Wolf faces tough second-half fight

CONNELLSVILLE, Pa. — For about 45 minutes, the scene at Highlands Hospital on Friday looked like a textbook illustration on how government should work. There was Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf in a conference room, flanked by three local Republican state legislators, listening to doctors, local officials, and a grieving mother discuss how to address the plague of opioid abuse.

"We all just want to make sure that we're doing in Harrisburg what we can," Mr. Wolf said.

It's a frequently expressed sentiment for the governor, who is half-way through a four-year term but already drawing Republican challengers and facing a less convivial government in Washington D.C.

"The folks in Pennsylvania don't like gridlock," he said in an interview afterwards. "They want to get something done."

Among the things he boasts of having done so far: signing bills to legalize medical marijuana, liberalize sales of beer and wine, and to address the opioids problem, including more thorough monitoring and control of pain-medication prescriptions.

"I've been helpful, in ways that prior governors have not been helpful, to get these things across the finish line," Mr. Wolf said.

Conservatives, unsurprisingly, don't share that assessment.

Charlie Gerow, a Republican political consultant, said Mr. Wolf is "pointing to things that are political lay-ups: I haven't found anybody who is against treating people with opioid addiction."

And Mr. Wolf has presided over gridlock too: a nine-month budgetary standoff with the Republican-controlled legislature. The fracas badly stressed the finances of school districts and human-service agencies.

"I get asked all the time" if the fight was worth it, Mr. Wolf said. It's a hard question to answer, he said, but in his first two budgets, he'd raised education spending by more than half a billion dollars. "We've supported education in a stronger way than any administration, in any two-year period," he said.

"I think he's done pretty well in very difficult circumstances," said Marc Stier, who directs the left-of-center Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. "He's been reined in by budgetary difficulties he didn't create, and by a General Assembly that doesn't recognize the problems. But despite that, he's found more money for education and human services."

Still, the second half of his term doesn't figure to be any easier.

One of Mr. Wolf's signature decisions was to accept federal dollars to extend Medicaid health coverage for some 700,000 Pennsylvanians. But that initiative is jeopardized by President-elect Donald Trump's plan to roll back President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms, which made the Medicaid expansion possible. A roll back would put at risk some 63,000 Pennsylvanians being treated for opioid and other drug abuse.

"Twenty years from now, I'll be saying extending Medicaid was a big piece of the Wolf administration," said Antoinette Kraus, executive director of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network. But unless Mr. Trump crafts an adequate replacement plan, "There's a real fear about how you maintain the dollars."

In the meantime, Mr. Wolf has drawn a challenge from state Senator Scott Wagner, a York County Republican firebrand who called Mr. Wolf a "failed governor" and a "roadblock" during a Murrysville rally on Thursday. He blasted Mr. Wolf for the budget standoff, saying he "decided he was going to hold everyone hostage because he was right."

Other Republican lawmakers, including state House Speaker Mike Turzai and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, may also jump into the race.

That means future budget talks and other proposals "are going to be done in the context of a gubernatorial election," said Terry Madonna, a Franklin & Marshall College pollster and veteran Harrisburg observer. "We're already in campaign mode."

But while the 2016 election delivered even larger Republican margins in the state legislature, Mr. Wolf said he and Republicans can find common ground on issues like patching up a $60 billion hole in the state pension fund. Republicans haven't been able to settle on a plan, but Mr. Wolf said, "There have been a number of permutations of a pension agreement I would sign."

The governor also has pledged not to try raising the sales or personal income tax in the budget he will propose next month. "That's a categorical: The budget will not have that," he said.

Mr. Gerow said there may be room to maneuver on such issues. "Republicans will work with him on a reasonable budget that doesn't ask taxpayers to hand over more of their hard-earned money," he said. "But for Tom Wolf politically, it may too little, too late."

Privately, some Democrats admit to similar misgivings, as Mr. Trump's victory has stirred up anxiety about the state's political landscape. "Obviously there is concern about Wolf's reelection," said Mr. Madonna, whose polls have shown Mr. Wolf's approval ratings hovering around 40 percent. Still, that's 10 points higher than his predecessor, Tom Corbett, often posted. Mr. Madonna said that while Mr. Wolf did little politicking for much of the past two years, "In the past three months he's been everywhere."

"You gotta be careful about panicking," said Mr. Wolf. But he said he'd fought for economic fairness as a politician and, before his 2014 election, as a businessman. "I think the voters in the end will decide ... they like the idea of having a governor who believes those things in his gut, as well as in his heart."

Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2533.