Catching up…

Good afternoon political junkies.

Good to be back. We’re diving ninto things. But Harrisburg budget madness aside, post-July 4 is an inherently slow time of year for political news. So bear with us if things don’t exactly go from zero-to-sixty in the course of a day.

In the meantime, here are some important things we missed.

Friend-of-the-site Alex Roarty reports that Democratic Congressional candidate Doug Pike has half-a-million on hand. We’ll get an exact number when campaign finance reports come out soon. But if it’s anywhere even close to that, it means Pike continues to prove himself a formidable candidate, and like I wrote earlier, it seems unlikely any Democrats will seriously challenge him for the nomination.

Republican Damian Dachowski is starting to raise his profile in the 13th Congressional District. Here’s one of his first mentions in the local press. I hear MontCo Republicans are pretty enthusiastic about him. But can he raise the money it takes to really challenge a candidate as formidable as Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz?

And The Inquirer called out my colleagues for jumping the gun on Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) supposedly making his Senate run “official.” At the risk of tooting my own horn here, I can’t resist pointing out that I basically got this one right—or at minimum, didn’t fall for the bait.

More to come!