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Democratic Challenger Wolf Topples Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett

Democratic Challenger Wolf Topples Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett

By Thomas Fitzgerald, The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

PHILADELPHIA — Democrat Tom Wolf, a businessman from central Pennsylvania, was elected governor Tuesday in his first campaign for political office.

Republican Tom Corbett became the first incumbent governor to lose re-election in the state’s modern history.

“We need to re-establish education as the priority,” Wolf said, speaking to supporters at the York Expo Center shortly after 10 p.m., after thanking Corbett for his service.

He exhorted Pennsylvanians to believe in themselves and their future. “Let’s make this the time,” Wolf said. “Let’s get started.”

A misty-eyed Corbett addressed a crowd of about 200 supporters shortly before 10 p.m. at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh.

“They said I might be a one-term governor and I am,” Corbett said. “But I am proud of what we did.”

He said he had fought for fiscal discipline and limited government, while making tough choices along the way.

Exit polls showed Corbett losing across the board — among men, women, all age groups except those over 65, and all income levels. He also was losing in every region of the state but central Pennsylvania.

When he takes office in January, Wolf will likely face a Republican-controlled legislature and a budget deficit as he tries to make good on a promise to dramatically increase the state government’s share of public school costs.

Running on the promise of a “fresh start,” Wolf poured $10 million of his own money into his campaign for the Democratic nomination, swamping better-known rivals.

He hammered Corbett for cuts to state education spending early in his administration, while passing out business tax cuts and refusing to tax the value of natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale formation that underlies much of the state. In addition, Wolf argued, jobs growth was anemic compared to the rest of the nation — putting the lie to supply-side economic theory, he said.

Exit polls suggested the Democrat scored on the jobs issue: 90 percent of voters interviewed said they remain worried about the economy, and Wolf led among those voters.

All told, candidates and independent interest groups spent at least $70 million on the campaign in 2014. That included $47.4 million tallied by the Center for Public Integrity, for about 50,000 television ads on broadcast and national cable channels in Pennsylvania.

Wolf, 65, ran his family’s York County building-supplies company for nearly three decades, building into the nation’s largest supplier of kitchen cabinets while sharing profits with workers. He also served for 18 months as state revenue secretary in the administration of former Gov. Ed Rendell.

Wolf has a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served in the Peace Corps in India as a young man.

Corbett, 65, was state attorney general for two terms before winning election by 9 percentage points in 2010, a Republican wave year. As attorney general he sent a series of state lawmakers and top aides to prison on corruption charges.

Wolf’s running mate for lieutenant governor, Democratic state Sen. Mike Stack of Philadelphia, appearing at the Sheet Metal Workers hall in South Philadelphia, said in an interview after the polls closed “We need to invest in public education or we are doomed.”

After casting his own ballot Tuesday afternoon, Wolf said he was heading home for dinner with family.

“We’re having chili,” he said.

The Democratic candidate — with a horde of reporters, cameramen and staffers in his wake — swept in and out of his Mount Wolf polling place in about a minute.

Before Corbett, the last Pennsylvania governor to lose re-election was William Bigler in 1845, after two years in office. A Democrat, he ran afoul of abolitionist sentiment after supporting the Kansas-Nebraska act, which ended the Missouri Compromise and allowed slavery in new western territories.

After a constitutional convention in 1874, Pennsylvania governors’ terms were lengthened to four years, but they were no longer allowed to succeed themselves.

Beginning with a new state constitution in 1968, governors were allowed to have two, four-year terms. Corbett is the first incumbent under those modern rules to have lost.

Photo: Tom Wolf via Flickr

When Government Was Good

When Government Was Good

THORNDALE, PA — Tom Wolf’s mood is sunny but his words are serious.

He’s answering teachers’ questions at an elementary school featured last year in a New York Times story about the costs of overcrowding and underinvestment. The Democratic nominee for governor, Wolf criticizes Pennsylvania incumbent Tom Corbett for education cuts, but he is not terribly partisan about it. Wolf is a businessman who also holds a Ph.D. in political science, and he offers a brief commentary on the importance of “public goods,” not a term typically invoked on the stump.

He ends a lengthy response about pensions with an apology. “Am I giving you more information than you want here?” he asks with a smile.

Wolf has reason to be in fine spirits. Democrats are unlikely to have a great evening on Nov. 4, but as the returns roll in, the 65-year-old native of York, PA, is almost certain to emerge as one of his party’s stars. Wolf is so far ahead, wrote The Associated Press‘ Marc Levy, that the state’s pollsters couldn’t find an example of a candidate who “overcame the kind of polling deficit Corbett now faces.”

Democrats may find solace in other governors’ races as well, but Wolf will stand out as an unusual politician who speaks to two of the main sources of popular discontent: unhappiness with the economic system over its failure to deliver for so many workers, and widespread alienation from government.

As a businessman who took over and at one point saved his family’s building materials company, Wolf thinks capitalism works best when employees have a stake in their firm’s success.

“I share 20 to 30 percent of my net profit with my employees,” Wolf says. “Everybody is a stockholder in the company. My Republican father came up with the idea. And he did it because it really works.

“I am judged in my company by my truck drivers, not by me. They see my customers more than I do. I know that my warehouse people who pack the trucks get credit because they pack the trucks so well.” Thinking of workers as stakeholders is old-fashioned. But these days, it’s also revolutionary.

Then there is his talk of “public goods.” Wolf recalls picking up a group of exchange students from France who visited his family in 1965, a time when America’s public works were the best in the world. Kennedy Airport, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the New Jersey Turnpike, the nation’s water systems, the new schools in his hometown — all, he says, were state of the art.

Since then we have fallen far behind other nations in productive infrastructure investment. “You can get away with deferred maintenance in any setting for so long, but then things don’t work,” Wolf notes during an interview in the school’s library where a water-damaged wall underscores his message. “This stuff really does catch up to you. You don’t get jobs. You don’t have people who can buy things. You let your schools get hollowed out. That’s not good for anybody.

“Yes, the market is going to deliver the goods,” he concludes, “but what does the government need to do to make sure the market is operating optimally?”

Yet progressives, Wolf argues, have to confront uncomfortable facts, too: “People are afraid of taxes because they don’t see that they get much for their taxes. … Governments in the United States have to show — and I think it’s a bipartisan finger-pointing exercise here — that we can actually deliver to people who pay taxes.”

He speaks of his time as secretary of revenue under then-Gov. Ed Rendell when he visited with his agency’s employees to persuade them to look at the state’s taxpayers as “our customers,” as “the ones that give you employment.”

“What we need is to get out of this sort of thing that government is this immutable institution that just sits there and is a pain in the butt at best. … The case must be made again that government is something that actually plays a constructive role in the lives of people.”

Then the hard part: “But to do that, you can’t just say it. You’ve got to actually act it out.”

True, Wolf is setting himself high standards. But in an era of deadlock and estrangement from public institutions, it’s bracing just to hear someone insist that they can be made to work again.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

Photo: Tom Wolf via Flickr

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Clinton, Christie Rally Pennsylvania For Wolf And Corbett

Clinton, Christie Rally Pennsylvania For Wolf And Corbett

By Thomas Fitzgerald and Chris Palmer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Tom Wolf, the Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, was still speaking Thursday evening when the politician who only needs one name (like a Brazilian soccer star) stepped from behind a curtain, early.

Hillary! The crowd at the National Constitution Center roared at the sight.

In Wayne, on the Main Line, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was the afternoon attraction at a less-raucous rally for the re-election of Gov. Tom Corbett.

With two potential 2016 presidential candidates just 14 miles apart, it was hard not to think beyond the current campaign to the one coming — though Hillary Rodham Clinton and Christie took pains to focus on the present.

Clinton’s remarks at a “Women for Wolf” event were salted with populist references to working families that boosted the nominee but also sounded at times like a presidential primary stump speech.

“At a time when corporations seem to have all the rights, but none of the responsibilities of people, you deserve a governor who will put Pennsylvania families first,” she said to a crowd of about 900 people.

Meanwhile, flanked by rows of steely-faced cadets in a half-full banquet hall at Valley Forge Military Academy, Corbett said he’s balanced Pennsylvania’s budget and resisted raising taxes, while the unemployment rate has fallen.

“We’re in a much better situation than we were four years ago,” the governor told a crowd of about 200 who clapped politely.

Then the other governor, Christie, delivered the red meat as he strolled to the lectern to thunderous applause.

He said Wolf was “lying” in blaming Corbett for education cuts, when the administration had increased funding. “We could use a nicer word (for Wolf), but it’s the word that fits him,” said Christie, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which has given $5.8 million to Corbett’s underdog campaign.

“We cannot allow a liar to win the governorship of Pennsylvania,” Christie said.

Polls show Wolf in cruise control, leading by an average of 15 percentage points, with Corbett seeking to solidify support in the GOP base and drive home doubts about Wolf’s plans.

Clinton drew loud cheers when she discussed education, describing cuts that have resulted in 27,000 layoffs and larger class sizes across the state as “heart” and a “down payment on decline.”

The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state also talked about women’s rights, saying that women deserved equal pay for equal work, paid family leave, and to be left alone to make their own health-care decisions.

A Quinnipiac University Poll released earlier in the week found that 59 percent of Pennsylvania women likely to vote on Nov. 4 prefer Wolf, while 34 percent support the incumbent.

“You want to know what Tom Wolf won’t do?” Clinton said, recalling one Corbett gaffe and exaggerating another. “He’ll never tell Pennsylvania women ‘Stop complaining, you just have to close your eyes.’ He will never compare the marriage of loving and committed partners to incest. . ..Pennsylvania has had enough shame and blame.”

Before the rally, Clinton attended a high-priced fundraiser for Wolf behind closed doors in the Constitution Center’s Annenberg auditorium. Wolf aides would not say how much the event was expected to raise.

Christie, too, attended a fundraiser — for Corbett, at an undisclosed private home in Bryn Mawr after the Valley Forge rally.

The Clinton-Wolf public event drew 14 television cameras and more than 50 journalists, including a crew from Japan’s NHK network. Secret Service agents were posted around the room, and hundreds of people began lining up behind metal barricades an hour before the Constitution Center doors opened.

Maureen Kersting, 34, said she has looked up to Clinton almost as long as she can remember.

“Chelsea’s about my age, and I was able to look at Hillary as someone I could relate to, like my mom,” said Kersting, a veterinarian who is a stay-at-home mother. “She did things people didn’t do. She kept her maiden name. She spoke up forcefully, not as ‘the spouse,’ but as her own person. It was ‘Hil and Bill.'”

As people do at many Clinton appearances, attendees said they were excited about the possibility of her becoming the first woman president.

“The country needs a woman,” said Tina Davis of Bucks County. “Women just come to work. That’s it.”

Likewise, there were many in the Wayne crowd who were hoping Christie seeks the GOP nomination in 2016.

Greg Arnoldi, 32, from Drexel Hill, attending with his wife, Kristin, said before the speech, “I’ve got to be brutally honest. We’re Pennsylvania residents. We’re here for Christie, though.” Why? He connects with people.”

Bert Kirsch, from Quakertown in Bucks County, said after the speech that she was impressed by Corbett, too. But she couldn’t contain herself from discussing Christie.

“I hope he runs for president,” she said.

Soon after, she left the hall holding her white Corbett sign.

Clinton and Christie were in agreement on one thing: The election for governor is not over.

“Every race Tom Corbett’s ever been in, he’s been underestimated,” Christie told the crowd. “Every race he’s ever been in, people have thought, ‘No we’re going to be beat Corbett this time.’ And believe me, his opponent thinks the same thing right now, and so now is the time to finish this off.”

In an oblique reference to her failed 2008 run for president, Clinton said she’s seen supposedly insurmountable leads melt before — and told the audience to buckle down for Wolf.

“From my perspective,” she said, “you can’t count on things turning out the way you want them unless you go out and work for it.”

Photo: Tom Wolf via Flickr

Both Parties Have Candidates On ‘Endangered Governors’ List

Both Parties Have Candidates On ‘Endangered Governors’ List

By Thomas Fitzgerald, The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett has been described as “endangered” so often in the past couple of years, it could be mistaken for his first name.

Long saddled with low approval ratings in statewide opinion polls, the Republican governor trails by double digits in his fight for a second term.

For all his troubles, it turns out that Corbett has plenty of company in misery this year: 11 governors of both parties are in tight re-election races, and analysts foresee the roughest ride for incumbent chief executives since at least 1994, when six lost their jobs.

The modern record was 1962, when voters jettisoned 13 incumbents.

Republicans such as Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Snyder of Michigan and Florida’s Rick Scott are threatened. Endangered Democrats include Pat Quinn of Illinois, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Connecticut’s Dannel Malloy.

A combination of local political turmoil, self-inflicted wounds and a restive mood among voters is likely at the root of the gubernatorial job insecurity, analysts say.

“There’s something of a revolt in these states against the status quo,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the political forecasters at the University of Virginia. “One theory is that people are mad — if you look at the national polls, they don’t like the way the country is going — and this is being expressed at the state level against the executive who’s closest to home and on the ballot.”

Some of the governors have added to their own troubles with controversial or polarizing decisions, but the economy is the underlying common denominator in many contests, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“Michigan and Illinois, for instance, are not recovering as fast as some states in the country,” Duffy said. “I would say that’s a big part of Corbett’s problem as well.”

Corbett inherited a weak state economy when he took office in 2011. Early term cutbacks in education spending and the fallout from the child sex-abuse scandal that engulfed Pennsylvania State University’s football program also weakened his popularity. And the tight-lipped Corbett, a career prosecutor, has never really mastered the communications aspect of his job. In that regard, at least, his garrulous predecessor, Democrat Ed Rendell, was a tough act to follow.

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois is staggering after tax hikes and spending cuts, including to education, enacted during his term. The state has had fiscal problems even after Quinn canceled some public-union contracts to try to save money.

In deep-red Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, is in deep trouble after doubling down on an aggressive series of tax cuts, which have not produced promised economic or state revenue growth, and he has had to slash state services. (The Kansas GOP is also deeply divided between moderate and conservative factions).

Though the split is less pronounced, there are echoes of that phenomenon in Pennsylvania. Corbett has been unable to get most of his agenda, including liquor privatization and pension reform, through a GOP- controlled legislature; he secured passage of a transportation-spending package only after a prolonged fight.

Democratic Gov. Malloy of Connecticut won by a few thousand votes in 2010 and is locked in a re-match with Republican Tom Foley. Malloy raised taxes and cut public-union benefits, which alienated a key part of the Democratic base. Foley is being attacked for his record as a private-equity investor.

“In 2010, a lot of open (gubernatorial) seats switched parties, and those are the people who are up for reelection now,” said John Weingart, director of Rutgers University’s Center on the American Governor. “Some of them won races they probably wouldn’t have won if they’d run two years earlier or later, in a presidential year — and they may be vulnerable as a result.”

Since 1948, incumbent governors who have sought re-election have been successful 72 percent of the time, according to analysis by Rutgers’ center, part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

That sounds high, but it pales in comparison to job security in the U.S. House. Despite record low opinions of Congress as an institution, the overwhelming majority of representatives running for re-election win — 93 percent, on average, since 1954.

The parties have been able to draw House districts to their advantage, reducing their competitiveness in elections.

U.S. senators, like governors, have to run statewide, and they’ve enjoyed an average of 85 percent re-election rate since 1964.

“It’s tough economic times, and that can hurt incumbent governors in the same way it does presidents,” Rutgers’ Weingart said. “You don’t have as much good news to deliver, building projects, preserving parkland, expanding education programs — there’s less money to do that.”

Photo via Wikimedia Commons