More evidence that proves Pennsylvanians don't want to give Governor Tom Corbett (R. PA) a second term:
http://www.philly.com/...
Four years ago, Joe Szalwinski knocked on doors and "passed out more fliers than I can count" to help elect Tom Corbett governor of Pennsylvania.
This year? "I'll probably vote for him, but I won't work for him," said Szalwinski, 58, a tea party voter from Fishtown.
He was disappointed that Corbett had abandoned the legal fight after a federal judge threw out the state's ban on same-sex marriage, and by the governor's willingness last year to put extra money into Philadelphia schools.
"Maybe he doesn't have a backbone," Szalwinski said Friday.
Political strategists and conservative activists alike say Corbett is struggling to energize the conservative base that swept the Republican into office in 2010, with disappointment on the right a major reason the governor trails Democrat Tom Wolf by about 20 percentage points.
One poll even shows Wolf running well in two groups that lean right: gun owners and evangelicals.
"It's one thing after another," said Ryan Shafik, a GOP strategist from the Harrisburg area who handles conservative candidates. "The only thing he really twisted arms for, really pushed, was the transportation bill that brought the largest gas-tax increase in state history."
Some conservatives are mad at Corbett for that, saying he broke his no-new-taxes pledge. Others are most upset about the marriage issue, and some are frustrated that the governor decided to stop defending in court the state's voter ID law - a conservative priority that Corbett had championed.
The governor has said that it made no sense to continue with unwinnable cases and that he remains morally opposed to same-sex marriage.
Activists also mention what they might call Corbett's sins of omission: his inability to get liquor privatization or reductions in public-employee pension benefits through the legislature, or to pass proposed legislation allowing members of the state workers' and teachers' unions to opt out of paying dues.
Such grumbling might make little difference if Corbett's moderating moves had won him enough support among moderate Republicans in Southeastern Pennsylvania and independent voters. Yet anywhere from a quarter to a third of self-identified Republicans in recent polls have said they don't believe Corbett deserves a second term.
"He's not winning over moderates, who are unhappy he's pushed an agenda they don't like - and he hasn't delivered on much of the conservative agenda," said pollster G. Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College. "He's got a huge uphill climb."
A poll conducted by Franklin and Marshall in late June suggested how steep the path could be.
It found Wolf with a nominal lead among respondents who said they were born-again or fundamentalist Christians - a key part of the conservative coalition - by 34 percent to 32, with 33 percent undecided.
"I have done a lot of races in a lot of states," Shafik, the strategist, said. "I've never seen a Republican losing evangelicals."
The poll of 502 voters also had Corbett trailing among gun owners, with 41 percent saying they would back Wolf to 34 percent for the incumbent. Twenty-four percent were undecided. - Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/20/14
It's not that difficult to understand why the GOP base has given up on Corbett. He keeps trying to run away from his abysmal record:
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/...
Since 2011, Pennsylvania Democrats have pointed to the budget-balancing cuts in education aid that GOP Gov. Tom Corbett signed six months into office. And there’s evidence voters are listening: A recent independent voter poll found that the single biggest factor behind voter disapproval of Corbett’s job performance is his record on education.
Corbett may finally have found an effective strategy to counter that attack.
He is pounding the Republican-controlled Legislature for not acting on legislation to rein in a $50 billion pension debt that, he argues, is driving up property taxes, hurting families and squeezing out money for classrooms. He is also doing something he arguably has not done before on any issue: making the case in near-daily public events across the state, with plans to continue doing so for the rest of the summer.
It is not foolproof. He lacks a surefire way to deliver relief to school district budgets in a form that lawmakers will embrace. And he is doing it with less than four months until the Nov. 4 election, a limited time frame in which to turn around awful polling numbers in his race against Democrat Tom Wolf.
But at this point, he has no other choice, said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and a professor of public affairs at Franklin & Marshall College. Education is the single-most important issue to Pennsylvania voters for the first time in modern history, and Corbett spent much of his time in office arguing ineffectively that he didn’t cut education funding, Madonna said.
“It’s a big moment for him in a world of diminishing options,” Madonna said.
For now, the argument has the advantage of seizing on the general unpopularity of nearly $12 billion in school property taxes, the biggest single source of funding for public schools. For Pennsylvania’s policymakers, property tax relief remains an elusive goal, much discussed in the Capitol for more than a decade but so far only delivered in doses that are quickly swallowed by the schools’ growing costs.
The Wolf campaign, Democratic Party allies and labor unions vigorously sought last week to counter the Corbett argument and wrest back control of the narrative.
“There would be no pension ‘crisis’ if Mr. Corbett had not cut education funding by $1 billion in 2011,” House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, wrote in an opinion piece distributed to newspapers. “Those sustained cuts, over his tenure, have grown into a $3 billion loss for schools.”
That, wrote Dermody, is driving property taxes up. - CBS Philly, 7/19/14
But Corbett continues to stick his Tea Party foot in his mouth pissing off everyone else:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) gave an interview to KDKA NewsRadio in Pittsburgh on Friday and reignited the suggestion that immigrant children crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. carry diseases with them.
"We also are concerned about their health and, and what they may not cause in health issues in the state of Pennsylvania. From my standpoint where they're coming in, there are certainly enough military bases in Texas and Arizona that the federal government could at least house them in there temporarily to make sure before they even send them to any state, that their health conditions are okay for that. That they've had all their immunizations and so forth because we have a strong concern on that," Corbett told interviewer John Shumway.
When Shumway asked if he was worried about the spread of disease, Corbett said, "Well, measles is one that, that comes to mind very quickly and, you know, whatever other diseases that they may or may not have."
However, the concerns have been disputed, with UNICEF's statistics showing that just 92 percent of U.S. children have been vaccinated against measles, compared with 93 percent of children in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. - Huffington Post, 7/18/14
Corbett also went after Holy Family in Pittsburgh for taking these children in but Holy Family is standing by their actions:
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/...
Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese Leader Bishop David Zubik has released a statement defending the Holy Family Institute’s decision to provide care for these children while they await deportation hearings.
It reads in full:
“Holy Family Institute, a ministry of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Emsworth, will be providing temporary humanitarian aid to children from Central America.
“The children, who are all under the age of 12, will be temporarily sheltered at Holy Family Institute.
“You probably recall that Holy Family Institute performed a similar ministry for many Haitian children after the devastating earthquake in that country. This is exactly the same kind of humanitarian response.
“The children will not remain in Pittsburgh but will be placed with relatives or other sponsors nationwide.
“There have been questions as to why Catholics are involved. The Catholic Church responds to humanitarian crises here at home and all across the world because we are pro-life. Being pro-life requires we protect and care for vulnerable persons from conception to natural death. It has been reported that some of these children are fleeing violence. The current law requires that they receive a hearing to determine if in fact they are refugees fleeing grave danger.
“Whether they are traveling because of poverty, or violence, or with the hope of reuniting with relatives on the other side of the border, followers of Jesus are called to protect these children and help them because they are very vulnerable and defenseless against any abuse or misfortune.
“At the same time we respect the rule of law and the right of nations to have secure borders. Ultimately, the root causes of why people are fleeing their homelands must be addressed by the international community.” - CBS Pittsburgh, 7/18/14
So yeah, Corbett's having a hard time going back and forth between Tea Party Tom and Centrist Corbett so it's no wonder Republicans aren't thrilled about voting for him. Even his push to make pension reform a campaign issue isn't really paying off. Now Keystone Politics has pointed out that Tom Wolf (D. PA) and Democrats don't need to make this a campaign issue but they will have to come up with a plan at some point:
http://www.keystonepolitics.com/...
It’s not catastrophic or anything – the budget is about $29 billion – but it’s a pretty decent chunk of money. We were talking about a lot of pain from a $1.2 billion budget hole this time, and people were worried about that.
Another point to make about these projections is that while these are Corbett administration numbers, and some readers are probably tempted to think the Corbett administration is overestimating the threat level because they want to soak unions, in this case they’re underestimating the threat level to make their own plan look good.
They’re actually presenting a very rosy picture of the situation, assuming a 7.5% annual return. That’s an absurdly high rate to assume, so realistically we could be talking about an additional $3-4 billion responsibility per year relatively soon.
Again, not catastrophic. But it is $3-4 billion worth of spending cuts (preferably tax expenditures) or tax increases that the next Governor is going to have to identify in the 2015-2016 budget.
From a purely partisan perspective, there’s no reason for Tom Wolf to get baited into discussing these issues during the campaign. But it is time for the Blue Team wonks to start kicking around a plan to find that amount of money, because these days I’m hearing a lot of Democratic candidates double and triple-counting the revenue from the natural gas severance tax. We can use it for education, or the budget, or transportation, but the severance tax alone is not going to pay for it all.
I don’t think there is any reason for Democrats to vote for any “pension reform” bill that changes defined-benefit plans for anyone, or cuts benefits for anyone. 401Ks are a failure of a retirement savings policy. We do have the option of not changing our pension plans, and just paying for our pension responsibilities by cutting tax exemptions and expenditures. But we have to think beyond just the severance tax.
For instance, many of our tax expenditures go toward subsidizing fossil fuels. PennFuture says we could be getting about $2.9 billion a year by eliminating these subsidies.
We should also accept the federal Medicaid money, fully close the Delaware loophole with combined-reporting, and explore joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (conditional on the energy-importing states accepting some reforms). Over the long term we can try to overturn the Uniformity Clause and introduce a progressive structure to PA’s income tax. - Keystone Politics, 7/20/14
But this guy is trying to make climate change a central issue in this race:
http://www.post-gazette.com/...
Billionaire Tom Steyer and his Super PAC, NextGen Climate, are making big moves in Pennsylvania this year.
The organization aims to call out elected officials who deny the existence of climate change while working with those who are fighting to stop it. In Pennsylvania, it has its eyes on the gubernatorial race between Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and Democratic challenger Tom Wolf.
During a 2011 budget speech, Mr. Corbett said he wanted to make Pennsylvania “the Texas of the natural gas boom.” In May, during an interview with StateImpact — an NPR-affiliated policy news site — he said the reality of climate change was “up for debate.”
A spokeswoman for NextGen Climate said it is working to show voters how Mr. Corbett “stood up for powerful energy companies (who are significant contributors to his campaign) at the expense of Pennsylvania voters’ best interests.”
Last week, NextGen sent a Right-to-Know request for all correspondence between Mr. Corbett and oil and gas companies, plus campaign finance records.
NextGen also asked that Mr. Corbett “acknowledge that you have wronged the people of Pennsylvania by giving away the state's proverbial family jewels to the oil and gas industry and impose the kind of common-sense extraction tax that other states have required — in order to cut taxes and fund public schools.” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 7/19/14
Corbett is on the same path as former Senator Rick Santorum (R. PA) in 2006 where the conservative base stayed home allowed Santorum to be crushed by Senator Bob Casey Jr. (D. PA) by the biggest margin in Pennsylvania history. Things are looking good for Team Blue but we can't afford to take anything for granted. Click here to donate and get involved with Wolf's campaign, State Senator Mike Stack's (D. PA) Lt. Governor campaign and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party so we can take back the State Senate:
http://www.wolfforpa.com/
http://www.stackforpa.com/
http://www.padems.com/