Dr. G. Gary Kirchner is no stranger to controversy.

His three-year tenure as Lancaster County coroner has been marked by  errors — he once imposed a $500 fine on himself for every future gaffe — and numerous highly publicized clashes with prosecutors and police.

But the 73-year-old retired surgeon's latest predicament, being charged with a felony by the state attorney general, likely spells the end of his short political career, the county GOP chairman said.

"I think it's going to be very difficult for him to win both the endorsement as well as the nomination to get himself  elected," said David M. Dumeyer.

"His polling so far, in straw votes and interviews, has not been terribly strong. I suspect this may have a further effect on the committee's willingness to go ahead and endorse him," Dumeyer said.

Kirchner, reached this morning for comment, said he will remain in the two-way coroner's race through the May 15 primary.

"Oh sure. No reason not to," Kirchner said.

He declined to comment further, and referred questions to his attorney. The attorney, Emmanuel H. Dimitriou of Reading, was in court and unavailable for comment, his law office said.

Kirchner, of 610 Millcross Road in East Lampeter Township, was charged by the state Attorney General's Public Corruption Unit with unlawful use of a computer and criminal conspiracy with the reporters — the result of a lengthy statewide investigative grand jury.

Kirchner is alleged to have breached the security of the county's 911 system by giving Intelligencer Journal newspaper reporters illegal access to confidential police information.

It is not the first time he has come under fire. Kirchner's confrontations with the law-enforcement community started almost from the very moment he took office in January 2004.

He criticized the police and district attorney in a Sunday News interview that year by suggesting they were being too tight-lipped in certain ongoing criminal investigations.

Law-enforcement leaders, including District Attorney Donald Totaro, responded by saying Kirchner was providing too much information to the media, and suggesting he might have damaged some of their cases.

They wrote in a letter that he "has absolutely no training or experience in law enforcement" and went on to accuse him of jeopardizing crime-scene investigations, which had the "potential to allow criminals to escape justice."

The law enforcement officials cited specific examples, one in which they claimed Kirchner and his deputies "disturbed" a possible crime scene, and another in which he made statements to the media about the cause and manner of death before conducting an autopsy.

Kirchner acknowledged the mistakes — including an evidence mixup in a Manheim Township accident, the premature release of his ruling on a child's death in Warwick Township and compromising a Southern Regional Police investigation of bones found in a Conestoga garage by talking to the press — and apologized with letters to each of the police departments.

"... I have written separate apologies to those chiefs and have promised to levy a $500 fine against myself should it ever happen again," Kirchner wrote.

He added, "... Cut me a little slack; I am transitioning from 38 years of talking to a job that requires silence until permission."

More recently, Kirchner came under fire for allowing the organs of a shooting victim to be harvested without an autopsy first. The district attorney, who was investigating whether murder charges would be filed in the case, called the move a mistake, and Kirchner acknowledged as much.

In November, Kirchner wrote in an e-mail to more than six dozen local officials that Totaro considers him an "enemy of law enforcement," but the two have made efforts recently to patch things up.

Even through the controversies, Kirchner has remained a strong advocate for upgrading the county's morgue and for better monitoring of the elderly.

Kirchner is in his first four-year term as coroner. He initially sought the office in 1999, but dropped out of the race when the county GOP endorsed Dr. Barry Walp for a fifth term instead.

He was drafted to run again in early 2003 — after the Republican Party had already endorsed its candidate, Dr. William Ives, for that year's primary.

Kirchner ended up winning in an upset, albeit a narrow one. He defeated the GOP's endorsed candidate by 457 votes out of more than 32,000 cast, according to newspaper records.

Kirchner ran unopposed in the fall 2003, and was elected coroner that November. He is seeking re-election this year, but faces a formidable opponent for the Republican Party's endorsement, Dr. Stephen G. Diamantoni.

In informal straw polls among most of the party's rank-and-file, Diamantoni, a former Lancaster City councilman and popular physician, is winning by a margin of more than 3 to 1. The GOP meets to endorse candidates on Feb. 13.

Dumeyer said he would prefer that Kirchner drop out of the race for party backing. He said the charges "raise a cloud over the whole issue, but it is still his decision what to do."

Kirchner retired from practicing surgery in December 1998 after more than 30 years.

He is a native of Lancaster, having grown up on Cabbage Hill. He attended Catholic schools in the city and later graduated from Lancaster Catholic High School. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 1955, and Hahnemann University's medical school in 1959.

Kirchner also served as a lieutenant commander in the Navy Medical Corps in the late 1960s. He was assigned to the carrier U.S.S. Forrestal, serving in the Tonkin Gulf during Vietnam.

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