By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA
roarty@politicspa.com

The seven days since the Republican gubernatorial primary haven’t cooled tensions between the two former opponents, high-ranking officials from the Sam Rohrer and Tom Corbett campaigns made clear in interviews this week.

On one side, Jeff Coleman, senior strategist for the defeated Rohrer campaign, emphasized that he and other former Rohrer supporters still have doubts over whether the attorney general is a true conservative. The Berks County lawmaker, while never directly critical of Corbett on the campaign trail, had billed himself as the true conservative in the race, a message designed to take advantage of tea party activism.

The concerns, Coleman said, can be assuaged only by a sustained effort from Corbett to convince conservatives he can make the necessary hard choices while in office to put the state back on sound fiscal footing.

“It’s important for Corbett two send some signals that his administration will be a surprise to conservatives,” said Coleman, who said a successful effort would convince activists that the GOP nominee planned to enact policies similar to those of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

“Is the GOP nominee independent enough of special interests to make these kinds of reforms?” he asked. “Or are there too many tethers tied to the balloon?”

Still, Coleman said that aside from Corbett’s governing philosophy, he and other Rohrer supporters remain upset over a last-minute barrage of negative attacks from the attorney general’s campaign and state Republican Party, which had endorsed him. He described the late surge of negativism, which included negative mailers and robo-calls, as “acerbic” and added that it makes supporting Corbett formally difficult.

“You don’t easily look past those kinds of cheap shots and say, ‘Let’s now pose for the cameras,'” Coleman said. “This wasn’t just a political campaign. This was a real serious discussion.”

Colemans’ interview with PoliticsPA came hours before Rohrer issued a release Tuesday night telling supporters that he would not be running a write-in campaign because it would not be worth the extensive resources and commitment necessary to be successful with it.

Rumors of the potential general election write-in candidacy from the Berks County lawmaker had percolated among some conservatives, and even a run that wouldn’t show on the ballot could have hurt the attorney general in a likely tough battle against Democratic nominee Dan Onorato.

But while Coleman touted the necessity of Corbett to reach out, the GOP nominee’s campaign manager emphasized that many Rohrer supporters he has talked to have already been drawn to the attorney general’s strong conservative record.

Campaign Manager Brian Nutt cited Corbett’s commanding victory in the primary, 69 percent to 31 percent, as proof he attracts a large swath of the conservative moment.

“I would disagree that there not conservative support for Tom Corbett,” he said. “It’s not a 51 percent to 49 percent primary. It was a pretty impressive (victory).”

Nutt spent much of the interview praising Rohrer for bringing important ideas to the table during the campaign and arguing that whoever still feels slighted from the campaign needs to “take a step back” from the campaign and reflect on what happened.

He also said that a meeting between the two former foes, which Coleman suggested could be important to bridge the gap between them, could happen.

But when told of Coleman’s criticism of the late negative attack ads against Rohrer, the campaign manager took a different tone, arguing that the Rohrer campaign needs to get over it.

The attorney general had to deal with a slew of attacks from blogs and other “viral” sources, Nutt said, that the Rohrer campaign officially kept its distance from but never stopped.

“To say at this point in time that we did or anyone else did anything, I think that’s a little disingenuous,” Nutt said. “I think we all need to man up a little bit and rise up the occasion and focus on what’s important.”

Coleman made it clear that Rohrer is also not going to formally endorse Corbett at any point, saying the gesture would likely be seen as meaningless to many conservatives anyway.

The still-present distrust between the two could threaten to undercut support for Corbett among the conservative base if it lasts through the fall, a possible boon to Democratic nominee Dan Onorato.

Chris Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College, said the divide between the two campaigns is symbolic of the gap nationally between conservative activists and mainstream, moderate Republicans. The more hardcore conservatives, he said, aren’t always eager to join up with the moderate candidate after losing. In this case, that could cause problems for the attorney general.

“I think Corbett is going to need the support of Rorher voters if he’s going to win come November,” the pollster said. “He doesn’t need all of them, but he can’t afford to lose the lion’s share of them and win the statewide election when Democrats have such a big registration advantage.”