Perhaps the worst-kept secret in Harrisburg in the early years of the decade was that John Barley didn't have what you and I would call a warm and fuzzy relationship with his Republican colleague John Perzel.
"While both leaders worked closely together, there was a level of competition and distrust that existed between the two of them," the Web site PoliticsPA, read by many Harrisburg insiders, once noted.
In 2001, Barley was in what would turn out to be his last term representing southern Lancaster County in the House and chairing the influential appropriations committee.
Perzel, meanwhile, was the House majority leader and had his eye on the speakership.
Did the Philadelphia Republican see Barley as a rival?
Absolutely.
The public-corruption charges filed against Perzel last week go a long way to proving that. Buried deep inside the 188-page grand jury presentment is a single paragraph that sheds a lot of light on how Perzel viewed Barley's power.
Perzel, it alleges, ordered a political operative named Billy Tomaselli to act as a "secret squirrel" in 2001 and oversee untraceable robocalls against fellow House Republicans he didn't like. One of those Republicans was Barley, whom, the documents say, Perzel had come to believe was a "political liability."
The report doesn't say to whom Barley had allegedly become a liability — the caucus or Perzel's political future.
But you can guess.
Barley, a prolific fundraiser who headed up the House Republican Campaign Committee, was nothing if not ambitious, so it's certain Perzel saw him as a rival.
But Barley also had come under fire repeatedly in his home district — for his family's million-dollar deals for sludge hauling, for his alleged hand in redrawing House districts and for the secret deal to sell 345 acres of his family's land to the county waste authority for $15.7 million.
So, for the first reason or the latter, Perzel "instructed Tomaselli to assist in getting rid of Barley from the Republican Caucus," the grand jury report states.
Perzel had nothing to worry about, or course; the 100th district was and is safely Republican, so there was no chance of the GOP losing the seat.
The robocalls against Barley "sought the reaction of his constituents to potentially unsavory information," the report states, though it does not specify what that information was.
"After the survey was conducted," the report says, "the survey results were handed over to a political consulting firm to employ the information in an effort to pressure Barley into not seeking re-election."
Barley ultimately did a political two-step: In January of 2002 he said he'd had enough of the political attacks and announced he would retire at the end of his term.
A month later he changed his mind and accepted a draft from the Republican committee in his district to run again. With his wife by his side, he kicked off his campaign in rousing style.
By April, he'd again had enough. Barley abruptly resigned from the House in the middle of his campaign for a 10th term, for reasons he never publicly explained.
Barley is now the chief executive officer of the Harrisburg lobbying firm Versant Strategies. He did not return phone and e-mail messages left for him.
He told The Philadelphia Inquirer this week, however, that it was all water over the dam.
"I am at a wonderful stage in life, enjoying life and my business. That's about all I have to say," Barley told the newspaper. "I've moved on."