Board of Supervisors to build.

In 2018, the board held a series of quasi-judicial proceedings during which the developer and a grassroots group opposed to the project, Friends of Abolition Hall, made their case. As solicitor, Kilkenny effectively served as the judge — hearing objections to testimony and advising the board on the law — and the supervisors as jurors. In several instances, the board limited the testimony of expert witnesses presented by the activists, based on the relevance of the information.

The township granted the permit. Friends of Abolition Hall appealed to a Common Pleas Court judge, who sided with the township.

About that time, the Chestnut Hill Local reported that a political action committee affiliated with Eastburn & Gray — the Doylestown-based law firm that represented the developer — had contributed to Kilkenny’s campaigns.

Records show that the firm’s PAC had contributed about $3,000 from 2015 — the year Kilkenny first ran for sheriff and when Hovnanian reached the sale agreement — through 2018. That’s tied for the 12th most amount of money contributed to Kilkenny’s PAC over that period of time out of 288 total donors, records show.

Activists raised ethical concerns about the issue at township meetings, according to minutes, and one wrote a letter to the Chestnut Hill Local calling on Kilkenny to recuse himself going forward.

In an interview, Kilkenny denied any conflict and noted that he discloses all contributions in campaign reports. In the interest of transparency, he said, he intentionally files reports with the state — which maintains a searchable database — even though as sheriff he’s required to file only with the county, whose records are not as readily available.

Kilkenny said that he has many friends who are lawyers and other professionals who appear before boards he represents and that he’s had hundreds of donors. “I don’t treat anybody differently,” he said. Kilkenny gives his clients the best advice he can, he said, and if the Whitemarsh board thought he was acting inappropriately, he would have recused himself.

Eastburn & Gray’s CEO, Grace M. Deon, said the firm’s PAC “gives to many candidates in various races.” She noted that as solicitor, Kilkenny didn’t have a vote.

Amy Grossman, who served as chair of the Whitemarsh Board of Supervisors during the hearings, said Kilkenny wouldn’t do anything “to tarnish his personal compass.”

Grossman added that although she personally opposed the project, it complied with the local code. “You can’t just say to a developer, ‘You can’t build here because we don’t want you to,’” she said.

In 2020 the developer pulled out of the project, and last year the township partnered with the nonprofit Whitemarsh Art Center to pay $3.95 million to preserve the property — with the help of a $2 million grant to the arts center from a philanthropic nonprofit.

“It was a complicated legal deal, and I was very proud of that,” Kilkenny said.

It was in Jenkintown — where Kilkenny was solicitor and had previously served as borough council president and Democratic Party leader — that a dispute involving his law practice hit closer to home.

What began as a controversy over a resident’s compliance with the zoning code evolved into a yearslong saga that challenged the town’s identity and culminated in a federal lawsuit alleging that Kilkenny harnessed the power of local government to intimidate a perceived political foe.

Kilkenny denies wrongdoing and says the episode showed his commitment to even-handed application of the law.

The whole thing started in the summer of 2016, when Christine and Joseph Glass moved into a house on Runnymede Avenue. They owned a concrete masonry business and parked cement mixers in the backyard. Trucks came and went with equipment, according to neighbors.

Peggy and David Downs, who lived next door, alerted local officials that the Glasses were operating a commercial business in a residential area — potentially violating the zoning code.

For more than a year Peggy Downs urged borough officials to enforce zoning violations against the Glasses. The dispute grew ugly, with Joseph Glass eventually serving jail time after being convicted of charges related to harassing the Downses.

Dissatisfied with officials’ handling of the zoning matter, Peggy Downs, a Democrat, in September 2017 launched a write-in campaign for mayor against the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate. Downs lost the November election and a couple weeks later received notice that the Glasses had filed their own zoning complaint against the Downses, alleging they’d been operating a landscaping business.

This came as a surprise: Peggy worked at a commercial mortgage company, and David was the building superintendent at a church. They say they did not have a landscaping business.

When the Downses showed up to a Dec. 7 meeting at borough hall, they were handed a zoning violation notice. Peggy Downs said the officials refused to discuss the matter. “Sean Kilkenny just kept shrugging his shoulders and said, ‘If you don’t like it, file the appeal,’” she later told the zoning board.

Kilkenny later said in a deposition that he didn’t remember the specifics of what was said in the meeting.

The Downses ultimately appealed the matter to the Jenkintown zoning board, which held three hearings in 2018. Residents rallied to their defense, with one saying Jenkintown — featured a couple years earlier in National Geographic as a “Big Hearted, All-American Town” — now belonged “on the cover of the National Enquirer.”

As evidence, one of Kilkenny’s law associates presented photos and videos produced by the Glasses purporting to show David Downs loading a truck with a large lawn mower and other equipment at various properties.

But David Downs had a simple explanation for all the yardwork: He liked to help his neighbors — including his mother, who lived a couple doors down — free of charge.

The borough maintained that payment was irrelevant, and that the Downses’ landscaping violated zoning rules limiting business activities to those “normally associated with residential use.”

The zoning board voted 5-0 in favor of the Downses.

But that came at a cost — the Downses say they’d spent about $25,000 on legal fees. To try to recoup some of that money, they later filed a federal lawsuit accusing Kilkenny and other borough officials of conspiring to punish Peggy Downs for exercising her First Amendment rights to run for office and speak out at public meetings.

The Downses argued that Kilkenny should have known the zoning allegations were bogus. A runner, Kilkenny acknowledged in a deposition that he jogged by their house at the time and never saw evidence of a business.

In the deposition, Kilkenny testified that the zoning charge was consistent with a judge’s ruling that he said expanded the definition of an impermissible business.

Kilkenny noted that the borough had previously pursued the Downses’ complaints against the Glasses and wanted to treat the neighbors “equally.”

Beyond the Glasses’ evidence, Kilkenny testified he had additional reason to believe the Downses had a landscaping business. Their sons had cut Kilkenny’s lawn for years, he said, and David Downs occasionally pitched in. But Kilkenny said that stopped a couple years before the dispute.

A federal judge in 2019 dismissed the counts against Kilkenny, ruling that he had immunity from civil liability for conduct related to his job as zoning prosecutor. The judge wrote that there was “no evidence” of a conspiracy between Kilkenny and the borough manager, and the case was ultimately dismissed.

A federal appeals court affirmed the decision.

The Downses sold their house in 2020 and moved to Abington. “The mental anguish was just crushing,” Peggy Downs, 59, said in an interview.

Kilkenny, in an interview, denied any political considerations and said it was never his preference for the government to get involved. He noted that attempts to mediate the situation had failed.

“I don’t think neighbor disputes, absent very extreme circumstances, are a good use of government resources,” Kilkenny said. “People really have to go out of their way to work things out.”

Some involved say the episode left them disillusioned with local government — and Kilkenny’s job as solicitor. “I think he has a personal political agenda that doesn’t put the needs of the borough front and center,” said Laurie Durkin, a Democrat and former Jenkintown councilwoman who advocated for the Downses.

Kilkenny remains an influential presence in town. His firm is still solicitor. And when a vacancy opened on the bench in the Jenkintown area for Magisterial District Court this year, Gov. Shapiro tapped R. Emmett Madden — a personal injury lawyer who recently partnered with Kilkenny’s firm — to fill it.

Kilkenny is cochairing his campaign for a full term.

Staff writer Aseem Shukla contributed to this article.