By Louis Jacobson and Alex Roarty
Special to PoliticsPA

As former gubernatorial candidate Jim Gerlach announced last week that he would seek another term in the U.S. House, political players in the Keystone State said that the failure of Gerlach’s gubernatorial bid stemmed from his decision his relatively late entry into the primary against Attorney General Tom Corbett.

“He started way too late — a year too late,” said David Patti, who heads the Pennsylvania Business Council. “Everyone thinks he’s smart and good on the issues, but they had already committed. And because of that, he couldn’t raise money.”

Gerlach specifically cited money in his announcement last week that he was getting out of the race. He said that even though he had raised $1 million for his statewide bid, he would have needed four times as much to be competitive.

“That left me with two choices: either spend all of my time raising money with little time left for meeting with voters; or withdrawing my candidacy and working even harder to serve the public,” Gerlach said in the statement. “I am choosing to serve the public — many of whom have graciously rewarded me with their support for nearly two decades.”

He later in a conference call with reporters blamed the country’s weak economy for his anemic fundraising, which he said all candidates this cycle are struggling with. The near unanimous support of the GOP establishment, and its money, for Corbett was also likely a major challenge.

A Republican insider familiar with Gerlach and his campaign said his responsibilities as a congressman were the biggest hindrance to his Congressional campaign. He was in Washington voting on bills instead of in Pennsylvania talking with fundraisers, the Republican said.

The source said Gerlach probably could have spent less time in the nation’s capitol, “but Jim is the kind of guy who felt he should. That’s a good thing from a substantive point of view. But it’s a bad thing if you’re running for governor.”

Gerlach seemed to echo those remarks in a conference call with reporters Friday.

“It’s a very difficult thing to try to juggle your responsibilities there plus your campaign,” he said.

“Let’s face, it was a challenge.”

Gerlach needed to be solely focused on campaigning because of the uphill climb he faced convincing Republican power brokers and officials he was a better candidate than the prohibitive front-runner, Corbett.

Republicans told PoliticsPA the congressman was unable to make much progress on that front, and many said openly they were now glad the party could grow even more united behind the attorney general.

Southeast GOP county Chairman Skip Brion, of Chester County, and Bob Kerns, of Montgomery County, each said Corbett’s campaign, which they both support, already had an overwhelming support from Republicans across Pennsylvania. In fact, their support of the Western Pennsylvania native Corbett over the southeast Congressman Gerlach was indicative of the fact he lacked support even among what should be his geographical base.

“All of those things are indicative of the fact his candidate wasn’t going very well,” Kerns told PoliticsPA.

Gerlach learned the hard way that running statewide in Pennsylvania requires a lot of retail politicking with party insiders.

“The attorney general had a tremendous amount of support, both among the grassroots community and the donor community,” said Ray Zaborney, a Republican consultant who managed the campaign of 2006 Republican gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann. “Gerlach found that not only was that support wide, it was deep too.”

Getting the requisite grassroots support would have required a specific kind of campaign approach, said Kirk Holman, a former Republican official in western Pennsylvania.

“When you are running an outsider’s campaign, you look to the campaigns of people who have run without the state committee,” Holman said. “Gerlach seemed to be either unable or unwilling to identify those people in any area outside of the southeast. It was almost like he had a belief that the traditional players would flock to him if given some time, and that just was not going to happen.”

Another factor that posed a stiff barrier was Gerlach’s inability to find the right ideological niche in the gubernatorial contest, said Muhlenberg College political scientist Christopher Borick.

Gerlach and Corbett had broadly similar positions on the issues in the mainstream-to-moderate wing of the GOP. Without an ideological difference, Borick said, Gerlach was left to distinguish himself on other factors – but his lack of name recognition statewide and Corbett’s years of media attention from pursuing the “Bonusgate” scandal in Harrisburg left Gerlach few avenues.

“He probably did the logical thing by cutting his losses” and getting out of the race for governor, Borick said.

State Rep. Sam Rohrer is now the sole opposition to Corbett in the GOP Republican primary. Gerlach said he would not endorse either candidate, saying voters need to decide for themselves whom to vote for.

Tags: Jim Gerlach, Jim Gerlach for congress, Sam Rohrer, Tom Corbett

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 11:23 am and is filed under PA Reports, PoliticsPA Reports. 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.