Victoria Brownworth » Joe Sestak

After the Election, What’s Next for Pennsylvania?

victoria — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:04:27 +0000

Last week’s election unnerved Pennsylvania progressives like myself. The Democrats delivered lackluster candidates as well as a confusing and inadequate message to the state’s voters at a crucial time for the state and the nation.

Nevertheless, many of us hoped that in a state with 1.2 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, voters would remember that given our choices, Democrats have done more for the state than have Republicans.

The ad campaigns for the senatorial and gubernatorial candidates signaled the message problems. The only ads from the Sestak campaign were attacks on Toomey. Voters seeking information on what Sestak was going to do–albeit in a sound bite–couldn’t find it in one of his ads. Conversely, Toomey gave succinct descriptions of his plans for economic growth and fiscal responsibility, his main focus.

Democrat Dan Onorato’s ads put him in a kitchen, not an office, with a Sesame Street placard with his name on it, which he explained how to pronounce, while Tom Corbett promoted his work as attorney general, prosecuting corruption on both sides of the aisle.

Is it any wonder the Democrats lost?

This state isn’t called Pennsyltucky for nothing–the blue tips of Philadelphia and, before this election, Pittsburgh, are not always enough to override the fact that in the center of the state lies rural Alabama, circa 1950. On election night, the red spread.

All but three of 69 counties went red.

So what does this mean for those of us still hanging on to the remaining blue tip?

Nothing good.

To Harrisburg, Philadelphia has always been the unwanted stepchild. As the poorest of the ten largest cities in America, Philadelphia has issues that Harrisburg would prefer to ignore because our issues cost money. Since both Corbett and Toomey have made fiscal responsibility a primary focus of their candidacies, expect the purse strings on Philadelphia’s needs to pull shut–tight.

Corbett says he wants to keep the always problematic state budget under control, wants to end wasteful spending, cut the legislature and create more jobs to keep the brain drain under control so that young Pennsylvanians don’t seek jobs in other states. How both cutbacks and job creation will impact the city remains to be seen.

Worrisome, however, is Corbett’s relationship to the biggest business the state may ever see: plumbing of the Marcellus Shale and the multi-billion dollar natural gas bonanza that lies imbedded within.

To be fair, no one has addressed the Marcellus Shale questions well. But Corbett thinks a severance tax would impede business in the state and hurt competition with other states engaging in natural gas drilling. Yet the money that would accrue to the state from even a base five percent tax–which most legislators agree is reasonable–would be monumental.

This signal question bodes ill for the entire state–and any money issues will impact Philadelphia hardest. As Mayor Nutter has made clear since the recession hit the city full force, there are no more places to cut and the city needs state help.

Also problematic: Corbett has been a signatory to the Republican efforts to dismantle the health care reform bill. With a significant percentage of Philadelphians impacted by some of the stipulations of the bill, such as abolishing prohibitions against pre-existing conditions and keeping children on parents’ health insurance through age 26, efforts by Corbett to eviscerate the reform could mean trouble for many Philadelphians, especially given the poverty demographic.

In his six years as a congressperson from 1999 to 2005, Toomey was a strict fiscal conservative, leading the fight to end earmarks and refusing to sign onto any. He was also a proponent of accessing America’s oil reserves. No doubt, Toomey will support Corbett’s stance on no severance tax. In addition, Toomey wants to roll back other taxes that would bring significant revenue to the state.

The new Republican majority impacts Philadelphia in other ways, too. It means a shift in who heads what committees in the House and likely the Senate as well, like the Appropriations Committee where Arlen Specter–one of the most powerful Democrats in the Congress–was a fixture.

So although Sen. Bob Casey will now be the senior senator from Pennsylvania, he’s still a junior in the senatorial panoply. Plus, he’s up for re-election in 2012. And with a weak record in the Senate and his inability to secure the 2008 Democratic primary for Barack Obama (the state went to Hillary Clinton by ten points), Casey hasn’t made much of a name for himself within the party elite, which means the next two years are critical for him in the Senate where he will be dogged by Toomey, a rising star in the Republican Party.

The impact of last week’s election leads directly to the 2012 presidential bid. Most pollsters agree that without Pennsylvania, Obama could not win in 2012–and with a Republican governor, Republicans now in 12 House seats as well as Toomey’s Senate seat—that prospect becomes all the more grim. The only Democratic president to win a second term since FDR was Bill Clinton–the others were all one-term presidents.
Of course Toomey could turn out to be as lackluster and ineffectual a senator as Casey has been, but that seems unlikely given his previous record in the House.

Corbett, who won the governor’s seat largely on the basis of his work as Attorney General, has hardly been a slacker. His talking points were many and focused and even a quick glance at his website shows a long list of concerns Corbett has with creating change in Pennsylvania.

So the post-election hand-wringing is hardly without merit. Pennsylvania is going to facing a great deal of change come January. The question is, how welcome will it be?

Cautionary Tales for Pennsylvania Voters

victoria — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:22:48 +0000

     Democrats were jettisoned into a political spin last week and the fallout will likely be felt right up until the mid-term elections in November.
     In a special election, the bluest state in the nation, Massachusetts, elected a Republican to fill the Senate seat held for decades by Ted Kennedy.
      There are many reasons why Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. Some had to do with personality, since voters still are easily charmed by things other than facts. Brown is personable; Coakley, not so much. Brown campaigned hard while Coakley virtually stopped campaigning after winning a hard-fought primary, presuming–wrongly–that the general election was a mere formality since the big fight had been among several Democrats. There were no exit polls, but voters ignored Brown’s far right politics on many key issues–despite the fact that the majority of Massachusetts voters are Democrats.
       There were other variables in the truncated race, but the only one that is truly relevant to Pennsylvania voters is this: Democratic voters outnumber Republicans four to one in Massachusetts and Brown could not have been elected without Democratic voters.
      Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in Pennsylvania where a pivotal Senate seat is at stake in November. Only two to one.
      The other problem raised for Democrats last week was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on corporate money, free speech and elections. In Citizens United v. FEC (Federal Election Commission), the narrow majority opinion ruled that First Amendment rights trumped existing campaign finance reform restrictions. The 5-4 decision left progressives reeling for the second time in two days.
      The complicated Supreme Court case stems from the contention of the conservative group Citizens United that their First Amendment rights were violated when an attack film they had prepared on Hillary Clinton during the primary was not allowed to air on TV. The legal argument was predicated on whether the film could be considered a campaign ad under the McCain-Feingold Act which restricts corporate and union funding of campaign contributions.
      The Court split on ideological grounds: the five conservative justices voted in favor of Citizens United while the four more liberal justices voted for the FEC.
      Conservatives celebrated the ruling. Progressives decried it, calling it nothing less than judicial activism. (It should be noted that Chief Justice John Roberts had cited judicial activism as one of the major issues he would fight against during his confirmation hearings.)
      The ruling resonated on both sides of the aisle. Rush Limbaugh told his audience, “Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision—huge. I cannot tell you how big this is.”
       President Obama, himself a constitutional law professor, held a different view, stating that the ruling “gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.”
      In his weekly radio address Obama said “this ruling strikes at our democracy itself” and “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”
      Hyperbole? Perhaps, but for Pennsylvanians, the impact of the ruling may be felt sooner rather than later, as political ads for the Senate race are slated to begin running in the coming weeks.        Corporate interests, as well as union interests, are profound in the state, which is anticipating a brutal primary and dicey general election for the Senate seat currently held by newbie Democrat Arlen Specter. The primary is in May and one can only vote for the party one is registered for in primaries in Pennsylvania.
        Much was made of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races back in November. Republicans wrested both seats away from Democrats. What was roundly ignored was what happened in Pennsylvania.
        In the off-year election last November, vacancies on the state Supreme Court, Superior Court and Commonwealth Court went overwhelmingly to Republicans who won six of seven seats, among them the controversial conservative Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin, who was elected to the state Supreme Court.
        In 2008, voter registration in Pennsylvania hit an all-time high in anticipation of the presidential election, which included an increase of 1.5 million more registered Democrats than Republicans.
       Yet in the November 2009 election, even though Republicans were outspent by Democrats and Democrats control the State House and the Governor’s office, Republicans still won handily. That win was also without anti-Democrat momentum or access to soft money through corporate or union entities.
        Democratic pundits note that November is a long way off–and it is. But May is not and in Pennsylvania, primaries tend to determine which party will win the general election.
         In April 2009 when Arlen Specter switched parties, the move was roundly seen as blatantly political. Specter, considered moderate by Republican standards and with a strong voter base among Democrats in Pennsylvania, faced stiff competition from Pat Toomey, the far right contender for the Senate seat who came close to unseating Specter six years ago.
        Rep. Joe Sestak is Specter’s Democratic competition now. Or wants to be. But Sestak isn’t even popular in his own district where the former Naval commander’s pro-war sentiments have been at odds with Democratic values there. What’s more, when the health care debates broke out in force last spring and summer in Pennsylvania, it was Specter rallying for Obama’s health care reform plan and becoming a champion of the public option, not Sestak.
       Last week Democratic Party leaders in Pennsylvania requested that Sestak withdraw from the race as Toomey’s numbers continued to rise. Concerns are that a bruising primary will give Toomey even more momentum and end up in the unseating of whichever Democrat, Specter or Sestak, is the candidate in November.
        Could Pennsylvania go the route Massachusetts took last week? Absolutely. Those of us who have covered politics in Pennsylvania for decades have not forgotten that it was ultra-conservative Rick Santorum who unseated progressive Harris Wofford in 1994 in the Republican congressional sweep. The November 2010 election has the potential to replicate that sweep and Pennsylvania is one of the key states Republicans are angling to win.
        Now they have way more available money to help in that fight, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling. Corporate interests in Pennsylvania are strong and Toomey has solid corporate support while neither Specter nor Sestak does. What’s more, Toomey is already trying to pivot off the Massachusetts win. And with record unemployment in Pennsylvania, Toomey has a ready-made platform for the kind of “change” message Brown ran on in Massachusetts.
      It may be too early to discern how much of an impact a wide-open campaign ad policy will have on the Senate race, but Pennsylvania voters witnessed the propagandistic ads that ran in New Jersey in the gubernatorial race–and that was without the lid being lifted on corporate interests.
      Will a primary with soft money tossed into the mix and a Republican groundswell benefit Toomey? It may be too early to tell, but Toomey’s lead increased this week. Toomey now leads both Specter and Sestak in polling, by four and nine percent, respectively. Specter handily leads Sestak 53 to 32 percent.
       Numbers shift, of course. But Pennsylvanians are strongly against health care reform–Specter’s key issue–and two-thirds say the country is going in the wrong direction.
        Money and issues could reprise 1994 for Democrats. It may be a long time until November, but political time is fluid. Martha Coakley thought she had her seat sewn up. Pennsylvania Democrats who ignore that cautionary tale do so at their peril.—VAB