The longtime incumbent beat Lackawanna Commissioner Corey O’Brien in the Democratic primary Tuesday, winning about 49 percent of the vote, according to preliminary returns. O’Brien had run an energetic albeit underfunded race, and may have prevailed under different circumstances. But a third candidate in the primary, Brian Kelly, won more than 11,000 votes, numbers that would have meant the difference to O’Brien.

Kanjorski, often considered one of the more vulnerable Democrats in Congress if for no other reason than his two-decades-plus incumbency, will now face Barletta for the third time in eight years.

“I thank the Democratic voters in the 11th District for their support today in our solid victory over two hard fighting challengers,” Kanjorski said in a statement. “Many people in northeastern Pennsylvania are still fighting through tough times and they deserve to have a representative who is fighting for them.

“Make no mistake,” he added, “11th District voters will face a real choice this November. If I am fortunate enough to be reelected I will continue to put the needs of the people of northeast Pennsylvania first, ahead of corporate special interests. I will continue to fight for lower taxes for the middle class and tougher regulations on Wall Street.”

O’Brien had run a campaign heavy on field work, and had been called the most competitive House primary challenger in the country. But in the end, Kanjorski’s name recognition and large late-campaign TV blitz proved to be too much. His campaign did not return messages seeking comment late Tuesday night.

Kanjorski beat Barletta in 2002, and barely edged by him in 2008, when a wave of Democratic support helped push him over the finish line. Analysts are expecting another close race. In a statement, Barletta noted that Kanjorski, according to unofficial return numbers, had failed to crack the 50-percent mark.

“These were not good numbers for Paul Kanjorski,” he said. “The unofficial returns show that a majority of voters in Mr. Kanjorski’s own party have rejected him. If you add in my vote totals, it’s an overwhelming rejection of Mr. Kanjorski. This is a great indicator for the general election.”

The race is currently ranked No. 4 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Politico reports on an e-mail that was sent from Kanjorski’s legislative director to a campaign staffer, a message that included a document with contact information for interns who worked in Kanjorski’s government office. House ethics rules stipulate that “internal office files… may not be used for campaign or political purposes.”

Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell told Politico he could not “authenticate that these supposed emails have not been altered,”  but also conceded that “maybe the intern list should’ve been handled better.”

The e-mail has also been reviewed by pa2010.com, and appears, at first glance, to be authentic.

Kanjorski is favored to win renomination on Tuesday, but is facing an energetic challenge from O’Brien, a Lackawanna County Commissioner.

The northeast Pennsylvania district is ranked No. 4 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

•Also on pa2010.com: O’Brien hopes field campaign can overcome Kanjorski

“You should have worn your sneakers today,” one aide remarks to a reporter.

This is how O’Brien, a Democratic Lackawanna County Commissioner, has spent evenings and weekends for the last several months, and how he’ll spend his days and nights for the final two weeks—he’s officially on vacation—before his primary showdown with Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11). Unseating an incumbent in a primary is one of the more impossible political tasks out there, and O’Brien has his work cut out for him. Kanjorski entered the homestretch with a campaign war chest totaling about 25 times what O’Brien had in the bank, and the longtime congressman has all political benefits incumbency provides in a primary, with few of the liabilities it yields in November.

But O’Brien is unfazed, confident—and more full of energy than one is used to seeing in politics. He’s been called the most competitive House primary challenger in the country, and while conventional wisdom says he’ll get blown out of the water on Tuesday, O’Brien says his upset win will be nothing but expected.

“I don’t care what some pundits might say about the race,” O’Brien told pa2010.com while riding on his campaign RV earlier this month. “I see it every day. People are going to say on May 18 that this is ‘a shocker, a surprise.’ I’m not going to be surprised.”

The RV is very much the hub of his campaign, and contained within it is a full-office-hybrid of old-school retailing campaigning and savvy, technology-driven voter targeting and database management. O’Brien can’t compete with Kanjorski’s presence on TV in the closing weeks, nor with the name recognition afforded by more than 20 years in office. So he’s going door-to-door.

But he’s doing so with precision. Though the RV travels far and wide, his campaign is most heavily targeting a strip in the northeast part of the district that accounts for more than two-thirds of the Democratic electorate. Using barcoded lists of voters, O’Brien and his aides knock on doors, talk issues and gauge whether a potential vote is there (voters are ranked 1-5, one being a definite O’Brien vote, five being a definite Kanjorski vote). For anyone but the staunchest Kanjorski supporters, the respective barcode is scanned once back on the RV, information on what issues were discussed is input, and a form letter to be signed by O’Brien is instantly generated and printed in the RV, which has all the trappings of a mobile office.

All of this stays on an organized campaign database, and anyone whose door O’Brien knocks on will get a letter from him within two days. The ones most on the fence will surely hear from him again personally. As of early last week, 35,000 voters had been contacted. His campaign predicts 70,000 will cast their ballots in the primary, and plans to have contacted 50,000 by then.

“This is a very high-level, very technology-driven field operation,” O’Brien says. “I don’t think you’re going to find a field operation anywhere near as well organized as this one.”

It has to be pretty much perfect. There’s no margin for error in this kind of a campaign. He took a risk by going on the airwaves all the way back in January—insanely early to most political operatives—hoping to break through while televisions were still devoid of political ads. He started pulling back when statewide candidates began saturating the airwaves, and went dark in late April (there’s a particularly high concentration of commercials here right now because of a competitive state Senate race).

Kanjorski, meanwhile, has run very much the classic incumbent campaign, seemingly far more concerned about a rematch against Republican Lou Barletta in the fall. He’s sent the franked mail from Washington that all incumbents do, had aides on the ground more recently, and has flooded the airwaves late in the game. What little institutional support O’Brien enjoys has come in the form the occasional labor backers here or a newspaper endorsement there.

Ed Mitchell, Kanjorski’s longtime campaign spokesman, says his boss isn’t worried.

“Corey O’Brien is broke, he hasn’t been on TV since April 26, he has done no mail and basically it’s been a failed campaign,” Mitchell said. “He has the benefit of the wind at his back because of the anti-politician feeling in the country, so I don’t know whether he’ll benefit from that or whether [voters will] see that Congressman Kanjorski stands up them here.”

O’Brien campaign manager Justin Carroll says it’s all part of the plan.

“We always knew that Paul Kanjorski was going to outspend us by some large margin to one,” Carroll says. “Knowing that, and knowing his campaign style—which has no door-to-door but involves touting his accomplishments from Washington—we had to determine how to use our resources.

“We’ve had a tight rope to walk this whole time,” Carroll adds, “staying on message, getting that message out to voters and doing it in a cost-effective way.”

To see O’Brien in action on the ground is to see the kind of campaigning that seemed lost to earlier days and hyper-local races, deemed obsolete in an expensive TV state like Pennsylvania. O’Brien and four staffers fan out on the streets, while the driver stays behind the wheel and inches behind them. Aides knock on doors, and when a voter is located, they wave over O’Brien—who will stop mid-sentence and break into a sprint in that direction. One voter says his grass is growing in poorly, so O’Brien crouches down to the ground and checks it out. Another man says taxes are issue No. 1, and O’Brien quickly rattles off statistics about how taxes were kept steady in Lackawanna County. A couple of voters teach him about how car brakes work. One elderly woman say she hasn’t heard from Kanjorski in a while.

“Do you know the last time Paul Kanjorski knocked on her door?” O’Brien asks later. “It was never. That matters.

Before long, the team has made three dozen contacts in less than half an hour.

“We have to move fast,” O’Brien says bluntly, somehow not sweating from the sun-soaked jogging session he’s undertaken.

In the end, the results on Tuesday will prove a test case of whether this type of campaigning can work when scaled to the level of a vast congressional district. One Democratic insider familiar with the district says O’Brien just might be able to pull it off.

“The guy works,” the insider said. “He works his butt off. He’ll knock on his many doors as possible in a 10- or 12-hour day, and that’s what he’s been doing. It’s still a tough task, but I think he’s got a really legitimate chance.”

But another Democratic insider said Kanjorski’s financial advantage would simply prove too great to overcome.

“It doesn’t seem like he has enough money to mount a genuine challenge in a Democratic primary where Kanjorski still retains broad popularity,” this insider said. “You need a lot of money if you want to topple the king.”

For now, in between stops, campaign aides run slant patterns and O’Brien throws the football half-a-block. Holding clipboards, they’ve clearly grown adept and one-handed catches. One aide laments that the football occasionally hits a car—hardly good politics. But O’Brien says it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

“Imagine if we didn’t have the football, the music, the RV—how boring it would be,” he says. “You’ve got to keep the energy up.”

The Tribune-Review made its picks for the Senate race, backing Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak. “Mr. Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, could not be a better messenger for the Democrats’ agenda,” the newspaper wrote. “He’s incredibly intelligent, thoughtful and articulate. And his expertise on matters military is impressive.” The editorial page also said that “Toomey’s conservative credentials are rock solid and he’s a voice of economic sanity so rare in politics today.”

In the gubernatorial primaries, The Tribune-Review backed Republican Tom Corbett and Democrat Jack Wagner. Both were also endorsed by The Inquirer on the other side of Pennsylvania.

Democratic front-runner Dan Onorato, for his part, got the endorsement of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. “As the Allegheny County executive since 2004,” the newspaper wrote, “Onorato has seen firsthand the difficulties local governments have faced during this recession. He understands what it means for counties when the state is late on a budget.”

And there were some big endorsements in House races, too. The Tribune-Democrat endorsed Democrat Mark Critz for the special election to finish out John Murtha’s term in the 12th Congressional District. “In an era when party politics trumps common sense and cooperation, Critz offers voters a candidate who would work from within to forge relationships and make decisions that positively impact his district and the nation,” the newspaper wrote.

The Tribune-Democrat also had some harsh words for Republican Tim Burns. “We fear Burns is merely a puppet for his party,” it wrote. “Burns’ rhetoric seldom wavers from the GOP national platform, and his knowledge of the local issues and players across the 12th district puts him far behind Critz—who has been working on community projects and with those local individuals for 10 years.”

And insurgent Democratic challenger Corey O’Brien got the hometown paper’s endorsement over incumbent Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11). The Times Leader called the Lackawanna County Commissioner “a go-getter. … He offers the district’s Democratic voters an option they haven’t seen much lately: fresh ideas and a fresh face.”

Kanjorski raised about $44,000 during the month, and spent more than $267,00o, leaving him with still close to a million bucks in the bank three weeks before the primary, according to campaign finance data. Political watchers consider Kanjorski an easy favorite over Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien thanks to his big money edge and the inherent difficulty of knocking off an incumbent in the primary. But some people watching the race closely say O’Brien—who’s been called the most competitive House primary challenger in the country—has made significant inroads with a disciplined field operation complemented by an early but steady buy.

So Kanjorski, who had kept a low political profile for months, started spending last month. Though his first TV ad wasn’t set to begin airing until earlier this week, he shelled out money for the media buy last month. The campaign spent about $168,000 on a media buy made through Edward Mitchell Communications, the firm owned by Kanjorski’s longtime campaign spokesman. Another $20,000 was spent on Mitchell’s firm for media consulting, according to Kanjorski’s pre-primary campaign finance report. And Kanjorski spent another $20,000 on “Voter Contact ID” costs.

O’Brien, for his part, raised about $33,000 during the period, and had more than $36,000 in the bank. After going on TV early this year, his campaign has gradually pulled back as statewide candidates have increasingly saturated the airwaves, while maintaining what the campaign hopes will be enough of a presence to stay on the radar. The campaign spent another $15,000 on TV last month.

And Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, the lone Republican candidate in the race who is running for the third time in eight years, raised almost another $25,000 last month. He has raked in about $311,000 since getting into the race late last year, and finished the period with about $126,000 on hand, according to his campaign finance report. He has loaned his campaign almost $110,000 this cycle, and despite not having a primary, he spent about $26,000 last month on direct mail costs.

The race is currently ranked No. 4 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Kanjorski’s first ad is a 30-second spot that highlights his support for extending unemployment benefits. In the ad, an out-of-work Scranton resident says that “Congressman Kanjorski helped me and thousands of others.”

A person familiar with the ad buy told pa2010.com that the ad is set to saturate broadcast TV in the northeast Pennsylvania district, and will also air on local cable.

Kanjorski is facing a primary challenge from Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien, who first went on the air with a relatively small ad buy back in January. Republican Lou Barletta is gearing up to take on Kanjorski for the third time in eight years.

See the ad below.

O’Brien, a Democrat, raised about $114,000 during the first quarter of 2010, and has raised about $320,000 to date. But he has also spent heavily, and finished the period with just under $47,000 in cash on hand, according to his campaign finance report.

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11), meanwhile, raised about $258,000 during the quarter, spent lightly, and finished March with more than $1.1 million in the bank.

All told, Kanjorski has about 25 times the campaign cash that O’Brien has in the northeastern Pennsylvania district.

O’Brien made waves by going on the air with TV ads earlier this year, but that has also been costly. He spent more than $100,000 during the period on media consultants, though it remains unclear exactly how much of that was for TV time.

Republican Lou Barletta said this week that he’s raised more than $300,000 since getting into the race.

The umbrella labor organization endorsed five candidates in Democratic primaries when its Executive Council met Tuesday. Perhaps most notable was the AFL-CIO’s backing for 6th District hopeful Doug Pike, who is locked in the party’s most competitive House nominating contest against Manan Trivedi. Pike already enjoyed deeper labor support than Trivedi, and despite Trivedi’s recent surge of local party support, the AFL-CIO endorsement effectively puts the state’s organized labor community behind the former Inquirer editorial writer.

The endorsements from the state’s most powerful labor organization were expected to be formally announced later on Tuesday, but the results were described by someone familiar with the Executive Council’s vote.

The AFL-CIO also endorsed incumbent Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper (D-3) over primary challenger Mel Marin, and it backed incumbent Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11) over Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien.

The group endorsed state Representative Bryan Lentz (D-Delaware) in the 7th Congressional District, where he is considered the overwhelming favorite against political consultant E. Teresa Touey and environmental lawyer Gail Conner.

And the AFL-CIO backed Democrat Mark Critz in the 12th Congressional District, endorsing him for both the special election and the primary election to be held the same day.

That means he was voting against Congressman Chris Carney (D-10), with whom Kanjorski shares a couple counties as part of the neighboring district. And that led Kanjorski’s primary opponent to charge that the longtime incumbent was playing politics instead of looking after local constituents.

In an e-mail with the subject line “Betrayal” on Friday, Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien’s campaign manager said it was a “sad day for our region.”

“Even though Congressman Carney and our opponent share Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, our opponent would rather play insider politics than put the needs of our region first,” campaign manager Justin Carroll wrote. “To deny our region a voice on the Appropriations Committee when we need it the most is a public affront to the people of our region.”

Other sources familiar with the vote have confirmed that Kanjorski cast his ballot for Murphy. It remains unclear why, though it’s possible that Murphy’s influential role on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee helped sway the perennially vulnerable incumbent, who will surely be looking for financial help from the DCCC again this year.

In a statement, a Kanjorski spokeswoman reiterated that it was a secret ballot.

“It was a secret ballot that was taken, so no one would have known how the Congressman voted, including me,” spokeswoman Abigail McDonough said.

The result of the vote, which still needs the approval of the larger Democratic caucus steering committee, was six votes for Murphy, four votes for Carney and one for freshman Kathy Dahlkemper. Sources familiar with the vote said that if Kanjorski had backed Carney instead, it would have forced the process to a second ballot, during which Dahlkemper likely would have given Carney the deciding vote.

Paige, whose candidacy was notable for his self-managed messaging style, announced his decision in a blog post over the weekend. His nominating petitions were being challenged in an effort to keep him off the ballot. And while Paige said he was “confident that I would prevail, I am equally confident that a protracted legal battle would not advance the causes I believe in, and—ultimately—those issues are more important than my personal political fortunes.”

“I began this race because I had something important to say about the bailouts and their moral, economic and political costs to our society and because I was alarmed by the dangerous ongoing transformation in our country and its politics, and I sincerely regret that I won’t have an opportunity to continue fighting for you and for the ideals we share,” Paige wrote. “Realistically, I knew the forces in favor of plundering our wealth and subverting our democracy were likely to prevail in the end, but I believed that I had been called to try, and I tried with everything I had.”

He also alluded to a recent death in the family, and said in a subsequent e-mail to pa2010.com that he dropped out to “address some health and family issues.”

Barletta, who has carried the Republican banner in the general election twice before, was the only other GOP candidate seeking to get on the primary ballot. Paige had been fiercely critical of Barletta and his electoral viability, and Paige did not endorse Barletta in his farewell message. Though Barletta was always considered the front-runner with deep party support, Paige, a wealthy hedge fund lawyer, was expected to dip into his own pocket to fund a race that would have drained some money from Barletta’s war chest.

On the Democratic side, Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien is looking to knock off incumbent Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11).