Kathy Salvi’s Personally Opposed Stand on the Death Penalty

There’s no doubt that I’m soft on Kathy Salvi, the brilliant and beauteous (if that doesn’t brand me a sexist) student I had in my Poly Sci class at Loyola who went on to a law degree, work as a public defender, the wife of Al Salvi and the mother of six who is running for 8th district Congress. It’s satisfying to see someone who took to the study of politics early and who has been such a success in her young life. And I’ve been thinking of late on Kathy Salvi’s response to my question as to where she stands on the death penalty.

Her answer squared with my own view which is anti-death penalty, but came in such a way that you could easily be mis-led but I attribute it to her savvy mastery of the political arts. After I described the action of a house-painter who killed a minister and his daughter who was spared the death penalty after a statement made by the minister’s widow, in an act of sublime forgiveness, Kathy’s response was, well, ingenious. She said she favored the state to act against the killer to the full extent of the law. Period. I took that to mean she favored the death penalty and so I asked how she squared that with the anti-death penalty view of John Paul II. No, she said, she is personally opposed. Oh, okay. Glad I asked the follow-up.