By Keegan Gibson, Managing Editor

Within minutes of Larry Medaglia conceding, PA Democrats were thanking Governor Tom Corbett and calling the election a referendum on his bare-boned budget proposal.

Click here to read PoliticsPA’s complete run down of the special election results.

In the latter part of the campaign, especially in the last week, Democrats sought to turn the vote into a referendum on Corbett’s budget proposal and its proposed cuts. The theme continued in the post-election spin.

“Today’s election was a referendum on Tom Corbett and his record. In this early test, Tom Corbett and his budget have been roundly rejected by voters,” Democratic Chairman Jim Burn wrote last night.

“Last night’s state Senate election… was a referendum on Tom Corbett and his disasterous budget proposal that will hurt the middle class,” said the party in a release this morning,” read a press release from the party this morning. “It was also a significant loss for Harrisburg Republicans who spent heavily on the race and Tom Corbett who put his own political capital at stake by visiting the district. In 2010, the district supported Tom Corbett 54.4 to 45.2 percent.”

After it was clear Medaglia was headed for a loss, Republicans talked about how it was a difficult district for them to win.

And they have a point. Among super voters, those who vote in every primary and every general election, the state Senate district left vacant by Mike O’Pake has a 3-1 advantage for Democrats.

PA GOP Executive Director Mike Barley talked with PoliticsPA at the Medaglia event last night in Reading.

“It’s a difficult district for us to win,” he said. “They ran a popular candidate, a well known candidate. It was a hard fought race, I think the results show that we got a lot closer than many people give us credit for.”

“We knew it was a tough race heading in here. We had no illusions that it was some kind of cakewalk. I think Medaglia ran a great campaign. They had a very good candidate up here. I think it’s probably, if you look at the results, one of the tighter races we’ve had in the district. We’re not taking this as a complete loss. We worked really hard on this race, and I think it was a tough election, but we’ll fight another day. I think this is a way for us to keep momentum going,” said Barley.

“We knew what the odds were going into this. You look at the odds and you say, ‘That’s a pretty tall mountain,’ but we went out and we gave it hell,” said Medaglia during his concession speech. “Obviously, I would have liked to see a better result, but there’s always next time.”

It’s a tough loss for any campaign staffer, and it wasn’t for a lack of effort or input by statewide Republicans. When all the campaign finance reports are in, it looks likely that Harrisburg Republicans will have invested close to $200,000 in the race.

The PA Republican Party “shut down” said Megdalia in his speech, to help with the effort. Indeed the crowd at the YR Club was filled with employees of Republican state committee who had been on the ground since Saturday or Sunday helping with GOTV efforts.

Early on as numbers started coming back, local Republican activits in the room already started their postmortem discussions, the post mortem discussions that happen in every campaign headquarters or every victory party that doesn’t turn out that way. They seemed to recognize that at the end of the day, it’s a fairly Democratic district. Judy Schwank is well known and well liked, several noted, and a ten week campaign isn’t enough time to turn that around.

Some in attendance were overheard asking whether the Medaglia campaign had gone too negative against Schwank and had backfired. Many of the campaign’s mailers and paid media were negative pieces on Schwank. There were a lot of references to distorted photographs which attempted to make Schwank look unattractive-a difficult task, those same Republicans admitted.

In a concession speech filled with football metaphors, Medaglia made a special point of thanking Governor Corbett.

“Governor Corbett stuck his neck out for me,” said Megdalia. “The Governor said ‘I am coming down there regardless of what the political consequences are. This is a message that needs to be told, this is a campaign that needs to be supported.’”

But in fact, Corbett may have been more of a liability than an asset to the campaign. Democrats had a field day with well-publicized press lockout during a lunch fundraiser Governor Corbett held on Medaglia’s behalf, earning his campaign rebuke in most local and state media outlets. Twenty-four hour finance reports covering the time of the event show that it did not reflect a major boost in his fundraising either.

Democrats  the nail in the coffin was Governor Corbett’s budget proposal, to which Judy Schwank had a clear response, focusing entirely on proposed budget cuts to higher education talking about how that would hurt Berks County families. Medaglia, on the other hand, was quoted in the Reading Eagle as saying he supported those cuts wholeheartedly. That created another PR problem when he tried to clarify and rescind those comments basically ceding the ground on the budget debate.

Nor were those the only campaign hiccups. Earlier this week, PoliticsPA reported that the Medaglia campaign had quietly withdrawn television ads and cancelled planned broadcasting arrangements.

It’s impossible to know whether they were successful in doing that, or whether the final vote reflects attitudes regarding Corbett’s budget, or simply the demographic reality of the district. The fact is that Republicans and Corbett’s specifically did not get a win tonight. And it may, indeed give pause to the number of Republican state Senators or Representatives elected from Democratic or swing districts across the state who don’t have the luxury of waiting for 2014 to run for reelection, who will have to stand on these tough cuts in a matter of a year as the 2012 campaign begins.

“This has been an extraordinary experience. To have people open their homes and invite you in and talk about the things they’re concerned with and have faith in you to be the guy that can take care of them, that says an awful lot,” said Medaglia.

Medaglia, the Berks County Register of Wills and former chairman of the Berks County Republican Party, thanked supporters profusely and said he would do it again. Earlier in the day, PoliticsPA caught up with Medaglia at a polling place in Cumru, one of the so-called “swing precincts.” Medaglia said that he had already filed to run for re-election this year.

Nicole Houck contributed to this report.