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LEFTOVERS: More F&M numbers, CQ forecasts, Onorato on revenue

The Franklin & Marshall College poll released Thursday didn’t just show Republicans leading in both of Pennsylvania’s statewide races. The survey also contained a litany of troubling data points for Democrats a couple months before Election Day.

Among the troublesome signs for Democrats:

•Almost 60 percent of Pennsylvanians say the state is heading in the wrong direction, while the 30 percent of residents who say things are moving in the right direction is the lowest in 15 years.

•A third of Pennsylvanians say their personal finances are worse off than a year ago.

•Only 37 percent of Pennsylvanians rate President Obama’s job performance as positive, and less than a third say the same about Gov. Ed Rendell.

Make no mistake, the winds are blowing against the Democratic Party. Now it’s up to them to just run better campaigns, all the way down to the wire.

Meanwhile, our friends at CQ-Roll Call have gone through the list of House races in play, and they’ve changed the forecast for a few Pennsylvania districts. The race in the 3rd District between incumbent Democrat Kathy Dahlkemper and Republican Mike Kelly has been moved from Leans Democratic to Tossup. The race in the 8th District between incumbent Democrat Patrick Murphy and Republican Mike Fitzpatrick has been moved from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic. And the 6th District has been downgraded, with the race between incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach and Democrat Manan Trivedi moved from Leans Republican to Likely Republican.

And finally, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato was still doing some tax-talk Thursday, after spending the previous two days hitting Republican rival Tom Corbett on the subject. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Corbett has signed a no-tax-pledge, which even some Republican leaders doubt he can uphold and which Onorato calls a “gimmick.” But appearing in Fox29 Thursday morning, Onorato did stress the importance of cutting spending before looking for opportunities to raise revenue.

This came after he verbally committed not to raise income taxes or sales taxes.

“The state’s broke, people are broke, this is no time talk about new revenues,” Onorato said (video embedded below). “Let’s get our expenditures under control.”

August 26, 2010 at 4:56 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Barack Obama, Dan Onorato, Ed Rendell, PA-3, PA-6, PA-8

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