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Pa.'s Senate contest: Democrats vs. history

The mercurial southwest has often helped the GOP.

By John J. Kennedy

On April 28, 2009, when Sen. Arlen Specter announced he was switching parties, news accounts focused on the Democrats' moving closer to a rare filibuster-proof majority. From a Pennsylvania perspective, however, Specter's switch produced something even more unusual: The state was represented by two Democratic senators for the first time since Jan. 3, 1947.

Besides a four-year span in the mid-1940s, one has to go back to before the Civil War to find the last time this occurred. In fact, with the exception of a three-year period following the death of John Heinz in the 1990s, Republicans enjoyed a monopoly on the state's Senate seats for close to 40 years.

Until Bob Casey's victory in 2006, the futility with which Pennsylvania Democrats contested U.S. Senate elections was virtually unrivaled in American politics. And this is a state where Democrats have maintained a registration advantage.

While the reasons for the Democrats' struggles have varied from election to election, the party's southwestern base has deserted it time and time again. This has been especially true during those landmark elections - often open-seat contests - that seemed to determine control of a particular seat for a generation.

In 1958, for instance, Democratic Gov. George Leader was cut from the ticket by western bosses, mainly in response to his calls for reforming the state's patronage system. This allowed Republican Hugh Scott to win the first of his three Senate terms.

Regionalism came to the fore in another titanic open-seat battle in 1976, this time between two rising-star congressmen hailing from opposite ends of the state: John Heinz, from Allegheny County, and Bill Green, from Philadelphia. The Democrat, Green, couldn't overcome the western avalanche for the homegrown Heinz.

In each of these cases, Democratic voters in the southwest were the deciding factor. And in each case they swung the election to the Republican.

As we approach another crucial open-seat election, this time between Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey, the central question is whether southwestern Pennsylvania will once again deliver the knockout blow to the Democratic candidate.

For most of the 20th century, southwestern Pennsylvania served as the traditional political base of the state's Democratic Party. The nine-county region around Pittsburgh is home to many of the blue-collar voters who have been identifying themselves as Democrats since the New Deal. This is in contrast with Philadelphia, which didn't turn Democratic until 1958.

The small towns of southwestern Pennsylvania have long provided fertile ground for Democratic votes. In 1932, FDR carried the region by more than 120,000 votes, even though the Republican president, Herbert Hoover, won statewide and managed a 70,000-vote plurality in Philadelphia.

Another contrast between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is that the former is surrounded by communities that are quite different politically. Until recently, the Philadelphia suburbs were much more Republican, tending to negate the Democratic advantage in the city. That was not the case in the southwest, where counties such as Washington, Greene, and Fayette have a Democratic tradition that's even older and stronger than that of Pittsburgh's Allegheny County.

Much has been made of recent Democratic trends in the Philadelphia suburbs. The Democrats' plurality in the southeastern suburbs has tipped the balance to the degree that they hold a statewide advantage of almost 1.2 million registered voters.

However, a more subtle change has occurred in the southwest - first in voting behavior and, more lately, in increased Republican registration - providing a counterweight to the eastern Democratic surge. Some of the cultural issues that helped Democrats in the southeast are now cutting into their support at the other end of the state. It's similar to trends in West Virginia, a longtime Democratic state that has gone Republican in the last three presidential elections.

Considering the advantage Democrats now enjoy in the southeast, the only path to statewide victory for the GOP is to flip these traditional Democrats in the southwest. Simply rolling up big numbers in Republican-dominated central Pennsylvania isn't enough.

Should the southwest once again abandon the Democratic nominee and tilt to the Republican, it will show that Pennsylvania is a lighter shade of blue than many thought just a short time ago. And the past 18 months of all-Democratic representation in the Senate will be remembered as a minor footnote in the state's political history.