Bingo!
If this wasn't an accident, then it's the Carpenter's Local sending a message to Mayor Street and Governor Rendell regarding the Convention Center. The Philly Convention Center is totally under the thumb of the unions and those unions have been making the mob unions of NYC look like Walmart greeters when it comes to customer relations.
Surveys have shown that something over 80% of all convention organizers who've used the Philly Convention Center won't come back. It isn't the city or the local businesses or the hotels or even the city workers that's the problem. It's the Carpenter's Union along with the Metalworkers and a couple of other unions that gouges each convention, often fails to do what's needed by the customers, ignores requests and takes several times longer to get things done. The unions also fight among themselves constantly over who does what at the Center with the Carpenter's being at the center of most disputes.
It's gotten so bad that both Mayor Street and Governor Rendell have been tossing out ways to remove the unions. Rendell has just proposed making city or state workers run the Center. The scary part is that even a slow municipal hack relative of a politician would do a much cheaper and better job than the current setup.
So any intentional acts here will be the work of the local unions.
Besides, removing O'Connor also risked taking out Specter (enabling Rendell or the Democratic Lt. Governor to appoint his replacement). For that matter, I believe that Santorum was also around the ceremony. A VRWC demon wouldn't risk losing the Senate. *g*