me as i mentioned earlier this is sort of unusual that i'm interviewing a person for a job on a position that i ran for in the primary election ok we'll get into them later just i want you to introduce yourself as far as i live in peter's township washington county born and raised my wife and i built a house in peter's township to raise our family with a beautiful family for young children who do you know i've seen them have an eight year old named london a five year old named call their own power hill elementary school i have a three year old little boy named brooks he's in st john's preschool and then we have a six month old baby girl named marla so we are so if we bought a house out here about three years ago this area so we we are active in the community and we were paying attention somewhat i'm sure you're going to be getting into it with regards to the district judge race in peters township and the surrounding communities and i got involved based on some of what was taking place in the spring and i think it's what got you involved too i would assume well let's not forget rebecca yes yes my beautiful wife i should not yes i mean she's for many reasons i'm going to be going my but my wife a lot this fall for she has my beautiful wife rebecca watkins pettit she's a practicing i want to give up my age too much but and then we both came back to pittsburgh she went to graduate school with the university of pittsburgh dental school i went to university of pittsburgh school of law and then we got married after we both got out of school ok let's talk about your education very your to talk about your undergrad in somewhat of your graduate degree let's talk about that yeah i went to the university of pittsburgh school of law graduated in two thousand  one then i started my career practicing law if you want to get into my career and i'm my own my of course i'm going to ask you about your experience levels for as long as concerned yes yes absolutely bill  i started my career as a prosecutor i've been practicing law for sixteen years the first five years of law school i was a prosecutor i worked at the state attorney general's office working organized crime narcotics under mike fisher's of ministration and went on to become a federal judge in the third circuit court of appeals after working at the state attorney general's office i worked at the philadelphia district attorney's office for a period of time and then came  into private practice in two thousand and seven i've been practicing in private practice since two thousand and seven i have owned and managed my own law practice since two thousand and nine pittsburgh based law firm most of my practice is in pittsburgh and paint wide brush very well then we start back whenever i was a prosecutor because that is part of what really raised my interest and more importantly my concerns about this  race time that i spent both in the state attorney general's office and in the philadelphia district attorney's office a lot of time was spent handling preliminary hearings for instance preliminary hearing is a hearing an evidentiary hearing that takes place once a individual has been charged with a crime any crime that the originates for instance in this district will have to have a pulmonary hearing heard before the local district judge so people tend to think sometimes that the district judge of the massive magisterial district judge office only handles traffic court and that could not be further from the truth when i was out in philadelphia i mean we can presume their hearings anywhere for aggravated assault attempted murder  gunpoint robberies significant drug drug charges so there are a lot of complex criminal cases that get run through a district judges office in philadelphia i think that i handle probably somewhere around twenty five hundred when they're hearings or when i say handle i'm talking about actually standing up presenting evidence in court making legal arguments before the judges in that in that area now in philadelphia i and a lot of my cases nowadays involve both the family lawyer and business litigation if you will a lot of breach of contract disputes in the business side a lot of business representation with regards to litigation as they call it you know disputes that are arising before lawsuits and if you can't get a dispute settled on behalf of a client then you either have to sue somebody or they get sued and you have to defend them that makes a big part of my practice now along with family law matters i started handling family law cases back in two thousand and seven when i left left the prosecutor's office and i went into private practice and i've continued to handle family law cases i think it's an important part in the important part of the practice of law the bourse work complex divorce work custody work which i put a lot of focus and because i think custody cases and the standard in pennsylvania is the best interest of the child and i i think  that you know attorneys that handle custody cases and know what they're doing is very important because it directly impacts children's lives so i've had a lot of custody cases child support cases drafting or prenuptial agreements and all of the  the areas that fall into family law well needless to say whenever i ran against the individual who was on the ballot for both parties because the the manner that he became on the ballot i thought my undergraduate degree in legal studies from the university of pittsburgh gave me much more experience than what he had i've also had life experience where good or bad i defended companies against you know cases and workman's comp and things like that so i have a lot of experience and that aspect of it nowhere near the amount of experience that you do you bring to the table and i don't want anybody to be surprised that i am supporting you as is diane the cell who in fact was the democratic candidate i was the republican candidate that was being supported by the local party and she was a democratic candidate we are both supporting you for this position at this point but can we see that card please a document was sent out in a confused a lot of people you know in the written yeah it'll be coming up here as you see those darn democrats and they're going to take over everything i you know this is the kind of politics that nobody wants to be involved in lay said i'm i was chairman of the washington county republican party at your your fundraiser i was there as was another past chairman of the republican party as was the d a who of course if you talk to the opponents they're saying you want that job and apparently he feels that  word is good enough that he came and actually spoke at your fundraiser and i said this thing about both parties if you read his documentation he was he's being supported by the washington county republicans not the local party that's absolutely correct and it's interesting because you have many of the hierarchy in the local party supporting you and not only supporting you are there on your committee that's cracked so it's interesting to see that this garbage is put out by the way it's illegal it doesn't have that it's approved by the person or it's by candidate or it's by anybody so it's not a legal document it scares me whenever a person running for especially a judge position puts out that's illegal or wrong whenever i was running they'd they were spreading the word that i'd have to leave in the middle of my term because of the fact that we too wolf the only problem is last year they changed from seventy to seventy five and people who were in fact in the position didn't apparently know the law and that's a laser that's what scares me most of this should scare everybody out here because as you said there's a case that everybody has become familiar with in state college it's the  member who in fact passed away from alcohol fell down the steps and his fraternity brothers then didn't do anything for hours that position went to the district magistrate and let me have you explain some of the procedure that takes place there well i've been following that case very closely for several reasons and it's a it's a significant case when you think of you send your children off to college you're hoping expecting they're going to be safe i was in a fraternity myself and so when i'm reading these stories you know it kind of hits home as to what can take place on a college campus but specifically with this case you have a young adult nineteen year old adult who died during some fraternity hazing i believe eighteen different call it's to around the age of one thousand nine hundred twenty one twenty two were charged with some significant crimes including involuntary manslaughter again this getting significant there are very what i would call sophisticated defense attorneys from around the state i know one attorney frank pheno who i work with the state attorney general's office he was the chief of criminal prosecutions for the state when i worked with him he's an extremely talented attorney frank farina would be coming into that office defending his client and be making very sophisticated legal arguments to try to get back court to either dismiss the charges or  to in some manner modify what the charges have come from from the from the police and and the prosecutor's office they had i think seven days worth of preliminary hearing seven full days it's my understanding that there was expert testimony hearings so you're having sophisticated counsel on both sides the prosecutor's office and defense counsel making legal arguments presenting evidence you're having a young adult who died you're having eighteen other young adults who could be potentially held over and be standing trial for many charges such as manslaughter and i apply what happened in that case and i think about my opponent twenty eight or twenty nine year old guy with clickable experience certainly no legal experience and putting a robe on him and having him sit in trying to decipher that evidence and try to figure out the a clickable law and making decisions that directly impact people's lives and when i say directly impact your talking on a very very significant basis the attorney not the attorney of the judge that was handling that heard those cases was not an attorney  there's a lot of legal scholars that are saying that there was definitely a legal error that was made it's my understanding that there is going to be an appeal potentially as well as the district attorney's office in whether they can refile charges in that case and refile involuntary manslaughter charges but i think anybody on either side of a case like that would feel the most comfortable by having a sitting judge who was able to hear the evidence properly apply the appropriate law and understand the appropriate law and then make the proper decision it's questionable whether that happened in that case and it would be in my opinion a catastrophe if you had somebody like my opponent sitting in trying attorneys like me in observing his current with the current judge there handling court cases on a daily basis i don't know how you learn how to be a judge by sitting in a courtroom just observing for a very minimal amount of time i don't even know why i've never thought of my legal experience and hours before this race has made me do so most people talk about their experience in years but if you boil my legal experience and again i'll emphasize legal experience not his call turn experience in say eight hours a day five days a week for sixteen years i think it amounts to over two hundred sixty six thousand hours of legal experience versus my opponents five hundred hours of sitting in a courtroom watching others  said by the republican party all right that seems that some people because we're talking about those darn democrats you know what they are they're going to come out the woodwork and take over everything the bottom line is that was not sent out by the republican party either locally or washington county we don't know who sent that out but they said it was an illegal card because it has to have a form on there saying paid by or authorized by the candidate or something and it does not so going into a magistra or any race with people who don't understand the law scares me to death but there's a survey a phone survey out of ohio which is probably the most biased survey i've ever heard of and people have been calling me saying who  this which just demonstrates one that there's big money behind your opponent i mean there is big money behind in that happens to be probably the same people that are pushing some people for county offices which in fact is why the washington county republican party who is separate from the peters contrary publicans seems to be supporting him there are certain to be certain members in the washing county government who wants this kid because their funding comes from the same people so it's an interesting fact to see how money ruins everything and how it in fact plays and even local politics corruption doesn't start at the federal level it doesn't it doesn't start at the state level it starts at the local and i'm a concerned that this kind of stuff gives everybody a bad name because i'd like to i'm in my heart of hearts i like this i think most people who are in government service to really do help but that's not the way it's looking well let me speak to ok you you've raised a couple of of issues i mean try to speak to them one of the time first off we'll talk about the telephone polling it's deceptive to say the least the you have an individual calling a local voter not identifying themselves as to who they are supporting they are representing themselves as they're an independent polling agency if you will they ask the the resident who are you voting for and then if that person says well i'm supporting jesse pettit i'm going to vote for jesse pettit then they say well let me ask you a few more questions about that when they ask misleading questions they make implications that are not true  instance that i'm planning on using this office as a stepping stone for to further my political career i mean that can be further from the truth and then after they ask all those misleading or deceptive questions then they will say wolf hearing pairing all that understanding all of that as if it is the truth who are you still are you still going to vote for jesse but it so again it's a it's disappointing that my opponent would be resorting to those type of tactics i've heard it expressed to me that it's called push polling i'm certainly not using those type of tactics in my campaign i ran and i got involved and i think i was motivated same reason that you and die in the south where i got involved to give the voters a choice and i wanted to give voters a choice in somebody that had the legal experience that could step in and do the job not only were they have a choice taken away from them on the ballot in the spring but the only person that was put on the ballot is somebody that has  i have absolutely no legal experience or life experience to be able to sit as a judge in our community and at least on the positive side of legal experience that let me just throw that out there that's for a correct so and then going back to the card that was sent out and it's certainly a very divisive court have done a lot of phone or not a phone done a lot of door knocking over the last six weeks or so and i was surprised to get the reaction of people who had never met before him knocking on the door for the first time and they said oh yeah we know about you we also got that card we were disgusted by the car backwards ridiculous again disappointing and it doesn't it doesn't state who actually authorized or paper the card direct violation campaign finance law but it only benefits one person and that's my opponent and i think it shows a sign of one's character based on their decisions their actions that they makes is specifically whenever they are confronted with some adversity you know my opponent was basically handle livered and put on the ballot on both sides in the spring and i think that he thought he was just going to basically walk into the end zone with this race older guy and they were actually walking up to one house one time and guess they either they were passing or walking and he said why do you want my job yeah yeah i thought that was interesting like he's being ordained into ballot was the first step obviously i don't think that pleased my opponent to hear that he was going to have opposition on the ballot and diane did an incredible job in the very limited amount of time that you had to run a writing campaign which is virtually impossible and if you look at seeing that he has a significant challenge he sees that i'm gaining momentum and he sees that i have bipartisan support again you mention for instance our republican district attorney gene the town and more important than him being a republican he's the chief law enforcement officer of washington county and he understands the need to have experienced people in these positions and he spoke to that fact and my fundraiser about ten days or so ago so i was very pleased to have his support  i have some significant bipartisan support and so what does my opponent do or and or his supporters as they send out a very divisive card again there are things that are stated on that card that are not true  it's negative and if he's looking to try to make this political and i don't see this position as being political i think it's not supposed to be yes or i both will person can run on both sides yes exactly and not only that but whoever gets elected the rules of judicial conduct specifically state that you have to remove yourself from politics immediately because you're sitting judge and you should not be an involved in politics in any manner so again some of the decisions that have been made by my opponent once he's  faced this type of opposition i think goes to his character and i think goes to the type of campaign that they're running well this is why you said it's hard for me to understand why people would vote for an unqualified might not know what the b b british broadcasting system and they did a program on drug usage and the saddest part that hit me the most was the program was totally on western pennsylvania and why you know foreign countries using our western pennsylvania as a snapshot on out of control drug use scares the heck out of me it scares the heck out of me because i i have grandkids and they're going to be coming up in a society that has allowed open borders and drugs have been crossing every day you know i'm i'm i'm it's funny i used to be so liberal i used to be a democrat on the left left hand side of all these people who are out there today and the pendulum has swung especially one of i started having my own children and then it has swung not totally to the right i do believe and certainly helping people who need a hand i believe that government as i mentioned earlier should be there to help the people not hurt them i believe in the second amendment but darn it we need people who are going to actually read the constitution and what it means to understand and because these judges are once again you know the after the supreme court ruled the travel ban was approved now these judges are coming back in changing the next travel ban and putting up you know how can you do that if the supreme court has ruled how can you do that doesn't make sense to me but they're all point he's of a previous administration so that that doesn't surprise me but it's disappointing whenever you're trying to get your life moving and you see all these distractions happening in the political world around you i mean we just had a disastrous situation in the eighteenth congressional  which is it makes me sick you know you know it's again you expect these people to do their job and do it well but politics is turning out to be the cesspool of our country and it shouldn't be that way we should be the best and brightest and it's just really sad that that people who are unqualified are getting in because of slight you know that that's bothersome well i have faith this might sound a little ridiculous i have faith in our community i have faith in humanity i have faith that people will when they go into vote on november the seventh they're going to vote and understand that this decision impacts their life you're you have both myself and my opponent for instance that have emphasized that you when you sit in this position besides handling these cases you have the ability to to do community outreach to come into a school such as peter's township and talk to the students in the school about the epidemic about the impact of drugs and alcohol on one's life and that citizens that you know a student makes at the age of fourteen fifteen sixteen and how it can impact your life the only difference between myself and my opponent is that i will be speaking to our students with experience again i worked in organized crime in our comics for three and a half years i've handled drug cases i've went to top gun and drug enforcement training for week that was that is sponsored by the pennsylvania state police and the pennsylvania district attorney's association that's a training program where they bring prosecutors and drug enforcement officers together and they do a joint type of training so we  prosecutors can understand what narcotics officers are dealing with whenever they're making arrests when they're developing a case and at the same point time narcotics officers can understand what prosecutors are expecting or what they need whenever they're doing their investigation and then they're wrapping it up and handing it over to a prosecutor to prosecute so i've gone through training like that when i will be speaking before our children in the schools i'll be speaking from experience i've handled dui cases i've handled drug cases and i don't know what my opponent's going to be speaking to them about but i get concerned because you know i have children in the school district he's talking about speaking to my kids pocking about speaking to you know a lot of other people's kids and grandkids and i think that when you go into the schools you should be speaking from experience well coming to the end of our time as they told you in beginning really goes us ok but just you know i want you to explain why people should vote for you i i've been running on a platform that experience matters i feel that way because the district judge position directly when pac the daily lives of the community that you live in the district that you'll be voting in i think that  a candidate that's running should be should be offering the voters the experience the qualifications necessary to be able to step into a position like this and be able to handle any case that comes through complex or simple and be able to handle it from day one this type of office is not the type of office that somebody should continue their of learning if you will on the job that would be detrimental to the to the community that would be detrimental to the people  who are coming through that office and having their cases being heard so i have the experience to effectively run that position and i look forward to the voters selecting the candidate with experience but just see w come out of time i really want to thank you very much for coming on the program today well thank you very much for having well we please tell you tell your family i said hi give my best and i want to i want to before we end this i want to say one thing i was not always i didn't know you literally more than a few months ago the first time i just you had the opportunity to really try to make you mad now was my intent and it was just one of those things because i wanted to see what kind of person you were and i'm sure it's hard for these people out there to understand if i could really make you mad as i told one of the school board members i really try to but she goes he must be a saint if you couldn't pick what i would do that's that's a kind of this position you have and that's what we need sitting in that position locally we need somebody about politics in western pennsylvania thanks