Category: Congressional Race

Pa. Dem Plays The JournoList Card

Manan Trivedi, the Democrat’s choice to take on incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach in Pennsylvania’s 6th District congressional race, accused Gerlach of racism because Gerlach has been describing Trivedi as a far left-winger who “doesn’t
share our values.”

Trivedi, a doctor, was a health policy
advisor to Barack Obama.

Gerlach aide Mark Campbell responded by saying Trivedi was the only one who used race in the campaign which happened when he asked Indian-American groups to contribute to his campaign solely because he descended from emigrants from India.

Trivedi responded by accusing Campbell of racism and demanding he be fired.

To their credit Gerlach and Campbell are sticking to their guns.

What Trivedi is doing is disgraceful and shameful. Rather than discussing the advice he gave Obama regarding health care or this nation’s impending bankruptcy,  he is taking a page from the playbook of the despicable and discredited JournoList .

He should apologized immediately and end his campaign.

America must not be divided anymore by power-seeking wannabees.

GOP Up In Pa

The  Reuters/Ipsos poll released, today, has Republican Pat Toomey up 47-37 percent among likely voters over Democrat Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Among registered voters, a category historically more favorable to the Democrats, Toomey is up 40-37 percent.

Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen Poll has Toomey up 45-39 percent among likely voters with Toomey ahead 48-42 percent if leaners are factored in.

In the governor’s race, Reuter/Ipsos has Republican Tom Corbett head of Democrat Don Onorato 49 percent to 34 percent.

In other election news, Sestak has launched his first attack ads in which he accuses Toomey to be in the pockets of Wall Street and features a CNBC interview from 2007 in which he advocates ending corporate income taxes.

The ad buy is estimated to cost $110,000 and will run in every market but Philadelphia.

Toomey has responded saying he was just trying to explain to consumers that it is they who ultimately pay for taxes on corporations, and that he recognizes that a 0 percent corporate income tax is is “impractical for a host of reasons”.

Some friendly advice, Joe. You are living in a greenhouse on the “capitalist tool of Wall Street” matter so be careful about throwing stones. It’s not like Toomey ever voted to take $700 billion in taxpayer money to bailout Goldman Sachs et al. That’s not his name there in the yes category of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

It’s funny that even though the TARP bailout was pushed by President Bush most Democrats voted for it and most Republicans voted against it.

 

More Bad News For Murphy

A week ago Commonwealth Court Judge Dan
Pellegrini foiled a plan by the incumbent Democrat to get a conservative third-party candidate on the ballot in Pennsylvania’s  8th
Congressional District.

Now there are reports that internal GOP polling shows that that Democrat, Patrick Murphy, is behind Republican challenger former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick 48-41 percent.

Murphy knocked off Fitzpatrick by just 1,518 votes in 2006. He easily held his seat two years ago getting 57 percent of the vote in his race against Tom Manion.

Hat tip to PoliticsPa.com

Lingenfelter Off Ballot In Pa-8

The Republican’s road to returning as the party representing Pennsylvania’s 8th District in Congress got a little easier after a successful petition challenge knocked conservative independent Tom Lingenfelter off the ballot, Thursday.

Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini ruled that 769 signatures on the petition were invalid because they were obtained by circulators who lived outside the district.

Lingenfelter attorney Larry Otter argued that the Department of Stateinstructions simply said circulators “must be a qualified elector of theCommonwealth of Pennsylvania.”Pellegrini, however, said a ruling by the state Supreme Court that they must be district residents took precedence over the Department of State directions.

Among those circulating the petitions for Lingenfelter were two interns working for Democrat incumbent Patrick Murphy. The Republican in the race is former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick, who Murphy beat by 1,518 votes in 2006.
 
Lingenfelter received more than 5,000 as a third-party candidate in 2008, in the race that saw Murphy easily win reelection with 57 percent of the vote over Republican Tom Manion.

Murphy, an Iraq war veteran, has claimed to be a moderate. With Obama in office, however, he has shown himself not just to be an extreme social liberal, with his support for abortion and gun control, but a fiscal one as well supporting Obamacare and the stimulus. He has voted with Nancy Pelosi 99 percent of the time.

Lingenfelter remains on the ballot in 143rd District State House race.

Hat tip to Phillyburbs.com

Tea Party Asks Stalking Horse To Quit In Pa

How Jim Schneller got on the ballot isn’t helping him with Tea Party groups to which he claims to have allied himself.

Schneller is an independent candidate for the Pennsylvania 7th Congressional District seat being vacated by Democrat Joe Sestak. The major party candidates in the race are Republican  Pat Meehan, who is a former Delaware County district attorney and federal prosecutor, and Democrat Bryan Lentz, who represents the 161st District in the State House.

It has been learned that about 4,800 of the approximately 7,900 signatures Schneller acquired to get on the ballot were collected by Lentz volunteers including Swarthmore Democrat Chairwoman Colleen Guiney, Nicholas Allred of the Swarthmore College Democrats andSpringfield activist Rocco Polidoro.

Since 4,200 names were needed, Schneller would have been over a thousand shy on his own.

Polidoro, btw,
says he has cooled substantially on the Democrat Party in the last year
but is still behind Lentz.

Anyway, the action appears likely to backfire on Lentz. The publicity concerning the  act has made him look old-school schlocky and the district’s Tea Party groups are disassociating themselves from Schneller.

A letter sent to Schneller from the Independence Hall Tea Party Association signed by Don Adams and The Delaware County Patriots expresses concern and disappointment with his 3rd party candidacy and asks that he withdraw his candidacy “which Bryan Lentz feels will benefit his campaign.”

FWIW, Schneller says he hadn’t realized that it was Lentz supporters circulating his petitions.

Pa. Congresskook Defends Massive Bank Bill

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D–Pa11) defended at a June 17 conference committee hearing  the pending massive regulation of American financial institutions by saying it will help people suffering from the “longevity of this recession” and  “they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs [are] about, these are average, good American people.”


Being reconciled are similar thousand-plus page bills passed by the House on Dec. 11  and the Senate on May 20.  The regulation would not touched the government-sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac  and Fannie Mae, to which our economic turmoil can be traced, and will likely open the door to rampant crony capitalism. 

Kanjorski is in a tight race with Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta. 


Dem Beats Gleason’s Choice To Keep Murtha Seat

Mark Critz, the aide to the late Congressman John Murtha, won a special election Tuesday to fill the remainder of his term which ends Jan. 3.

Critz, a Democrat, easily beat Republican Tim Burns, who state GOP Chairman Rob Gleason had tapped over Bill Russell, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who ran against Murtha in 2008.

Critz got 53 percent of the vote to Burns’ 45 percent with Libertarian Demo Agoris getting the rest.

There will be a rematch in November for a fresh term since Burns beat Russell in the GOP congressional primary race while Critz defeated two novice primary challengers.

In other races extreme liberal Congressman Joe Sestak ended turncoat Arlen Specter’s career beating the party-endorsed incumbent in the Democrat U.S. Senate primary. He will face Republican Pat Toomey this fall who easily beat activist Peg Luksik.

Attorney General Tom Corbett won the Republican gubernatorial primary over tenacious Sam Rohrer, the representative for the 128th District in the State House. His likely opponent in the general election will be Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato who won the four-man Democrat race.

What might complicate the race a bit is Robert Allen Mansfield , a sergeant in the National Guard with service in Iraq, who has announced that he will run as a independent candidate. Mansfield is an African-American conservative from Philadelphia who had been a Republican and who has a fascinating life story. 

In the Democrat lieutenant governor race,  it appears rather shockingly that Scott Conklin who represents the 77th District in the State House has beaten endorsed candidate Jonathan Saidel, the former Philadelphia city controller, and Doris Smith-Ribner, a retired Commonwealth Court judge.

In the GOP lieutenant governor race, the winner of a field of nine is very unshockingly  Bucks County Commissioner Jim Cawley, who was strongly pushed by Tom Corbett.

Dem Fails In Strange Attempt To Stop A Congressional Election

The man expected to be the Democrat nominee to replace Joe Sestak to represent Pennsylvania’s 7th District in Congress tried a bush-league trick to force the Republican nominee from the race which could have been seen as doomed to fail by a first-year law student.

Actually, it could have been seen as doomed to fail by anyone who caught five minutes of a rerun of an old Ally McBeal but that didn’t keep state Rep. Bryan Lentz (D-161) a.k.a. The Man Who Would Be Joe from giving it a whirl.

The Republican — former U.S. Attorney and Delaware County DA Pat Meehan — caught some signatures on his nominating petition that he thought  forged and turned them over to the proper authorities.

Lentz basically said “hey, if those are forged then everything is forged” and filed a challenge to disqualify 2,624 or so of the 3,623 signatures obtained by Meehan knocking  beneath the 1,000 required to be on the ballot.

On Thursday, Commonwealth Court Judge Rochelle S. Friedman ruled as expected that Lentz’s challenge had no merit. Lentz had spent tens of thousands of dollars in his strange attempt to stop an election in the 7th District.

He could have spent that money advertising his positions instead but for some strange reason he chose to fight over trivia and technicalities.

Strong School Choice Advocates In Both Pa. Gov Primaries

Maybe there are Democrats with some sense. One of the four seeking that party’s nod for governor in the May 18 primary is being strongly backed by school choice advocates. This means he actually cares about children and is willing to oppose those whose goal is to collect a fat paycheck and bennies for pretending to which, of course, is the usual Democrat constituency.

The candidate is state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams who represents the 8th District which covers southwest Philadelphia and southeast Delaware County.

Williams has been given $1.5 million by Jeff Greenberg, Arthur Dantchik and Jeff Yass who are the founders of the Bala Cynwyd investment firm Susquehanna International Group, and who are major school choice advocates. The money was funneled to Williams via political action committees supporting school choice and charter schools.

A strong school choice proponent is running on the Republican side as well. Underdog candidate state Rep Sam Rohrer, who represents the 128th District in Berks County, authored the EducationalImprovement Tax Credit Program, which may be the most successful school choice program in the country and is something he would like to expand.

Clear Road For Lou Barletta

Chris Paige has withdrawn from the Pennsylvania 11th Congressional District Republican Primary leaving Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta the last man standing to face the Democrat candidate this November. That candidate is almost certainly going to be incumbent Paul “I Believe In Executive Orders” Kanjorski but still he faces a May 18 challenge from Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien and in this climate you never can tell.

Barletta  would have likely beat Kanjorski in 2008 but for the Obama surge.