Corbett, Onorato score big primary wins

Democrat Dan Onorato and Republican Tom Corbett won convincing victories in Tuesday's gubernatorial primary and will face off in what promises to be a hard-fought November election battle between two Pittsburghers generally seen as pragmatists.

Onorato, 49, the Allegheny County executive, said he didn't pay heed to the view of some in politics that Corbett, the state attorney general, starts as the favorite.

"I look forward to having a debate with Tom Corbett," Onorato said from a union hall in Pittsburgh, "and I am confident that, at the end of the process, the voters will be with us."

Corbett, 60, said his party hungered for victory.

"They want to win in November," he said from a Pittsburgh hotel. "They want change in Harrisburg."

Onorato easily beat back a late charge by state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia, who received a $2 million cash infusion in the final days of the campaign and was able to dominate local airwaves at the close of the race.

State Auditor General Jack Wagner came in second. Williams, who ended up finishing third in the four-way race, said his late-starting campaign never had time to fully connect with voters.

"Pennsylvanians really want to get to know who they are voting for in an election," he said.

Williams was hurt by low voter turnout in rain-soaked Philadelphia, as was former City Controller Jonathan Saidel, the endorsed Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.

With nearly all votes counted, Saidel was trailing state Rep. Scott Conklin of Centre County for the No. 2 spot on the party ticket.

Corbett will be joined on the fall GOP ticket by Bucks County Commissioner Jim Cawley, who won a nine-candidate scramble for his party's second slot. Running close behind was businessman Chet Beiler of Lancaster County, who cast himself as the true-conservative choice over Cawley, the endorsed choice of party leaders.

The Republican battle for governor, in which Corbett had every advantage over state Rep. Sam Rohrer - money, name-recognition and party support - never figured to be all that close.

Rohrer had a small but dedicated following of conservatives and antitax activists. He dominated Berks County, with 80 percent of the vote, but struggled to make himself widely known across the state.

It was the Democratic primary, with four serious candidates, that attracted the greater attention.

Unknown to eastern Pennsylvania voters when he entered the race in October, Onorato made himself known with millions of dollars in TV ads before his opponents were able to get on the air.

He jumped out to a lead of 20 points or more in polls, and his opponents were never able to drag him back to the pack.

Onorato last night said he didn't know why Williams' ad campaign didn't have more bite with voters.

"Alls I know is, we stayed focused on what we were doing," he said. "We talked about jobs, and we talked about reform. . . . People want somebody from the outside to go up there and change things in Harrisburg."

Wagner, who twice had won statewide office by large margins, was not projected to finish as high as second in public polls. He clearly had strength that didn't show up in voter surveys.

Though he had far less money for ads than either Onorato or Wagner, he had spent many years building loyalty among party leaders and regular Democrats in cities, towns and hamlets across the state's 67 counties.

He wasn't dominant anywhere, not even in his home area of Pittsburgh, but his pockets of strength added up to No. 2 finish.

Still, that was a setback for Wagner, a wounded Vietnam veteran who once beat Onorato in a race for a state senate seat and who, at age 60, is the senior of the two men.

Hoeffel, who had hoped to be the only Philadelphia region candidate, was undercut when Williams got into the race in February.

Incomplete returns showed Hoeffel getting only about half the vote even in his home county. That led to a last-place finish in the state as a whole.

Williams' hopes had been built almost entirely on Philadelphia. He had hoped to get at least 270,000 city votes. But the entire vote in the governor's race - for all four candidates - fell far short of that.

The Democratic leader of the Third Ward and the chairman of a bloc of African American ward leaders, Williams got a little more than half the city's votes. Onorato got about a quarter. Hoeffel ran third in the city; Wagner, fourth.

Gov. Rendell, who remained officially neutral in the primary for governor, is expected to throw his political weight behind the Democratic ticket this fall in an effort to preserve his legacy. A win for his party will be perceived as a win, in part, for him.

But in a year of voter anger with the status quo in many places, Republicans feel good about their chances of winning the governorship for the first time since 1998.

History is on the GOP side. The two parties have taken turns holding the office every eight years since governors were first permitted by a revised state constitution to run for a second term in 1970. If that pattern holds, this would be the Republicans' turn.

The public's view of the primary battle differed from area to area across the state.

Onorato and Wagner, who shared a Pittsburgh base, dominated the view from Western Pennsylvania, where both are widely known and have been on the ballot many times.

Hoeffel's campaign, based in the Philadelphia suburbs, was most visible on the ground there.

But if a voter turned on a television or radio in Philadelphia, it almost seemed as if Williams were the only candidate.

With a $2.1 million in cash donations over the last 11 days of the campaign - largely from three Bala Cynwyd executives who like his stance on school vouchers - Williams pounded the airwaves with ads.

They were mainly aimed at dragging down Onorato, with a little help from Mayor Nutter and Rendell.

Rendell, whose top allies and biggest campaign donors mainly favored Onorato, had vowed to stay out of the primary.

But last week, at a meeting of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, Rendell said some very nice things about Williams, including that some of his ideas were visionary and that he had earned people's support.

The Williams campaign quickly turned that into a radio ad suggesting Rendell had endorsed Williams. His forces pounded the airwaves with that commercial almost right up until the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday.