Democrats Can’t Pick Gubernatorial Favorite
Gov. Tom Corbett is faring so badly in the polls that one line of thought is that Democrats just have to pick a candidate—any candidate—and the office is there for taking. An alternative perspective suggests Corbett can somehow win re-election if Democrats get bogged down beating each other in the primary and produce a weakened calendar.
We’re the first step to finding out if the second scenario is true.
Democrats will go into the crowded gubernatorial primary campaign without a party-endorsed candidate after party committee members splintered among five candidates at their winter meeting Saturday.
State Treasurer Rob McCord, who pushed for a vote after his campaign spent weeks trying to round up committee members’ support, came away with the most votes. … McCord said that he had not expected to actually win an endorsement, because it requires the high bar of a two-thirds majority vote in a field of six candidates who had sought the endorsement.
In both votes, McCord won nearly half the votes cast and about twice as many as Schwartz, most of whose votes came from the Philadelphia caucus. York businessman Tom Wolf came in third, followed by two former state environmental protection secretaries, John Hanger and Katie McGinty.
In the meantime, it’s probably best to avoid your TV for the next three months. AP again: “Spending in the wide-open campaign for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is beginning in earnest, and TV commercials might be on the air for the remaining 15 weeks before voters settle it in the primary election.”
The primary election is May 20.
