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Could Gerlach’s exit actually make things easier for Dems?

With Jim Gerlach bowing out of the governor’s race and leaving Attorney General Tom Corbett as the GOP’s presumptive nominee, many political observers may assume Republicans now have an easier path to retaking the Governor’s Mansion.

But is that really the case?

Sure, Corbett has had to do little to garner media attention during his run for the state’s highest office, thanks to his now three-year long—with no end in sight—“Bonusgate” investigation, which purports to expose legislative corruption but which, to date, has seemed to target mostly Democratic office holders and staff, number of indictments aside. But accusations of partisanship by Corbett will only be strengthened by recent revelations that state Senator Jane Orie, the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, is being investigated for the exact same thing—asking staffers to work on state time to aid in the campaign of her sister, recently elected state Supreme Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin, the brightest of the lights in the state GOP’s November electoral victories.

Corbett’s office apparently missed Orie’s alleged misdeeds, however, as the investigation into improprieties in her office is being handled not by Corbett’s state-level grand jury but by an Allegheny County grand jury at the behest of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr.

Add to that the fact that former state Representative Sean Ramaley was found not guilty just last month in the only trial that has resulted so far from the Bonusgate investigation after what is widely considered to have been a politically motivated case intended to knock a rising star of the Democratic Party out of what was, at the time, the only competitive race for state Senate in Pennsylvania.

And while it is common political wisdom that it is always better to have your nominee decided on and the other guys battling it out in a primary, I’m not so sure that wisdom is always on target. Both political parties are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, and both can promote their own candidates while at the same time gathering opposition research against the other team. That task is much easier when the other team has already made its choice, especially when its choice has painted a target on himself through partisan overreaching in an office that is supposed to protect the interests of all Pennsylvanians in a non-partisan way.

While the state GOP will be left spending the primary season making the generic—and tired—accusations of liberal taxing and spending, big government and elitism toward a not-yet-decided Democratic nominee, Democrats can go to work on Corbett’s record.

January 8, 2010 at 10:57 am

--Tammy Alonso

Tags: Bonusgate, Jane Orie, Jim Gerlach, Joan Orie Melvin, Tom Corbett

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