Facing GOP push, Pennsylvania is a must-win for Kerry
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. -- In recent years, most elections in Pennsylvania have been a battle for the votes in Philadelphia's suburbs, a four-county arc of affluence long dominated by Republican moderates who like to split tickets.
But in a political season when many old rules have routinely been turned inside out, this Pennsylvania truism may be obsolete. Fresh polls have indicated that Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic challenger, is thumping President Bush in the suburbs but is in a statistical tie statewide.
Terrorism and the war in Iraq may have something to do with it.
"If Kerry wins the suburbs by those percentages but loses Pennsylvania, it will go against the last decade of this state's politics," said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll and professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
A Keystone survey released Sept. 16 indicated that Bush and Kerry were tied among likely voters surveyed in the state but that Kerry was ahead, 57 percent to 33 percent, in Philadelphia suburbs, which typically produce at least 20 percent of the statewide vote. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week indicated that Kerry was leading Bush, 49 percent to 47 percent, among likely Pennsylvania voters surveyed but with a 17-point margin in the suburbs.
In 2000, Al Gore carried three of the four suburban counties, where he performed slightly better than his statewide victory margin of 4 percentage points.
The Quinnipiac poll indicated that an increase in opposition to the Iraq war is helping Kerry. Many voters expressed that sentiment when interviewed by the Globe last week in King of Prussia outside Philadelphia. A half-dozen registered Republicans, many using harsh or scornful language, were critical of Bush's handling of Iraq and said they'd vote for Kerry.
"I'm
Reilly, a Republican, said he voted for Bush four years ago.
"He's got to get out. He can't admit his mistakes," said Harvey Katuran, from King of Prussia. "We shouldn't be in that country." Katuran, also a Republican, said he voted for Gore in 2000.
Even some staunch Bush supporters are uneasy about Iraq. "I liked Bush kicking butt in the beginning," said Patrick Farrell, a software company executive and Republican from Audubon. "But I'm not too thrilled with what's happening in Iraq, like most of the country, I guess."
Despite the reservations, he said he is firmly behind Bush.
Pennsylvania has fallen into the Democratic column in the past three presidential elections, and with 21 electoral votes, it is a must-win state for Kerry. The Bush campaign has poured enormous resources into Pennsylvania, sensing potential for a knockout punch. "If we win Pennsylvania, it's over; Kerry can't win," said Leslie Gromis Baker, a veteran GOP operative in the state and chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the mid-Atlantic states.
As in other battleground states, Republicans in Pennsylvania are mounting an unprecedented ground operation in an effort to blunt the Democrats' traditional Election Day advantage that runs up huge vote margins in the urban pockets of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and solid leads in old industrial cities such as Erie, Johnstown, Allentown, and Scranton. The vast, T-shaped area of the central and northern parts of the state is heavily Republican, and Bush has offset his suburban weakness by polling even stronger than in 2000 in those areas.
"I think it reflects the notion of going to core voters and the exurbs strategy of Karl Rove," said Madonna, referring to the base-building emphasis of Bush's chief political adviser.
Republicans also are making a concerted effort to woo so-called Casey Democrats, culturally conservative Pennsylvanians who oppose abortion but generally support many government social programs. This sizeable bloc supported Robert P. Casey, the former governor who died in 2000, and backs his son, Bob Casey Jr., the state's Democratic auditor general.
The GOP says volunteers have made a million phone calls to voters and distributed 165,000 yard signs, almost four times as many as Bush had in the state in 2000. There are 27 GOP regional headquarters, up from 12 four years ago, and the Republican National Committee and Bush campaigns have deployed much larger paid staffs in Pennsylvania this year.
One of those impressed by the Republican effort is Governor Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat and former mayor of Philadelphia.
"The Republicans, operationally, are infinitely better here in 2004 than they were in 2000," Rendell told students last week at "The Science of Getting Elected" course he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. "Leslie and the Republicans have really raised the bar for the Democrats here."
Rendell's guest speakers for the evening course were Gromis Baker and Tony Podesta, Kerry's state director.
A veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns since 1968, Podesta ran Pennsylvania for Bill Clinton in 1996. He said the extraordinary resources committed by the GOP to the Keystone State indicates it wants "to win this state more than any other."
Through the end of September, the Bush campaign had aired 16,000 television spots costing $15 million in Pennsylvania, nearly as much as the combined Bush television buys in Michigan and Missouri, two other battleground states. Only in Florida ($22.8 million) and Ohio ($18.2 million), has the campaign spent more.
Podesta said the late-organizing Kerry campaign now has the resources to turn back the Bush onslaught. The paid staff is double what Gore's campaign had in the state four years ago, he said. The campaign has stepped up organizational efforts among African-Americans, Podesta said, particularly in Philadelphia, where high turnout is critical. Gore beat Bush by 348,000 votes in the city in 2000. His statewide margin was 204,840 votes out of 4.9 million cast.
As in other battleground states, the Democrats are receiving support from America Coming Together, which is registering voters and assembling an Election Day field operation, independent of Kerry's campaign. ACT in Pennsylvania is modeled on and partially staffed by veterans of Philadelphia Mayor John Street's 2003 reelection campaign, which registered 86,000 new voters, nearly half of whom cast ballots, said Rebecca Kirszner, Pennsylvania spokeswoman for ACT.
A 527 organization, named for the section of the tax code under which politically active nonprofit groups operate, ACT-Pennsylvania has about 160 paid staff members and canvassers, who operate from 11 offices around the state, Kirszner said.
Three of the offices are in the Philadelphia suburbs where Republicans hold a 3-to-2 registration advantage but are courted by both sides because, in Kirszner's words, "they are notorious for swinging back and forth -- voting on issues, not party."
Guy Ciarrocchi, executive director of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania, said: "It's the most volatile segment of the electorate in Pennsylvania, with the highest percentage of undecideds in the state."
In some respects, the presidential race in Pennsylvania reflects national political crosscurrents that have marginalized constituencies within the parties, making them targets of opportunity for the other side. Many Republican suburbanites around Philadelphia favor abortion rights and gun control, and break with the GOP orthodoxy on other social issues. Similarly, many Pennsylvania Democrats, particularly in the mining and mill towns around Pittsburgh and the smaller rust-belt cities in the east, are culturally conservative, Catholic, and abortion opponents.
The latter group includes the Casey Democrats, distinguishable from Reagan Democrats because they "believe government can play a positive role in people's lives," Bob Casey Jr. said.
A stronghold is the area around the Caseys' hometown of Scranton in the northeast. Since the demise after World War II of anthracite coal mining in the area, solidly Democratic Scranton and nearby Wilkes-Barre have struggled economically. Unemployment is significantly higher than the state (5.6 percent) and national (5.4 percent) rates. In Luzerne County, which includes Wilkes-Barre, the August rate was 7.5 percent. In Lackawanna County, which includes Scranton, it was 6.2 percent.
But Republican phone banks "are getting a good response from Democrats" in the area, according to the Bush campaign's chairman for 15 northeastern counties, William W. Scranton III, former lieutenant governor and, like Casey, the son of a Pennsylvania governor from Scranton. The area, he said, is "in play."
The best evidence of that, Scranton said, was that both Kerry and Bush, in the first out-of-state stops after their respective party conventions, visited Scranton.
Casey thinks fear of terrorism is underpinning Bush's strength in the region, where 1 in 5 residents is older than 65.
The terrorism-Iraq equation is "the wild-card issue, the one that might move the most voters" in Pennsylvania, Madonna said.
"If they believe Iraq is the vanguard in the war on terror and makes us safer, they'll go for Bush," he said. "If . . . people believe it's a quagmire, Kerry has a real advantage."
Previous articles in this series appeared Sept. 19 and 25.
