The indictment of one of Pennsylvania’s most powerful behind-the-scenes political players is rattling Democrats in a state that’s expected to be a key 2020 battleground.
The bombshell charges announced Wednesday against building trades leader John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty — a Philadelphia labor kingpin whose union is the single biggest independent source of campaign funding in the state — threaten to sap statehouse and congressional Democrats of a mega-donor, slow the party’s momentum in the Philadelphia suburbs, and sideline the man who orchestrated the Democratic takeover of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.