John Baer: Is McCain banking on the 'cracker factor' in Pa.?

WHY IS John McCain's

campaign camping out in Pennsylvania?

Independent polls say Barack Obama holds a double-digit lead here.

There are 1.2 million more Democrats than Republicans in the state.

And Pennsylvania went Democratic in the last four presidential elections.

Yet McCain, wife Cindy, Sarah Palin, husband Todd and surrogates such as Rudy Giuliani are omnipresent.

Why?

I have a theory.

I think McCain's camp is banking on Pennsylvania's "cracker factor."

I think the campaign believes the Democratic view - expressed by Ed Rendell last winter and Jack Murtha last week (and James Carville 22 years ago) - that there are racist tendencies among Pennsylvania voters.

Think about it.

Rendell in February said, "There are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."

He even put a point spread on it, saying that being black in Pennsylvania costs a candidate 5 percentage points.

Murtha, a veteran Johnstown congressman, last week said, "There's no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area."

He put the black penalty at 4 percentage points.

These guys are among the state's most successful, longest- serving politicians: Rendell has been in office 22 years and is a former national party chairman; Murtha has been in Congress 34 years.

(Carville in 1986 famously said everything between Philly and Pittsburgh is "Alabama without black people," which today insults Alabama; it has four times more black elected officials than Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Census data.)

So, if you take the most recent polling - an Allentown Morning Call poll Sunday is reflective of others and puts Obama 12 points up, 52-40 - I figure McCain's folks figure, well, heck, that's really only 7 points and since most polls have a 3-point margin of error, maybe just 4 points, and that puts us right in the game.

Meanwhile, McCain's campaign, in TV ads and on the stump, is calling Obama's tax- cut proposal a "government handout" and "welfare." McCain yesterday said it's "just another government giveaway."

Whom do you think that's aimed at?

Oh, I don't know, maybe lower-income, less-educated white voters for whom "welfare" and "government giveaway" means black people?

I test my theory on state GOP chairman Rob Gleason.

Is McCain here because there are enough Pennsylvanians who won't vote for a black candidate?

"I don't know. I have no idea," says Gleason. "The big reason I think is they don't trust Barack Obama."

Gleason argues that internal McCain polling is different from independent polls.

"I don't know who they're asking," he says, "but if McCain didn't think we were in play, he wouldn't be here."

Democratic state chairman T. J. Rooney says if McCain thinks "whites in droves won't vote for Obama, he's overestimating things."

Rooney concedes that "some" whites won't vote Obama because of race but argues the number is "far less now because of the circumstances of a tanking economy."

He says McCain's campaign is in Pennsylvania simply because "there are very few places for them to go."

You've heard of the "Bradley effect," a reference to black California gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley polling well but losing in 1982. And you might remember Doug Wilder, also black, narrowly winning the Virginia governorship (after a recount) in 1989 despite holding a comfortable lead in the polls.

Well, Pennsylvania is a lot whiter than California or Virginia, and older and home to, percentage-wise, more native-born residents, folks who don't much like change.

And I believe there's a "cracker factor" - we've never elected a black nonjudicial statewide candidate - and I believe that's why McCain is here.

But I also believe it's less than it once was, potentially offset by new, first-time voters and maybe, just maybe about to be relegated to the state's political past. *

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