Every week, PoliticsPA will give you a taste of the buzz, rumors and gossip floating around Pennsylvania’s political wags. This week’s edition focuses on a mini showdown between Specter and Sestak last weekend, a GOP chairman’s unusual decision, and Cawley’s continued front-runner status for the GOP’s lieutenant governor position.

Joe Sestak’s campaign has been eager to push video from last weekend’s PA Progressive Summit Senate forum, when Arlen Specter and the former admiral each answered, albeit separately, an array of questions before a crowd of several hundred liberal activists. Specter, who went second, walked on stage while Sestak was delivering his closing remarks, sparking consternation in the audience and prompting the moderator to ask he leave until the Democratic challenger finish.

Sestak’s campaign highlighted the incident again in a press release Tuesday meant to call attention to Specter’s refusal to debate his opponent more than once before the primary. Notice the bolded word below – we’ll let you draw your own inferences.

“However, he seemed eager to share the stage with Joe when he wandered onstage during Joe’s closing remarks and had to be told by the moderator to ‘get off the stage,’” said the release, which linked to video of the incident.

It was an awkward moment for the senator in a night that otherwise seemed to go well for him. Although the activist crowd would seem poised to be hostile to the senator, his roughly 30-minute time on stage provided an equal mix of humor and substantive responses that seemed to satisfy many listening. Only about 10 people gave him standing ovation when he walked onto the stage – about half the room was standing when he left.

Remember Republican attempts to bring U.S. Rep. Chris Carney to the right side of the aisle? The 10^th district representative certainly does, and he reminded the GOP of the effort they must surely now regret when two Republicans declared their candidacy against him last week.

“Congressman Carney is proud of his bipartisan record in Congress and was flattered to have recently been approached by Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders about switching parties,” said spokesman Josh Drobnyk in a statement. “He believes, however, that his job is not about a political party. It is about doing the right thing every day for the people he represents.”

Republicans have an array of state House candidates lined up in western Pennsylvania, according to at least one GOP source. And one of them is Westmoreland County GOP Chairman George Dunbar, who the Republican source said is committed to taking on state Rep. James Casorio. It’s an unusual move for a county chairman to take on a state lawmaker but perhaps his decision is indicative of Republican belief the party can retake control of the state House next year.

Last weekend’s southwest and northwest GOP caucuses did nothing to dispel Bucks County Commissioner Jim Cawley’s momentum toward securing the GOP lieutenant governor’s nomination. Reports indicate he has more than twice the number of votes as second-place Chet Beiler with the majority of the regional caucuses haven already taken place.

Some conservative activists continue to insist they aren’t happy with Cawley as the gubernatorial nominee’s running mate, and it will be interesting to see if they make their opposition known at next weekend’s state committee meeting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Front Page Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.