OFF THE FLOOR, A Capitolwire Column
By Peter L. DeCoursey
Bureau Chief
(Reproduced with permission.)
HARRISBURG (Feb. 5) – If snowfalls don’t cancel or derail this weekend’s Democratic State Committee meeting, then Arlen Specter and Jonathan Saidel will be the two candidates with the most to gain, and to lose.
Procedurally, the state committee’s rules for the endorsement this weekend make it nearly impossible for any candidate for governor to win the endorsement.
But it is a big weekend for the U.S. Senate matchup between incumbent Specter, D-Pa., and U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Delaware, and for Saidel’s lieutenant governor aspirations. So far, only former Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith-Ribner is running against Saidel, the former Philadelphia City Controller.
In those two races and for the four candidates for governor – Auditor General Jack Wagner, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel and Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty – a candidate must get two-thirds of those at the meeting to be endorsed. At least 202 of the 403 folks allowed to vote in endorsements must show up Saturday or send a signed proxy to create a quorum and allow endorsements.
Republican State Committee’s rules call only for a majority, but after Gov. Ed Rendell lost the state committee endorsement of his party in 2002, he pushed through a change to require a two-thirds vote for future endorsements.
That brings us back to this weekend. First up is the race where most people expect an endorsement: lieutenant governor. Saidel has been the only very active candidate, and while some party insiders think a Philly machine politician is not the ideal running mate for their gubernatorial nominee, no one else has emerged.
All the speculation about gubernatorial candidate Chris Doherty dropping down to the running mate race is likely just that. Doherty needed to mobilize earlier to stop Saidel, party leaders believe. And while Doherty or someone else could run against Saidel in the primary, winning a primary against the party-endorsed, Philly-backed Saidel would require $2 million or so. And frankly, the best thing about the Lite Guvship job is the pool. Doherty can buy himself a pool and a nice house for a lot less than $2 million. So no matter how many e-mails his wife sends out asking people to vote in online polls for Doherty for Lite Guv, it probably isn’t going to happen.
To stop the Saidel endorsement and make that primary winnable, Doherty or any other non-Saidel candidate would need a gubernatorial candidate or three to back whomever was challenging Saidel. None of them will do that, because none of them wants to antagonize Saidel’s strongest political friend and ally, Philadelphia Democratic City Committee Chairman and U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, D-Philadelphia.
Other than Doherty, all three candidates have notable pockets of support for the gubernatorial endorsement. Former Congressman Hoeffel was the party’s U.S. Senate nominee and endorsee in 2004. Auditor General Jack Wagner was endorsed by the party committee for his current office in 2004 and 2008.
Both Hoeffel and Wagner were schmoozing state committee members before Onorato got out of college. But Onorato has seven times as much campaign cash as Hoeffel and Wagner combined and the aura of the winner so far, and that matters among state committee members, although less here than among donors and interest groups.
Despite their fund-raising deficit, state committee is as favorable a playing field as Hoeffel and Wagner could ask for, and the rules stack up in their favor.
The party committee is only holding two ballots and only dropping the lowest vote-getter after the first ballot, and that will likely be Doherty. So on the second and final ballot, it will probably be Hoeffel and Wagner trying to keep more than one-third of the group – which they’ve known longer and better than Onorato has – from endorsing Onorato.
Whoever is in first place of that trio, the other two will certainly have the votes to deny them the endorsement. And with that vote pending, plus a primary to contest, no one is going to be going out of their way to annoy Brady by messing with Saidel.
Plus Saidel has worked the hardest, campaigned the most among state committee members, and has the longest track record with them.
Which brings us to the real contest of the weekend: Specter v. Sestak. This should be like the governor race, in that Sestak should be able to get one-third of the votes and stop Specter.
But with every major Democratic officials from President Barack Obama, Gov. Ed Rendell and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., on down backing Specter, his vote-counting team believes they can win the endorsement.
If Specter wins the endorsement of a party committee that loudly hissed him back his GOP days of 1998 and 2004 when they mounted candidates to challenge him, that is a big deal.
Because if Sestak can’t get one-third of this group to believe in him, when he has $5 million in campaign cash on hand – compared to Specter’s $8.5 million – that is a big loss for him, and a sign that his campaign is failing to catch on.
On the other hand, if despite Rendell and party leaders and Obama and Casey, Sestak can deny Specter the party committee endorsement, that is a signpost pointing to a competitive primary.
So for Saidel, if he loses the endorsement – which no one expects – it is very bad, but also very unlikely.
We can expect Hoeffel, Wagner and Onorato will all claim victories of various sorts after this meeting, although it is clearly bad for Onorato, if even in this mostly-older group, he does not finish first, and bad for Hoeffel or Wagner if either finishes a distant third.
For Specter, an endorsement is a big win, but he also is raising the ante so it becomes a big deal for Sestak to deny him the endorsement.
And of course, there is every chance that blizzard-fearing state committee members could stay home and deprive the committee of a quorum allowing any endorsements.
In which case, these battles could be delayed a week, perhaps giving Doherty the time to drop down and really challenge Saidel. But don’t hold your breath for that. Instead, watch your breath turn to ice this weekend, if you can’t stay home and warm.
