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INSIDER INFO -- SEPTEMBER 2008
Mayor for life?
The good and the bad
The Sarah surge
Is there enough time?
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Mayor for life?
Harrisburg’s king of local politics, Steve Reed contemplates an eighth term, despite setbacks
It’s hard to look beyond the competitive and exciting presidential election two months from now, but in the world of local politics, the next campaign is never very far away.
The mayor has yet to formally announce his candidacy but he has been raising political campaign money so he apparently is running.
Matt Coulter, the mayor's spokesman, said: “He’s not said one way or another. He normally doesn’t announce it until January. He doesn’t plan to announce it until January.” Reed was first elected mayor in 1981, taking office in January, 1982.
However, despite definitive word from the mayor, speculation is brewing about who else may emerge to challenge him.
So far, sources say, the leading contender to take Reed on in the Democratic primary is Harrisburg City Council President Linda Thompson. She has been a vocal and frequent critic of the mayor during her two terms on council.
Les Ford, a former member of the Harrisburg School Board of Control and a Turnpike Commission staffer, is the only candidate to declare his intention to run in that primary.
“It looks like we may actually have a race this time,” Ford said.
“Harrisburg is a city that can be an excellent place to live, to work, to raise children and to participate in the community,” he added. “And Harrisburg needs to rise to that possibility.”
Thompson did not return calls or an e-mail seeking comment about a potential mayoral run.
Another frequently mentioned name in the mayoral sweepstakes had been Harrisburg City Councilman Dan Miller, but he told The Patriot-News in August that he wasn’t contemplating a run.
“As far as being mayor, it would be problematic for both my business and family life. I have no intention of disrupting either,” Miller said, when asked about a residents’ survey he was conducting at the time. Miller is a partner in a downtown accounting firm and was elected to council three years ago with the mayor’s backing. Since then, he has become the second most vocal critic after Thompson.
Many believed that frequent criticism signaled Miller’s plan to run in 2009, and the surveys, seeking input from residents on various policy and city issues, further fed that speculation.
As for Reed, the mayor has had more than his fair share of political setbacks in his seventh term in office. Those setbacks have been amplified because for the first time in two decades Reed has lost control of a council majority which in the past largely would pass his initiatives with little questioning.
Reed also has encountered financial troubles in the course of funding expensive upgrades to the city’s incinerator, which has long been a drain on city resources. And more recently, he has come under fire from unions representing the 53 employees of the Harrisburg Parking Authority, over a $215 million proposal to lease Harrisburg public parking facilities to a private operator.
Still, Reed friend and ally Fred Clark says the mayor will likely run for another term – and win.
“I believe that the mayor will run again,” said Clark, who runs a government relations and business development firm Clark Resources in Harrisburg. “I don’t see any reason why he should not.
“Of course, like very other metropolitan city that has gone through some troubled times because of the economy, he has weathered it, be it the incinerator, the sale of the baseball team, the possible sale of the parking garages, the takeover of the educational situation at the Harrisburg School District. All of these things would temper someone else from getting back into the public fray. I don’t see that being the case for him,”
Political analysts say that recent setbacks and challenges for Reed this term may make him more vulnerable to a challenger than in the past.
And like it or not, race could be a factor in the mayoral contest too. Reed is white but his city is majority African-American. Both potential challengers, Thompson and Ford, are black; Councilman Miller is white. Despite the racial imbalance against him, Reed has always succeeded in winning his Democratic primaries – at least in the past.
“He has always found a way to win elections and now he has more than the usual number of setbacks, and the question has always been the strength of his opponents. If he has to face Linda Thompson, he will now face a very serious and tough opponent. I don't know if she will be successful, but he could be in for the toughest election of his career.”
While various sources say Thompson is weighing a run, one, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she may be rethinking that course. If she ran for mayor, Thompson would likely have to forego running for re-election to council.
The source noted the failed campaign of former City Councilwoman Sandra Mosten, who took on Reed two elections ago and lost, then saw her political influence wane
“It’s a pretty big gamble, if she’s carving out a good position for herself as president of the City Council and an independent power base,” the source said of Thompson’s potential run
But the source said if Thompson did run, “especially if it was one on one, she would be a very significant threat” to Reed, but not a sure winner.
Clark said: “I think any candidate who chooses to run for mayor of Harrisburg will always cause a great interest, not only because of the number of years [Reed’s] been mayor but because of the risk and the daring and the bold initiatives he takes on. Whoever that candidate is, there’s always going to be a heated and friendly debate.”
Reed accomplishments 1983-2008:
Under Steve Reed’s long stewardship, both he and the city have been the recipients of a number of honors and awards. But here are some of the highlights of his mayoral tenure.
The Sarah surge McCain’s pick of the conservative Alaska governor, a mother of five, is helping him with GOP voters
What a difference a veep choice makes!
That was the joyous cry of Republicans around Pennsylvania and the nation since the Republican National Convention ended a week ago.
Picking Palin, an upstart small town mayor who became Alaska’s governor 20 months ago by ousting Gov. Frank Murkowski, after he spent 22 years as governor and U.S. senator for Alaska, reinforced McCain’s image as a maverick reformer, polls and analysts indicated. It also bought a female element to his ticket: Palin is the mother of five, including a five-month-old Downs Syndrome son.
“This is the first time in American history where a vice presidential selection has changed the nature of an entire president election,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College. F&M hosted the first McCain-Palin trip to Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
Madonna added: “All the polling data so far indicates she has helped energize the GOP base, including social conservatives, and that is why this race is tied now, not because it brought over a lot of independent or swing voters to the Republican ticket.
And there are two other groups of potential help she can bring to the ticket -- helping McCain attract Hillary Clinton working-class Catholic and elderly voters. But she probably has a better chance of winning them, than the second group, middle-income, middle-class women voters, especially in the Philadelphia suburbs, who support abortion rights, and favor some gun control. Yet that is a group where Obama has not yet sealed the deal, and an important group, but a harder group to see Palin winning over to McCain.
In an election which will likely come down to whether fervent Obama supporters in the black community and suburban liberal regions are more excited about him than Republicans and conservatives are about McCain, Palin has supplied new juice to the McCain campaign.
“The enthusiasm gap was pretty severe between the Republicans and the Democrats,” Madonna told Capitolwire, a Harrisburg-based Internet news service. “That enthusiasm gap, that Democrats are more excited about Obama than Republicans are about McCain, still exists, but Palin has helped knock it down a lot.”
Quinnipiac reported voters in all three states say the Palin choice was a good one: 55-33 in Pennsylvania; 60 – 26 in Florida and 57- 30 in Ohio.
Since August 26, McCain’s support among white women rose four percentage points in Ohio and five in Pennsylvania while dropping by two percentage points in Florida, where more white woman voters supported McCain in the August poll.
And then Palin made her second Pennsylvania appearance in a week on Sept. 9 and was greeted by bigger roars and cheers than McCain in Lancaster. Incidentally, the two were each allotted the same amount of time to speak.
Palin’s crowd roars were essentially equal to the public reception Obama got in this GOP stronghold the previous week.
Obama, appearing elsewhere, said the McCain-Palin campaign’s claims of being reformers were laughable, but he phrased it in a way that caused controversy.
He said calling that pair reformers when they support all of President Bush’s major policies and initiatives was like “putting lipstick on a pig.” Republican women officials immediately called that an anti-woman insult of Palin.
It wasn’t a direct reference to Palin, but it was the kind of dumb remark, along with Obama’s famous description of Pennsylvania rural voters as “bitter” and “clinging to guns and religion,” that cause the Democratic nominee problems in the polls.
Especially because it is becoming increasingly clear that in addition to boosting the Democratic margin in the cities, eastern suburbs and getting a 400,000 or more vote margin out of Philadelphia, Obama has to keep from getting beaten big in western Pennsylvania and Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Right now, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, polls show neither Obama nor McCain are doing well, and undecided voters are more than one in four.
And western Pennsylvania is looming as a major voter-gain territory for McCain, partly because, as Obama admitted in York recently, “People still don’t believe I would cut taxes for the middle class more than John McCain, even though it is indisputably true. … Even conservative analysts say that. … So we’ve got some work to do to get that message out.”
That message will help Obama, but right now, the state is a toss-up, or a slight lean to Obama, which is the best McCain has done here so far.
And the best evidence Pennsylvania Democrats are worried about McCain and Palin? That they are trotting out the “L” word: Liars.
Gov. Ed Rendell, who generally avoids referring to other politicians as “liars” or to say they are “lying”, said just that about McCain and Palin in conference calls this week with reporters about the GOP pair’s claim to be reformers. Democratic State Committee Chairman T.J. Rooney did the same thing.
As long time followers of state politics know, generally if one side says the other side is lying, it means the name-callers are not only losing the argument but are getting beyond outraged and nearing toward desperation in the exchange.
And in Pennsylvania, McCain and Palin’s biggest problem is that President Bush and his record are vastly unpopular. That is why McCain, who spent a year swearing to be a loyal conservative Republican when winning his party’s nomination, is now branding himself a “maverick” and telling GOP audiences “I don’t work for any political party.”
And that is why Obama is running an ad quoting McCain – during the primary season - saying he votes with the president 90 percent of the time, and Obama says on the stump: “a 10 percent chance of change is not enough.”
And that is why McCain is trying to rebrand himself as a maverick reformer: to separate himself from Bush, who is extremely unpopular – with poll ratings in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania that are lower than the about-to-resign Richard Nixon in 1974.
As Madonna said: “it used to be there were only a few turning points in a race and they would occur weeks apart. Now there is a new storyline every two or three days and there are a lot of changes and events and new polls coming in the next eight weeks or so.”
Is there enough time? Senate Majority Leader Pileggi insists there is, even though the fall legislative session is just 9 days long
The state Senate may only be planning on holding nine legislative session days this fall before adjourning for the year, but Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi says there’s enough time to delve into a number of major policy issues, from health care to energy.
For Pileggi, devising a strategy to deal with anticipated increases in the cost of electricity in a few years, when current rate caps expire for about three-fourths of Pennsylvania energy consumers, should be the “highest priority” for the Legislature during that time.
And he says all four legislative caucuses have been meeting with top staffers of Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration to hash out a compromise on another contentious issue: health care and the future of a medical malpractice subsidy for the state’s doctors.
Pileggi isn’t promising results on any of these issues.
Pileggi, for his part, will be putting a lot of energy behind legislation to mitigate the impact of electric rate caps ending.
“That is, to me, the issue that will impact Pennsylvanians most directly and most broadly,” Pileggi said.
The challenge, Pileggi said, will be deciding on how to temper the rate shock for consumers and whether utilities should be able to recoup the losses from any restrictions the Legislature decides to put on their ability to increase rates after caps end.
The question is “how much of that should be recoverable in the long run and how much of that should be coming out of the utilities’ profits that they would otherwise make? That is not a settled issue,” Pileggi said.
After a decade or more of rates being frozen at 1996 levels, representatives of utilities and electric generators say utilities must be able to recoup the losses from any restrictions on rate increases – what lawmakers term mitigating the rate shock. Otherwise, utilities will be bankrupted by mounting costs on the wholesale market. That would essentially mean higher bills down the road for consumers in exchange for cheaper bills now.
As for the health care issue, Pileggi said he expects the Senate will continue to push hard for the medical malpractice MCARE Fund subsidy for doctors. That subsidy was created in 2003 to help doctors saddled with soaring malpractice insurance bills, which are particularly higher in Pennsylvania because of the legal climate here.
MCARE has yet to be renewed for the current year. That is because Gov. Ed Rendell and House Democrats have insisted on a plan to expand state-subsidized health care for the uninsured before agreeing to continue the MCARE subsidy.
Senate Republicans, who oppose the expanded health care plan but strongly support the continuation of the MCARE subsidy, complained bitterly about that tactic, but have since responded in kind.
In late June, the Senate, with enthusiastic support from GOP leaders, passed legislation tying the reauthorization of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council to the continuation of the MCARE subsidy.
The law authorizing the council, a state agency that collects and reports on health data, expired at midnight on June 30, and Rendell wanted a clean reauthorization bill. After the Senate GOP insisted on tying it to the MCARE subsidy, House Democrats refused to move the bill in that chamber. Rendell subsequently kept the agency alive with an executive order, but legislative action is necessary to keep it going beyond November.
All this would suggest a toxic atmosphere for resolving the health care issue, but representatives of state doctors and hospital groups say they are optimistic that a common ground can be reached.
Pileggi was neutral on the prospect of compromise, but said meetings were ongoing through August and this month to try to get there.
“I think it will be difficult to get the necessary votes to continue the Health Care Cost Containment Council, without the continuation of the MCARE abatement program,” Pileggi said. “Hopefully, we won’t have to make that choice, and we’re working to try to advance both of them and not pick one or another.”
Pileggi said there was also time for the Senate to take up a “limited” version of legislation calling for the state treasury and pension systems to divest of investments that are linked to Iran and Sudan.
That legislation, championed by Rep. Josh Shapiro, D-Montgomery, deputy speaker of the House, was approved by in that chamber earlier this year.
“In its simplest form, I think it has broad support in the caucus,” Pileggi said of that bill. “But when it starts to expand, the more it expands, the more it loses support.”
He said the bill could see some movement in the Senate as long as it is “limited in a way that it doesn’t cause a negative impact on the financial health of the pension system, and at the same time achieves the objectives of not having investments in objectionable countries.”
Pileggi said the House would also watch the progress of legislation likely to be taken up in the House aimed at overhauling the state’s dog law to crack down on inhumane breeding practices.
“I think there’s generally strong support in our caucus to see some of the egregious practices that occur in dog breeding in Pennsylvania reformed and changed,” Pileggi said. “But as to the specifics of the bill and the particular amendments that have been drafted to the bill, it’s really premature to comment on that, until we see what the House is willing to support.”
Pileggi downplayed the likelihood of the Senate taking up more reform bills in the fall. Despite the call of Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, and others to do just that, Pileggi noted that seven reform bills approved by the Senate have not moved in the House. They include measures to eliminate state employee bonuses, limit the number of take-home vehicles for state employees and make more information available online.
“The best and most productive use of time in the limited fall session would be for the House to send those bills to the governor and have them become law,” Pileggi said. “If we started with a special session and started the process over again, I don’t know that the House would be any more receptive to the reform legislation that we send them in the special session than they were with the reform legislation that we have already sent them in the regular session.”
Pileggi also told Capitolwire that recent state revenue figures, which have put collections for the year $117.5 million, or 3 percent, below estimate, don’t necessarily signal the start of a major budget deficit going into next year.
He echoed Revenue Secretary Tom Wolfe, who cautioned that it was too early to “jump to any conclusions about where collections will be at the end of the fiscal year.”
Pileggi said: “Although it is always preferable to have a surplus, we are only two months into the 2008-09 fiscal year and it is too soon to draw conclusions.”
But then Pileggi signaled that any big spending or tax plans Rendell might have in mind during his last two years in office will be met with as much of a welcome from Senate Republicans as his other higher spending proposals have been under the reign of Pileggi and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.
Pileggi said that “these revenue figures do reinforce the importance of a restrained budget in tough economic times, which is why Senate Republicans worked hard to control state spending over the past two years. We will continue our push for fiscal responsibility going forward.”
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