Scranton mayor enters race for Pennsylvania governor

SCRANTON - Only one Pennsylvania city can claim to have produced two governors in the last half-century.

Chris Doherty, elected just last week to his third term as mayor of this cradle of governors, hopes to join Republican William W. Scranton (served from 1963 to 1967) and Democrat Robert P. Casey (1987-95) as Scrantonians who made it to the executive mansion.

In rimless glasses, with the tail of his suit coat flapping in the wind, the boyish-looking 51-year-old stood in a downtown plaza at noon yesterday and pledged to do for Pennsylvania what he said he had done for his aging, stagnant hometown: shake it out of its doldrums.

"We have become a state that is just satisfied with 'just good enough,' " Doherty said in announcing his candidacy before about 150 people. ". . . Not being just satisfied is how we turned Scranton around."

Notwithstanding his Scranton roots, Doherty may face long odds in a five-way Democratic primary field crowded with better-known gubernatorial candidates who claim bigger bases of support.

Thomas Baldino, a political scientist at nearby Wilkes University, puts him in the second tier of candidates. "He is going to have to work very hard to break through statewide," Baldino said, "and I don't see him raising enough money to do that."

Doherty said he saw himself as the Michael Nutter of next year's election. As a Philadelphia mayoral candidate in 2007, Nutter was swimming near the bottom in a pool of five Democratic primary contenders. As the primary neared and no one else emerged as a clear front-runner, Nutter began to rise from the depths. He ended up winning in fairly easy fashion.

"Remember," Doherty said yesterday, "in a multicandidate race, you don't need to get 51 percent."

Doherty joins two Democratic candidates from the Philadelphia area - retired businessman Tom Knox and Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel - and two from Pittsburgh. The westerners are state Auditor General Jack Wagner and Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato.

Leonard Champney, who teaches political science at the University of Scranton, noted that the "historic tension" between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh has often created an opening for Scranton-area candidates to win by running up the middle.

"People from Pittsburgh tend not to like to vote for people from Philadelphia, and vice versa," Champney said.

After the two big metropolitan regions on the eastern and western sides of the state, the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area is next in population.

Besides two governors, the region in recent decades has produced a U.S. senator (Democrat Bob Casey, son of the late governor) and an elected attorney general, Republican Ernie Preate. Scranton also happens to be the boyhood home of Vice President Biden.

The city of 72,800 is like Pennsylvania, only more so.

Scranton's population is gray compared with state and national averages. Its people are locally rooted, with just 3 percent being foreign-born; they are less likely than most Americans to have college degrees. With its image as a conservative Democratic bastion - 93 percent white, according to the last census - Scranton was the subject of endless media inquiry leading up to last year's presidential election.

Scrantonians got tired of hearing from outsiders about their supposed prejudices. In the end, every one of the city's 24 precincts voted for Barack Obama, most by big margins.

Doherty said that in his eight years as mayor, he had launched a "renaissance" of the city's historic core, filled with solid, cut-stone buildings befitting its status nearly a century ago as the thriving heart of the nation's anthracite coal industry.

Scranton, Doherty said, had seen "no investment in decades." But after he became mayor, he said, it has had $500 million in investment, including $385 million in private funds. He said the city had attracted 5,000 jobs, a new medical college, a Hilton hotel, a pharmaceutical company office and (coming soon) 89 downtown apartments. He likes to point out that both parties nominated him in May for his third term as mayor.

"He has our city functioning as it never has before," said Herb Nealon, 76, a semiretired insurance adjuster who stood at the back of the crowd yesterday in the 500 block of Lackawanna Avenue, which police had closed to traffic for Doherty's campaign announcement.

Not everyone in town is a Doherty fan. One longtime political foe says that when Doherty's ambition to run for governor became known in the midst of his latest bid for mayor, some voters got their backs up.

"A lot of people don't think too highly of him," said Gary DiBileo, an insurance agent and former Scranton City Council member. "He lied to them when he said he wanted to be mayor, when what he really wanted was to run for governor and leave them behind."

Though he was the only candidate whose name was on the mayoral ballot on Nov. 3, Doherty got just 60 percent of the vote. Four voters in 10 wrote in other names - mostly DiBileo's.

Doherty yesterday dismissed the write-in campaign as the work of the city's fire and police unions, with which he has tangled over labor contracts. He noted the low turnout and said, "My voters didn't come out; they already realized we had won."

One of 11 children, Doherty grew up three blocks from the younger Casey. Casey's father was auditor general before he was governor. Doherty's father was a member of the city council.

The two went to the same schools. Doherty was two years ahead of Casey at the College of the Holy Cross.

Doherty said that because he is Catholic and has six children, people often wrongly assume he shares Casey's antiabortion views. He said he favors abortion rights, "without exception."

Age: 51.

Education: B.A., history, College of the Holy Cross (1980).

Experience: Mayor of Scranton (2002-present); Scranton City Council (1998-2002); business partner in James A. Doherty Co. (1990-2002); sales and marketing (1980-90).

Family: Doherty and his wife, Donna, have six children: Christopher, Michael, Marie, Elizabeth, Donna, and Hugh.

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