Corbett: It's votes, not polls, that count

YORK, Pa. - Stopping in on an early-morning gathering for veterans Thursday, Tom Corbett moved easily through the sea of older men, gripping their arms and crouching down to listen to their war stories.

It was his kind of crowd. Small. Calm. Controlled. Military men - men with simple but poignant values he relates to: honor, duty, and love of country.

For a campaign stop, Corbett's message to the vets was as apolitical as it was simple: Tell your story. People need to understand what you have accomplished.

"Reinforce it," he urged.

It is a lesson the first-term Republican governor could have easily given himself. It is also one of the reasons he is now in the unlikely position of being an incumbent trying to prove the polls wrong and claw his way to another four-year term.

Much of Corbett's story is a well-known tale: his administration's unwillingness - or was it distaste? - to pound the pavement and press the flesh to sell the governor's policies, his frosty relationship with the legislature, the verbal gaffes, his awkwardness in wading into crowds to connect, in any visceral way, with real people and their problems.

Now, he could become the first governor in Pennsylvania history to lose a bid for a second term. Even if he wins, he would still make history by overcoming what many pollsters say is a point of no return - down double digits in surveys of likely voters with less than a month to the election.

For his part, Corbett, 65, hardly sees the contest against Democrat Tom Wolf as a foregone conclusion. With vigor and passion, he ticks off all the good things he's done: transportation funding, extending health-care benefits to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Pennsylvanians, growing the natural gas industry while also making it pay a fair share of fees.

As for the sobering polling numbers, Corbett explains it this way: Independent polls that show him anywhere from 17 to 20 points behind are based on unrealistic projections of Democratic voter turnout - a scenario that he contends is never going to happen.

And despite a politically charmed six years as the state's top prosecutor, Corbett says he knows how to come from behind and win. In 2004, he hit the campaign trail with a limp brought on by a surprise case of the gout to win a brutal and demanding race for attorney general that most expected him to lose. His campaign this year has put him on a steady tour of events and stump stops that have raised his profile and kept his name in the headlines.

"I was never predicted to win any race I've won," the governor said last week during an interview in his Harrisburg residence. "Our base is comeback."

In many ways, Corbett's reputation - one he would not be able to shift in any tangible way in the months and years after - was etched in his first few months in office.

Coming into the governor's job in January 2011, the onetime state and federal prosecutor from Pittsburgh had the wind of public opinion and confidence at his heels.

He was the no-nonsense law-and-order guy who had just finished a six-year stint running the Attorney General's Office as it brought high-profile political corruption cases - Bonusgate and Computergate, to name a few - that helped take down the power structure in the Capitol.

"He was very popular as attorney general," said Chris Borick, a political science professor and the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. "People liked what he did. And I think his demeanor - his straightforward, not very complicated style of communication - served him well in that job."

So well that Corbett handily won a second term in 2008, the year of Barack Obama's ascent to the presidency and of record Democratic registrations. In fact, it was Corbett's dominance in that race that sealed the decision by the state's top Republicans to recruit him to run for governor.

But the Capitol was a different playing field. And with some exceptions, the governor and many of the top staffers he brought in were not schooled in its rules or yet had the savvy to maneuver around them, said William J. Green, a Pittsburgh-based political analyst and a onetime aide to Republican Gov. Dick Thornburgh.

"Every governor faces a challenge," said Green, "but it's how you lead your way through them that defines you."

There is little dispute that Corbett faced a pretty big challenge. His Democratic predecessor, Gov. Ed Rendell, had arguably left him a financial mess, including a budget deficit topping $4 billion and few stashes of state money to help plug it.

Having taken a no-tax-pledge during the campaign, Corbett had few options.

So he chose to cut.

Corbett's first budget was a severely trimmed spending plan that he said separated "the must-haves" from the "nice-to-haves," but which the public quickly grew to despise.

Public education took one of the biggest hits, after the loss of federal stimulus dollars that had helped prop up public schools through the recession now dried up.

Schools shuttered popular programs or raised local taxes to continue offering them. Other districts, like Philadelphia, laid off teachers and saw class sizes swell.

As the public felt the pinch and anger grow, the administration, whether out of inexperience or as a conscious decision, remained largely silent.

That left others - Democrats, public teacher unions, and advocates for the poor (who also saw funding for their causes dwindle that first year) - to fill in the blanks and tell Corbett's story for him. Their message was unequivocal:

Corbett is heartless.

"People defined him on the budget decisions of that first year," said Alan Novak, the former chairman of the state Republican Party. "He's been trying to dig himself out of that hole ever since."

To this day, Corbett has a hard time stomaching the label.

Spend any one-on-one time with him, and it's easy to understand why. He's quick to smile and quicker to share a story. His growing brood of dogs offers him an endless amount of mirth, his young grandsons an endless supply of pride. Showing off portions of his residence last week in between campaign stops and telling stories about when they were built, Corbett was . . . nice.

He didn't have to be. The press has pounded him mercilessly for four years. Every gaffe has been analyzed, every policy defeat noted. He admits that has made him guarded.

When he sits down to make his case for another four years, there is no hollering, no hurling of objects, or even flashes of anger that some of his predecessors were infamous for.

He made tough decisions, he said, and they didn't make him popular.

"Go along to get along is not me," he said.

But the governor said he made them because he didn't think taxpayers could shoulder tax increases in a recession.

Despite the tough financial times, his administration pushed through major initiatives, including an alternative Medicaid expansion proposal that could extend health-care benefits to roughly 600,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians, and a massive $2.3 billion transportation funding bill to finance improvements to highways, bridges, and mass transit.

Then there is the school funding question. That one bothers him, he says, because he believes his record on education has been purposely misrepresented. He said his administration has increased the state's share of money for schools, found more money for early childhood education, and established new performance evaluation standards for teachers and performance profiles for schools.

"Look at where we are," he said. "Look at how we've improved."

It's a message he's pounded hard on the campaign trail these last few months, from appearances before editorial boards to chicken dinners at local party functions to fund-raisers with some of the biggest names in Republican politics.

Given a second act, he says he will continue his push for more and better job training, as well as two issues by now familiar to many: liquor privatization and pension reform. He didn't get them done this year, but he's not walking away from them, he said. And he believes he's better equipped now to get the job done than he was four years ago.

"I am more qualified now to be governor than when I took office," said Corbett. "Because of experience. I know the problems, I know the issues."

Yes, he says, he should have communicated better and earlier. But he's worked on that.

In some ways, he's still working on it.

At his residence last week, the governor opened the door to the foyer and unexpectedly saw a group of about 30 people, likely gathered for a tour. Another politician might have waded in to schmooze for votes.

Corbett, on a tight schedule, passed.

"I've always believed that if you do a good job, people are going to recognize it," Corbett said later. "I understand, though, that's not always going to be the case."

Age: 65. Born June 17, 1949, in Philadelphia.

Education: Bachelor's degree in political science, Lebanon Valley College, 1971; law degree, St. Mary's University School

of Law, San Antonio, 1975.

Professional experience: Assistant district attorney, Allegheny County, 1976-80; assistant U.S. attorney, 1980-83; private practice, 1983-89. U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, 1989-93; private practice, 1993-95; chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, 1995-2003.

Political experience: Appointed state attorney general to fill unexpired term, 1995-97; elected attorney general, 2004-11; governor, 2011-present.

Family: Wife, Susan. Two grown children, Katherine and Thomas. Three grandchildren.

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717-787-5934 @AngelasInk