By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA
roarty@politicspa.com
Attorney General Tom Corbett, as expected, won the GOP gubernatorial nomination Tuesday night, fending off a spirited, if under-funded, challenge from insurgent state Rep. Sam Rohrer.
He now faces Democrat Dan Onorato in the general election matchup.
“Today, we are one step closer to making our vision a reality, but tomorrow the real fight begins,” Corbett wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “This campaign is going to be tough – our opponent will inherit the Rendell money machine and will invest tremendous resources in keeping the status quo intact and fighting us every step of the way.”
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Corbett led the Berks County lawmaker 69 percent to 31 percent, a margin of 320,000 votes.
The numbers, provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State, are not official.
The 40-point victory is itself significant for the attorney general. Rohrer challenged Corbett’s right-flank during the primary, drumming up an aggressive grassroots campaign that sought to portray the lawmaker as the primary’s authentic conservative. The strategy appeared tailor-made for a year in which “tea party” politics have dominated the GOP political scene.
A margin of victory near 20 points might have given Corbett’s coronation a sour note and raised questions about the conservative base’s support of the attorney general in a general election. But his resounding victory Tuesday likely puts those questions to rest.
Rohrer won just two counties: Lancaster and Berks. The state lawmaker won his home of Berks County 80 percent to 20 percent while narrowly edging Corbett in GOP-heavy Lancaster 52 percent to 48 percent.
The attorney general crushed his opponent nearly everywhere else, particularly in his home county of Allegheny, where he won 84 percent out of the 67,000 votes.
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