By Keegan Gibson, Managing Editor

Thee saying goes that Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line. There are a number of GOP insiders who hope that statement bears out in the upcoming primaries for Commonwealth and Superior Court.

For Superior Court, the Republican State Committee endorsed attorney Vic Stabile who lives in Cumberland County and practices in Harrisburg. He was GOP Chairman in Cumberland County for about a decade.

For Commonwealth Court the GOP chose Anne Covey, an attorney practicing in the field of employment and labor law matters.  In 2002 she was appointed as the first woman to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. She was reappointed by Governor Rendell in 2005.

Covey and Stabile, along with a number of Republican party operatives, have been working hard to make sure that the party’s endorsement maintains its value. Over the past 10 years, the GOP state committee has an impressive 88 percent rate of endorsed candidates winning the nominations in contested primaries where an endorsement is made.

By comparison, the PA Dems have a dismal 44 percent nomination rate.

That number does not include instances (which are fairly common in the PA GOP) when candidates drop out of a primary after failing to receive the endorsement.

The two candidates who hope to break the endorsement trend are Paula Patrick for Superior Court and Paul Panepinto for Commonwealth Court. Each of them currently serves on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
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Patrick has served on the bench for seven years. Prior to that, she was a general practice attorney in Philadelphia and an adjunct professor of sociology and Criminal Justice at LaSalle University. She finished fourth in the six-way Democratic primary for Superior Court in 2009.

Panepinto has served on the bench for over two decades, where he’s built a strong reputation for juvenile justice issues. He’s run statewide twice before, finishing third in three-way GOP primaries for PA Supreme Court in 2007 and 2009, and says his statewide experience gives him a name ID advantage.

The Main Factors

At the end of the day, these candidates and their qualifications come in second, because none of them has enough money to advertise state wide.

“These elections without virtually any name recognition or interest by the voters are confined to aspects mostly out of the control of the candidates,” says Terry Madonna, Director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.

“Where voters turn out, since county is attached to the candidates’ names. We look for regional considerations, since these are not really statewide campaign in a sense. What names are someone familiar to the voters. Sometimes ethnic backgrounds matter, and interest group support as well. Party endorsement can matter if the party leaders actually work and deliver.”

Here are the factors that will affect this race, and where each candidate stands.

Geography.

In these races, the Philadelphians are at a disadvantage. In general, there tends to be an anti-Philly bias among voters outside of the SEPA region – a fairly large chunk of the GOP primary electorate. Among Republicans, that preference is even more pronounced.

It’s bad news for Patrick and Panepinto, to be sure.

Click around the state in the 2009 results map for three-way GOP Supreme Court primary and you see numbers like 9.3 percent in Blair, 5.4 in Butler, 9.1 percent in Clearfield, and 10.5 percent in Center for the Philly candidate.

Name.

Voters favor candidates whose names sounds like the names in their neighborhood. By this criteria, every candidate would love to have a name like “Paula Patrick” – someone who could just as easily live down the street in Scranton or Johnstown as she does Philadelphia. Her normal sounding name has some GOP operatives worried that Stabile may be vulnerable despite her Philly disadvantage.

By the same token, “Anne Covey” has the advantage over “Paul Panepinto.”

Gender.

Women have a slight edge on a generic ballot.

Local Politics.

This idea ties into geography. If there’s a contended primary in county X, turnout there is likely to be higher. That works in favor of the Philly contingent this year. City council candidates and others are hitting the street to turn out their supporters, who in turn are likely to give a vote to locals running statewide.

Likewise, a contended GOP primary in Stabile’s home in Cumberland County will work in his favor.

In 2009 for example, Panepinto took 67.1 percent of the 10,770 GOP primary votes in Philly. On the other hand, he won just 12.3 percent of the 15,065 cast in Cumberland.

Party Endorsements.

Being the endorsed Republican candidate is great, if the party gets to work on your behalf.

And in these races, it may be key. Talking again of geography, even the Philly suburbs may not swing Patrick and Panepinto’s way. The strong GOP party machines in Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery Counties habitually deliver margins to endorsed candidates that outperform their state averages.

Endorsed candidates Tom Corbett and Jim Cawley beat their statewide averages in those counties in 2010.

In 2009, the three counties held up both GOP state committee endorsements for Commonwealth Court by impressive margins, despite the fact that none of the candidates was from the Philly area and one of the endorsees ultimately lost his statewide bid.

Frank Filkosky contributed to this report.