Democrats planning Pennsylvania push before primary

As the Republican presidential race moves to Pennsylvania, Democrats are hoping to grab a little of the spotlight to counter the bashing of President Obama that has been the dominant theme of the opposition party's nomination battle.

"We're not ceding anything," the party's national chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said in a telephone interview. "The Republican primary is a great organizing tool for us in the battleground states."

The Florida congresswoman plans to visit the Philadelphia area Thursday for two roundtables - one with women, on health issues, the other with Jewish leaders to discuss the administration's record on Israel and foreign policy.

By the time Wasserman Schultz arrives, Rick Santorum will have been stumping in his home state for two days. The former Pennsylvania senator, who is the remaining serious challenger to Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, is scheduled to watch the returns from Tuesday's Wisconsin, Maryland, and District of Columbia primaries in Mars, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. He plans to campaign in Irwin and Altoona on Wednesday.

Santorum has made his stand in Wisconsin, campaigning in the Badger State for eight of the last 10 days. Recent polls have him trailing Romney there, setting up a potential showdown in Pennsylvania's April 24 primary.

Two recent polls say the race here is close. The latest, released Monday by Mercyhurst University in Erie, found that 37 percent of the state's registered Republicans would vote for Santorum, to 31 percent for Romney. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich claimed 10 percent and 9 percent support.

The survey, by the Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics, found that 49 percent of Republicans believe the drawn-out contest is harming the party's ability to take on Obama. Fifty-five percent called the tone of the race more negative than the GOP's previous nomination fights.

Interviews with 425 registered Republicans were conducted between March 19 and March 30. Pollsters put the margin of error at plus or minus 4.75 percentage points.

Mercyhurst's findings were similar to those in a Franklin and Marshall College poll last week that gave Santorum 30 percent support compared to Romney's 28 - a reversal from the same college's mid-February survey, which gave Santorum a 45-percent-to-16-percent lead.

On Sunday, Santorum lashed out at the nonpartisan pollster in charge of the Franklin and Marshall survey, widely quoted political scientist G. Terry Madonna, as a "Democratic hack" when asked about that poll during an appearance on Fox News.

"I think he just draws numbers out of a hat sometimes," Santorum said, adding that Madonna gets more polls wrong "than anyone in the history of the state." Actually, Madonna's polls have a good track record and accurately predicted Santorum's Senate wins in 1994 and 2000, as well as his 2006 defeat.

Another poll out Monday, of Pennsylvania and 11 other swing states, helped explain the Democrats' focus on women's issues: a USA Today/Gallup survey found female voters in those states now favoring Obama over Romney by 18 percentage points. The same poll gave Romney a one-point edge among men.

Wasserman Schultz said Democrats have a strong case to make in Pennsylvania on issues of concern to women, noting that Romney has promised to "defund" Planned Parenthood and supported a Senate amendment to block an administration rule requiring insurers to cover contraceptives for women without cost. She said she would also remind her audience of Gov. Corbett's backing of a bill to require women to have an ultrasound before an abortion.

"You have an obsession on the Republican side with social and cultural issues, particularly those focused on women," Wasserman Schultz said.

The women's roundtable, cohosted by U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), is invitation-only, with a group of elected officials, business and community leaders, Democratic officials said.

In the separate meeting with Jewish leaders - also invitation-only - Wasserman Schultz said she would take on GOP statements, common during the campaign, that Obama is not a strong defender of Israel, as well as criticism that the president is not tough enough on stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

"Republicans know they can't get anywhere with most Jewish voters on domestic issues, so they feel the need to lie and distort the president's record," she said.

Along with traditional tactics - staffing phone banks, registering voters - Obama's campaign has lined up what it calls a "Pennsylvania truth team" to answer attacks on his record as the GOP candidates traverse the state.