Our midterm election edition. See who made this week’s list!
Tom Wolf. Well, this one is obvious. The York County Democrat completed his rise from little known ex-Revenue Secretary to the next Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Wolf was the only Democratic statewide candidate in the country to unseat a GOP incumbent on Tuesday. Not only that, he won by a solid ten points. The real work is yet to come, of course, but for now he’s on top.
Tom Corbett. Speaking of obvious choices. This week Governor Tom Corbett became the first incumbent to lose his bid for re-election in the modern era. It was a tough four years for Gov. Corbett and his tenure is set to end next January. The fact that Corbett couldn’t ride the national Republican wave likely didn’t help matters either. Someday soon, though, Tom Corbett will realize that no longer having to be Governor makes him the real winner of this election.
Republican Legislators. So much for Tom Wolf’s coattails. The belief among many was that a big Wolf victory could benefit Democrats down the ballot in State Senate and State House races. That didn’t happen. The GOP swept the competitive Senate races, picking up three seats and expanding their majority to a safe 30-20 margin. They also added an additional eight seats in the House. How future Governor Wolf interacts with this very red legislature will be the story of 2015 and beyond.
Dominic Pileggi. The Senate Majority Leader won’t get the chance to rest on his laurels. In fact, the expansion of his caucus could actually be his undoing. Appropriations Committee Chairman Jake Corman announced on Thursday that he will challenge Pileggi for the leadership post. The battle is being portrayed as a west vs. east affair and with new western Republicans set to take office, trouble could be in store for Delaware County native Pileggi.
Ryan Costello & Brendan Boyle. Congratulations to the two newest members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation. Costello ably handled Democratic nominee Manan Trivedi, winning 56% of the vote in the tossup district represented by retiring Rep. Jim Gerlach. Boyle meanwhile easily took the heavily Democratic 13th District and will replace outgoing Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz.
Our tweet of the week goes to Penn Live’s John Micek, but really to Gov. Corbett, who summed up the 2014 gubernatorial election in one line.
https://twitter.com/ByJohnLMicek/status/529830155448225792
Pennsylvania Democrats now find themselves in a micro-version of what Obama has faced — Republican opposition that will obstruct virtually everything Wolf wants to accomplish and smear anything that he does manage to do. Obama has tried to “play nice” with Repubs and has been vilified by both parties as a result. Wolf needs to learn from this – there is no moderate middle ground when dealing with Tea Party Republicans. You need to oppose them, shine a light on them, and out-message them.
It’s clear a significant percentage of voters were voting anti-Corbett and not pro-Wolf since they split their ticket. If you take out the roughly 275,000 vote advantage Wolf received in Philadelphia, Wolf still carried the rest of the state by 57,000 votes. Lynn Swan did better in some counties in Central and South-Central PA in 2006 than Corbett did in 2014.
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