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Guv Hopefuls Woo Lehigh Valley Dems

debateIn an unusual format, six Democratic candidates for governor talked to voters last night at Lehigh University’s Iacocca Hall.

Former DEP Secretaries John Hanger and Katie McGinty, former Revenue Secretary Tom Wolf, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, minister Max Myers and Lebanon County Commissioner Jo Ellen Litz cycled between six issue stations before coming together for stump speeches at the end.

The issue stations featured Labor/Jobs, Education, Equality, Reproductive Rights, Senior Citizens and the Environment.

This forum was more participatory than others so far in the primary circuit, but led to an incongruous mashup of talking points from each of the candidates. The noise in the room hurt the softer-spoken candidates, but one who was really able to make the best of the circuit format of this forum was Katie McGinty. She provided substance and color at each of the stations and attracted a herd at her every stop.

Tom Wolf was more personable than in past events and really connected with the audience when he shared anecdotes about his personal and business history. Hanger also commanded a decent sized cohort as he moved between stations.

Candidates split themselves between the six stations, staying at each and answering questions from voters for 15 minutes, and then cycling on to the next. So, it was not possible for any participant to hear what every candidate had to say on every issue. Attendees had to choose between hearing what every candidate had to say about one issue or what one candidate had to say about every issue.

McGinty compared the format to speed dating, which won laughs from the audience in the stump speech section.

Approximately 120 individuals milled between the six stations.

MSNBC contributor and Lehigh professor James Peterson kicked off the program, and from there, PoliticsPA decided to cover the Labor and Jobs station. This issue was moderated by Gregg Potter, AFL-CIO Community Services Labor Liaison for the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley.

The discussion took very different turns for each candidate, while some focused on health care, others focused on organized labor and some discussed privatization.

McGinty made the most of this forum, and had a mob follow her to each of the six stations. In her time at the Labor/Jobs section, she covered the greatest breadth of issues and also addressed specific policy.

One of the first topics she addressed was her electability and how Democrats should pick their candidate.

“One of the things that I hope we will all pay attention to [in this primary is], 1) who can win, who’s polling strongly across the Commonwealth and not just the narrow slice of Philadelphia and 2) Who has the experience to get stuff done.”

She discussed her experience as the Secretary of DEP, and her work as an adviser in the Clinton White House. Her remarks focused on the problems of privatization, ensuring that Pennsylvania doesn’t become a Right to Work state, and she spent a good deal of time discussing pensions.

Her time at this station was also unique in that she didn’t focus solely on union labor and manufacturing jobs.

“[There’s going to be a] High tech renaissance, no state should lead that more than us. Workforce, natural resources. We should be, an inventive and entrepreneurial economy,” McGinty said. “There’s no state in the country that competes and wins more development grants than Pennsylvania. Lehigh is always in the top of engineering. No state mints more PhDs than Pennsylvania.”

Full disclosure: this writer has two degrees from Lehigh.

Hanger was likely the most pro-union candidate at the Labor/Jobs station and continued to hammer the importance of joining a union.

“Here’s the real issue: the government can do so much, but at the end of the day, workers are going to have to help themselves and do something they did in the 30s and 40s – and join a union,” he said.

Hanger did well in the stump speech portion when he told the audience how he wrote the moratorium on forest franking and again when he called for the legalization of cannabis.

Without promoting a specific policy, Wolf handled this station very well by relying on his personal business experience. He’s stated that he’s pro-labor in the past, but owns a business that’s not organized.

“Why aren’t my workers union? I see that there are two possibilities: one, because I’m a real jerk. Or two, I treat my workers well enough that they don’t need to unionize,” Wolf said. “I am very strongly involved in the labor movement. We’re not organized because I have good wages and benefits and on top of all that, every year all employees get a cash distribution and I do that because of what people in organized labor recognize, you have to treat your employees right.”

Wolf engaged the audience with his stump speech when he talked about his personal story going from Dartmouth to the Peace Corps to managing a True Value hardware store to being the Secretary of Revenue.

Pawlowski was the hometown candidate, and had many supporters in the room. His remarks focused on his work in Allentown, particularly the Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

“Go with a guy that has the track record,” he said. “You know what I’ve done over the last 8 years.”

One audience member asked him how he could replicate his success in Allentown across the state.

“They’re trying to do it already, replicating our NIZ with the CRIZ,” he answered. “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

Max Myers was asked primarily about his views on privatization of the lottery and liquor privatization. He said he didn’t favor either, saying that he didn’t see the logic behind the arguments for privatization.

“The argument is that we’re the only state that still has state owned stores, so why don’t we get on board with what everyone else is doing,” he asked. “I go back to what our mothers said. Well if your friends jump off the cliff, are you going to too?”

Litz had some trouble connecting with the audience, but promoted job creation.

“My entire campaign is about economy boosting jobs,” she said, although did not provide many specifics.

She did, however, hand out business cards with a sliding scale for tipping on the back.

The Ban Fracking protesters who have attended every debate so far in the primary were present in the lobby but didn’t cause any disruption upstairs at the actual event.

The event was cohosted by the Allentown City Democratic Committee, Bethlehem City Democratic Committee, Carbon County Democratic Committee, Carbon County for Change, East Penn Dems, Easton Area Democratic Committee, Easton Area Democratic Committee, Lafayette College Democrats, Lehigh County Democratic Committee, Lehigh University Democratic Club, Monroe County Democratic Party, Northampton County Council of Democratic Women, Northampton County Democratic Committee and SEIU 668.

State Treasurer Rob McCord and Rep. Allyson Schwartz did not attend.

Before the forum even ended, the Corbett campaign released a statement slamming Schwartz for not attending.

“The Democratic candidates continue to prove they all represent a return to the same failed tax-and-spend policies that led Pennsylvania to high unemployment and a $4.2 billion deficit,” Corbett campaign spokesman Mike Barley said. “While absent, Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz won’t be able to hide from her record authoring ObamaCare and the havoc and higher costs wreaked on Pennsylvania’s small businesses, taxpayers and families.”

8 Responses

  1. An impressive share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a colleague who had been doing a little homework on this.
    And he in fact ordered me dinner because I found it for him…
    lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!!
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  2. @Brad You realize this is a political blog and not the Washington Post, right? A major part of PoliticsPA is opinion.

  3. “The Ban Fracking protesters who have attended every debate so far in the primary were present in the lobby but didn’t cause any disruption upstairs at the actual event.” Then why not write about the candidates views on fracking? The media is trying not to make it an issue, but it is, it’s the elephant in the room.

  4. @ Brad – you mad bro? This seems to be a full report on what actually happened in a room you were not in. That seems to be the point of articles like this, to notify people not in the room what happened. Obviously this forum meant something to you since you felt the need to read the article and write a comment on it. I take it your candidate did not fair so well?

  5. Full disclosure: this writer does not understand the difference between reporting facts and writing opinion an opinion piece. If either of this writer’s degrees is in journalism or any related media field, she should return it to Lehigh and earn a third degree that will teach her about reporting. Keep your opinions out of what you present as factual reporting.

    This forum has meaning to the 120 people in attendance, and nobody else. The opinions of 120 voters means almost nothing in a Democratic primary, and it is barely 5% of the signatures a candidate will need to get on the ballot (and not enough to meet the requiremen for even one county since attendees likely were from more than one county).

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