Terry's Elections Guide and Predictions: Pennsylvania
Governor (Democratic-held)
Ed Rendell (D) 57 - Lynn Swann (R) 42
So Lynn Swann is now overrated as a football player, broadcaster and political candidate. I have yet to figure out either why Swann took the lead last spring or why Rendell so effectively bounced back, but you have to give Team Rendell credit for staying calm and waiting for Swann to make a couple of stupid remarks to show that he wasn't ready for the job. Ed Rendell is a fantastic campaigner, from his days in Philly politics straight up to his tenure as DNC chair, and it's no surprise that he knows how this works.
Senate (Republican-held)
Bob Casey Jr. (D) 55 - Rick Santorum (R) 45
Rick Santorum is one of the most awful members of the Senate, completely sanctimonious and eager to make this country a theocracy. To his credit, he has never vacillated on his positions, even writing a book on his opinions on American culture last year that was an opposition researcher's dream, but he's still well beyond right-wing. Casey faced troubles early when pro-choice activists resented the way establishment Democrats anointed Casey, who is pro-life, as the party's Senate nominee and discouraged anyone else from running. I think the criticisms are a little unfair; the only other serious potential candidate I knew of was the state treasurer who had switched parties only four years ago, which doesn't exactly fire up the partisan base either. Besides, although I'm vigorously pro-choice, I don't resent Casey both because he's relentlessly progressive on most issues from education to the environment to unions and because I understand that a Democratic Senate will be far more supportive of the right to choose than the Senate we have now. If someone wants to find a more progressive primary challenger to Casey in 2012 who will win the general election, be my guest. Fortunately, it looks like my worst fears will not be realized and Casey will be able to pull this one out, all the more surprising because I thought Rick Santorum was supposed to be a fantastic campaigner. (He has, after all, carried this politically split state twice.) As Chris Bowers said on MyDD, Santorum should have run as a conservative in Pennsylvania's conservative areas and an elder statesman fighting for federal funding everywhere else, and he should have attacked Casey from the left in the suburbs just to confuse everyone there. As it is, it looks like Casey's strategy of not doing anything and hoping this race really never happens seems to be paying off. I'm not complaining.
PA-04 (Republican-held)
Melissa Hart (R) 51 - Jason Altmire (D) 49
Literally all I know about this race is that it's in the Pittsburgh suburbs and Hart has somehow gone from safe incumbent to toss-up in about a week. This pick is based on my increasing pessimism, so I'll go ahead and hope I'm wrong.
PA-06 (Republican-held)
Lois Murphy (D) 51 - Jim Gerlach (R) 49
It's hard to tell apart all these competitive suburban Philadelphia districts; the longtime Republican area started trending Democratic in the 1990s when Bill Clinton did such a terrific job as president and the national Republican Party started advocating theocracy. Here, Harvard Law alum Lois Murphy is making her second run at Gerlach after picking up 49% of the vote in 2004. Murphy has led in most polls this time around, but the NRCC has been making robo-calls that call people between 5am and 6am, saying "This is a call about Lois Murphy," then pausing for a long time to make people think Lois Murphy is calling them that early in the morning. The call eventually goes through a litany of anti-Murphy material.
PA-07 (Republican-held)
Joe Sestak (D) 54 - Curt Weldon (R) 44
This is one of the races I most hope turns Democratic. Curt Weldon, besides being your run-of-the-mill archconservative, co-chaired a congressional event for Sun Myung Moon of "Moonie" and owning the Washington Times fame. He also planned a congressional expedition to find WMD in Iraq himself. So that's bad. He then attacked his Democratic opponent, Joe Sestak, for not sending his daughter to a Pennsylvania hospital, even though Children's Hospital in DC was the only hospital that could treat his daughter's malignant brain tumor; Weldon refused to apologize. So Curt Weldon is an asshole. Weldon has a daughter too, and it recently came to light that Weldon is under federal investigation for using his congressional influence to steer contracts to his daughter's business. Sestak, on the other hand, is a 31-year naval veteran who retired at the rank of vice admiral. So I really hope Sestak wins this race. He was a netroots candidate from the start and won over establishment Democrats and political observers quickly. He'll be a terrific congressman.
PA-08 (Republican-held)
Mike Fitzpatrick (R) 51 - Patrick Murphy (D) 48
This is a tough one to give to the GOP, because I think Patrick Murphy is a fantastic candidate too. Murphy is an Iraq War vet and Fitzgerald is only a first-term congressman, but most recent polls have shown Murphy behind by a larger margin than I'd like. I still think this will be close, but for some reason we don't seem to be pulling this one out.
PA-10 (Republican-held)
Chris Carney (D) 54 - Don Sherwood (R) 45
This is the most conservative of the contested Pennsylvania districts, but it's also the most likely to flip because Don Sherwood had to go and assault his mistress. This is the race that provided the impetus for the strategy to contest every district; Sherwood's affair came to light in the middle of 2004 but there was literally no Democrat running against him. This is one of the few campaigns where the Mark Foley scandal had an impact: Carney maximized the effect by running an ad where a Republican who had previously supported Sherwood said he didn't know how he could tell his daughter what her congressman had done. This is another likely pickup.