Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Democrats defiantly upbeat, GOP buzzing with confidence

Veteran political consultant Ken Smukler surveyed the Pennsylvania Democrats drifting into the Radisson Hotel Valley Forge Friday night for the state party's fall dinner.

Veteran political consultant Ken Smukler surveyed the Pennsylvania Democrats drifting into the Radisson Hotel Valley Forge Friday night for the state party's fall dinner.

"Just cows being led to the slaughterhouse," Smukler joked. "Some of them are aware of it and some of them aren't." Next to him, consultant D.A. Jones laughed and shook his head.

Conversations mixed gallows humor and defiant optimism as state Democrats pondered their reversal of political fortune, nearly two years after Barack Obama's sweeping victory at the polls.

Up in Harrisburg, about 450 Republicans were gathering at the same time, buzzing like a community whose championship football team has come roaring back to life early in the new season after years of rebuilding.

About five weeks from the midterm elections, Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett holds a double-digit lead over Democrat Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County executive, in the race for governor. Republican Pat Toomey leads Democrat Joe Sestak in the U.S. Senate race. GOP candidates also have decent prospects of picking up at least four U.S. House seats now held by Democrats.

Nationally, the party appears poised for big gains in Congress and statehouses, generated by what party leaders describe as never-before-seen levels of anger among the electorate.

"The spending, the debt, the government control - no wonder people are in open rebellion," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio), who is in line to become speaker if the GOP retakes the U.S. House. Hundreds of Republicans cheered his pep talk, many of them waving "Fire Pelosi" signs in reference to the Democratic speaker.

At the Democratic gathering, about 150 people ate barbecued ribs, chicken, hot dogs, and hamburgers for what party leaders called a Battleground Patriotic Picnic. The audience heard a taped greeting from Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine. State Treasurer Rob McCord, lieutenant governor candidate Scott Conklin, U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, and state party chairman Jim Burn gave fiery speeches, urging the committee people to work hard turning out supporters.

"I don't care if you bring somebody holding their nose into the voting booth - I don't care if they're sleepwalking - as long as they vote Democratic," said McCord, of Montgomery County.

So much has been written about the vast "enthusiasm gap" between likely Republican voters and likely Democratic voters that it seems real, a canyon that should be fenced off before somebody falls into it.

The latest evidence was a Pew poll released Thursday that said the voters deemed most likely to turn out Nov. 2 leaned toward voting for Republican candidates for Congress, 50 percent to 43 percent. When all registered voters are surveyed, the GOP advantage is narrower.

In addition, total turnout for Republican primaries, with tea party conservatives battling the establishment, has dwarfed the turnout for Democratic primaries.

Randall G. Jefferson, a Philadelphia investment manager active in the Democratic Party, said the relatively subdued gathering worried him. "There's no hoopla, no oomph," Jefferson said. "You're six weeks out! There's no rah-rah, and you're getting your . . . kicked all around the state. You've got to go and get it."

It's been an eight-year drought for Pennsylvania Republicans as they watched their solidly red state shift to purple, then blue, losing the governor's mansion in 2002, both U.S. Senate seats (including Sen. Arlen Specter's party switch), and control of the state House in Harrisburg.

As one sign of the party's resurgence, the Young Republicans have chartered seven new chapters in Pennsylvania since 2008. Concern about the current job market and future debt has inspired a new generation, said Brittany Tressler, chairman of the Young Republicans of Pennsylvania.

"The spending that happens now eventually lands on us," said Tressler, 26, who is executive director of the Montgomery County Republican Committee.

But some Republicans cautioned that the party, down by more than one million in the number of Pennsylvania registered voters, cannot count on the general mood. Montgomery County Commissioner Jim Matthews frets that the GOP might blow an anger wave he hadn't seen in three-plus decades in politics.

"We have an annoying confidence," said Matthews, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor with Lynn Swann in 2006 and is being talked about as a possible challenger to Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2012.

"People are letting down their guard," Matthews said. "They're not going door to door, they're doing more mailers. We need more phones and shoe leather."

Along with the dinner, Democrats held training sessions for Vote 2010, their coordinated turnout program for the party's entire ticket in conjunction with Organizing for America, the Obama campaign arm. Democrats on the front lines did point to some encouraging signs, particularly in U.S. House races. Lois Herr, for instance, was only 7 percentage points behind Rep. Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.) in the heavily GOP 16th District in a recent poll.

Manan Trivedi, the doctor and Iraq war veteran running as the Democratic nominee in the Sixth District, said he and his supporters are finding "more of an anti-incumbent mood" than an anti-Democratic one, "and that is helping us." He is challenging four-term Rep. Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.).

David Landau, Delaware County Democratic chairman, said he was able to get 210 committee people to show up for a strategy session last Sunday, with the Eagles and Phillies playing.

"There's interest in the party, and it's been building for the last few weeks," Landau said. "Now we have to reach that next circle of Democrats out from the core."