Polls, fundraising, television and drug paraphernalia make up this week’s Ups & Downs, the third-to-last list before election day!
Don’t miss PoliticsPA’s 3rd Quarter Fundraising Winners & Losers!
Arlen Specter. The former Pa. Senator was laid to rest this week after decades of public service and fighting for Pa. We can’t say it any better than Frank Sinatra.
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Tom Smith. The conventional wisdom officially shifted this week, and Smith went from a long shot who looked OK in a few outlier polls to a serious threat to Sen. Bob Casey. Quinnipiac said the race was too close to call after their poll gave Casey just a 48 percent to 45 edge. And let’s not forget the fundraising numbers. Not only did Smith loan himself $10 million in Q3, he outraised Casey on top of that, $1.6 million to $1.5 mil for the Democratic Senator – quite a feat.
SEPA Republicans. Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick, Jim Gerlach and Pat Meehan, this goes out to you. Democrats essentially raised the white flag in the Philadelphia media market when they cancelled the last of their multi-million dollar TV reservation – money that had been aimed at PA-8. Sensing victory, GOP groups followed suit. Meehan cancelled $500K from TV this week in PA-7. And neither candidate is on TV seriously in PA-6.
Allyson Schwartz. Keeping with the down arrow above – the Congresswoman is the national recruiting chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, yet failed to mount a serious challenge to any of the potentially vulnerable Republican freshmen in her own back yard. She has $3 million on hand but gave none to the DCCC in Q3 despite having a no name challenger (whom she refuses to debate, for good measure). Not really a full court press.
Tarah Toohil. The State Rep. has been the object of gossip for a week over this video of her with drug paraphernalia and looking intimate with another young woman. Embarrassing and damaging. But Wednesday, Toohil issued her own response video. No denial, just a careful yet direct apology. She set a good example for kids who are considering… politics. The facebook era is upon us, this type of story will become more and more common (see: The Onion). Candor is really the best way to do damage control, evidenced by the sympathetic press coverage she got.
Alan Kennedy-Shaffer. First, he’s the President of Harrisburg Hope, a premier community group in the state capital. This week, he aptly moderated a heated and hilarious debate between SD-15 candidates John McNally and Rob Teplitz – very non-Jim Lehrer-esque. Second, after the non-partisan Harrisburg Hope rose to prominence Kennedy-Shaffer, a state employee (LCB), received a letter saying that he must cease and desist. But the circumstances were specious and the Patriot-News ed board blasted the Corbett administration for trying to oust him. Odds are HH isn’t going anywhere.
PA House GOP. The 2011/2012 session ended this week in Harrisburg and some big items on the to-do list were left undone. Majority Leader Mike Turzai’s 2 year crusade to cut spending via RACP floundered after being undermined by Republicans in the Senate and Gov. Corbett. A potential move to reform charter schools also failed to come together. Luckily for them, all campaign signs point to the GOP having another bite at the apple – and majorities in both the House & Senate – next year.
Tweet of the week: Montco PA Dem.
Pa. lost a statesman this week, but also a sports commentator. He was always able to turn from the very serious world of politics to the very serious world of Philly sports. We can only imagine how he would have reacted to the game Sunday.
#eaglestalk Arlen Specter reports that it looked just as bad from the other side.
— Montco PADem (@MontcoPADem) October 14, 2012
Facebook post of the week: State Rep. Tarah Toohil.
Her page exploded when she posted this video.
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11 Responses
Ocean – she will have to climb over Josh Shapiro first.
And an up arrow for Specter? Perhaps there are some positives for his memory and legacy, but – he will not benefit one iota from any of it. Overall, I would think dying merits a down arrow?
Signor conveniently ignores statutes of limitations, which is why journalists didn’t ask her about being arrested. It’s a hypothetical “gotcha” question, not worthy of a response.
Women the 13th Congressional District should be embarrassed for voting for Schwartz all of these years. Good female politicians on both sides of the aisle have been battling for years to get out from under the stereotypical issue of reproductive rights because they want to represent their constituents on a number of important issues along with the reproductive rights issues. Schwartz is a “one note” representative and everyone in her District should resent it. She has not written ANY legislation that has been passed into law. Sure she has “co-sponsored” some legislation proposed and written by others, but she has not worked hard for her District. She has only looked out for her own interests and it is appalling that she will not even participate in the basic political process like debating her opponent Joe Rooney. She is and her bestie Debbie Wasserman Schultz are the worst female representatives possible and all women should be ashamed of them.
“And, finally, she’s a woman.”
If my rage and disgust resulting from that statement could be hooked up to the state’s energy grid, PP&L would be able to shut down the power plants in Limerick, Three Mile Island, Berwick, and Washingtonville.
Ocean, if you think Schwartz can be Corbett, you’re nuts. She has virtually zero name recognition outside of Philly, has no connection to the more conservative Democrat votes around Pittsburgh, does not have close ties with state Democrats, cannot bring in big campaign contributions, and is too liberal to possibly win a statewide race. And, finally, she’s a woman. This simply isn’t going to happen. I hope she runs because it will be a joke and a she will make people wish Dan Onorato were running again. Better yet, why not run crazy Joe Hoeffel or Patrick Murphy, or maybe Joe Sestak? They all have done well recently in statewide races.
Joe Pitts is so old that he thinks George Romney and Butch Patrick are the GOP running mates. Joe Pitts is one slip-and-fall away from spending the rest of his days at the county home. He won’t get more than 55% of the vote and the DCCC will be left scratching their heads as to why Allyson Wartz failed to recruit a candidate here. Allyson can’t be governor because she’s too liberal for SWPA and too unlikable to pick up votes in Philly outside her district.
You might soon be calling her Governor Schwartz. Politics requires one to be extremely selfish. It’s the way it goes if you want to get to the top, and Allyson does. She will get there.
With Meehan cutting back his advertising, I wonder if Badey will follow suit cutting the little advertising he had planned and end the campaign with enough cash to pay back $125K he lent his campaign.
Finally we’re recognizing self important Allyson Schwatrz is a completely incompetent political operative. How is it possible that her recruits are this bad? Easily the worst line up in a decade if not more. And I refuse to believe Allyson couldn’t find anyone to go up against Joe Pitts, who is ripe for picking off given he has literally been asleep for this past decade with the exception of waking up long enough to advance regulation of women’s uteruses and full implementation of chastity belts. Schwartz elbowed her way into heading up recruiting and now look at her mess. PA will be run by white haired career octo-politicians like Joe Pitts! AAAAargghhh!
Another cycle and another failure by Allyson Schwartz. She bombed on candidate recruitment, stayed stingy with her warchest, and pissed off her fellow PA lawmakers. Even the dems wont work with her. That’s why Bob Brady wouldn’t help her retain her seat on Ways and Means. Now that everyone knows what a loser she is, PACs will stop investing in her.
You aren’t kidding about sympathetic media coverage. An elected official is shown to be engaging in activity that she vehemently believes should remain criminalized, and not a single journalist asks her if she thinks she should have been arrested? Would Tarah Toohill even be a state representative today if she’d been treated the way she wants others who engage in the same behavior to be treated? The story isn’t that she smoked pot 10 years ago; the story is that she’s a huge hypocrite who doesn’t think the rules she advocates for others should apply to her.