Cunningham, who bowed out the governor’s race last summer, was expected to win reelection in Lehigh County pretty easily. But he barely squeaked by his Republican challenger, netting a bare-majority 51 percent of the vote. Cunningham was an interesting candidate, widely seen as an underdog/dark horse. I always got the impression when I spoke to him that he might have more to offer in the race than conventional wisdom allowed.

This could just be part of an apparent anti-incumbent wave we saw throughout the country on Election Day. On the other hand, if he struggled to win his home base, it probably would have been tough for him to win the Governor’s Mansion.

Cunningham, who faces reelection this year and had been slower than Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato in building a statewide political apparatus, said in a statement that “neither the time nor the circumstances are right for me at this time to take that effort to the higher level that is required to ultimately succeed.”

“In modern politics,” he added, “the successful pursuit of higher office demands a complete and consuming devotion of time and energy often at the expense of all current commitments and responsibilities, both personal and professional.”

In recent weeks, Democratic insiders had expressed quiet but increasing doubts about Cunningham’s candidacy. With the former Bethlehem mayor seen as fully engaged in guiding Lehigh County through the economic downturn, some wondered if his heart was in being what it would take to become governor. Cunningham waved off this perception in a recent interview with pa2010.com, but he alluded to the tension between governance and politics in his statement.

“I am very fortunate to hold a position that I enjoy and find rewarding in my community. The people of Lehigh County made a commitment to me and I have a responsibility to them. This year I seek a second and final term as their county executive. These are particularly challenging times for all local and county governments and I’ve decided it’s not the time to have an ‘absentee’ county executive.”

He made clear that he was not interested in running for Lieutenant Governor.

Cunningham’s exit leaves Onorato, Auditor General Jack Wagner and Philadelphia businessman Tom Knox as the likely Democratic contenders next year.

The telephone survey of 800 Pennsylvania Democrats was conducted June 4-9 by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates. Not surprisingly, more than half of Democratic voters polled were still undecided, with almost a year before primary day.

But in a head-to-head matchup with Onorato, considered by most party insiders to be the early front-runner, Knox garnered 21 percent of the vote, only slightly behind Onorato’s 22 percent.

When Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham and Auditor General Jack Wagner were added to the mix, 14 percent of respondents backed Knox, and the same number supported Onorato. Wagner garnered 13 percent of the vote, and Cunningham 7 percent, with 52 percent undecided.

With Knox enjoying some leftover name recognition in the vote-rich Philadelphia region from his unsuccessful 2007 mayoral bid, the survey found him beating Onorato 42-6 in southeast Pennsylvania, where Onorato remains mostly unknown.

The poll had a margin of error of 3.5 percent. Only the poll memo was released, not the entire survey, leaving little information for independent analysis.

Click here to see the full poll memo.

Among Cunningham’s largest donors were Bethlehem developer J.B. Reilly and Los Angeles real estate mogul Edward Roski, each of whom gave Cunningham $10,000, according to his campaign finance report.

Cunningham, a Democrat who is up for reelection this year, spent about $62,000 during the period, much of it on various political consultants.

His fundraising clip pales in comparison to that of his likely opponent, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato. Onorato raised almost half-a-million dollars in the first four months of the year, and has more than $4 million on hand.

Cunningham’s campaign finance report was filed in April but only published online recently.

His committee, Friends of Don Cunningham, has hired Dan Kelly as a campaign manager and political director. Kellly, who will also manage Cunningham’s reelection battle this year, has worked on and managed Congressional races in Virginia and Ohio, and has also done field work for Democratic Party organizations in Virginia and Wisconsin.

Cunningham’s most high-profile pick was to hire Celinda Lake as his pollster. Lake runs the Washington-based polling firm Lake Research Partners, which has worked for heavyweights like Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

John Rowley, president of Fletcher, Rowley & Riddle in Nashville, has been hired to handle the campaign’s advertising strategy. And Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University who runs the political consulting firm Westen Strategies, has been retains as a policy and communications consultant.

For the moment, all of them work for Cunningham’s committee, but he signaled they would be retained if and when he declares his run for governor.

“We have a top-notch political team that’s hired and in place,” Cunningham told pa2010.com. “We’ve make key strategic hires in the areas we a

Although the issue of gun control is often off-limits for many politicians, the problems associated with gangs are not. Gang-related crime and what politicians have done to prevent it is expected to be a hot topic in political campaigns of 2010. Issues relating to gangs will likely be particularly important in the upcoming election, as a deep recession and increasing poverty make Pennsylvania even more vulnerable to violence and gang activity.

Route 222 bisects 7 major cities—Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Harrisburg, York, Reading and Lancaster—and directly links New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore, has long been known to facilitate the proliferation of gangs in Pennsylvania. It’s central location in the Pennsylvania network of cities makes it a prime conduit for the trafficking of cocaine, crack cocaine and heroine.

One of the major initiatives being taken to prevent gang violence along the highway is the Corridor 222 Anti-Gang initiative, which aims to abate the proliferation of gangs in this area by forging partnerships between local elected officials, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and local faith based groups. The organization hopes to help end the violence that has been burgeoning along Route 222 as members of the Bloods, Cash Money Boys, Latin Kings and others use the highway as a conduit for the trafficking of guns and drugs.

The initiative has seen some dramatic signs of success, which will work to the advantage of former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan, who helped to forge the Corridor 222 initiative. On September 21, 2007, Prince Isaak, Shamek Hynson, and Dwight Williams received guilty verdicts in connection with the operation of a violent Lancaster County drug trafficking gang. The gang’s revenue exceeded $10,000 a day, according to prosecutors.

Other potential political candidates have also made significant contributions in the fight against gangs. By working to help form a county-wide police academy, called the Lehigh County Citizens’ Police Academy, Don Cunningham brought community members and local law enforcement together to strengthen the state’s fight against gang related crime and violence. In the academy, representatives from the Lehigh County Drug Task Force, the Lehigh County Gang Task Force, the Allentown FBI and the District Attorney’s Office taught classes on drug investigation, gang awareness, and other aspects of public safety and crime prevention.

With the unique position and importance of Corridor 222 in Pennsylvania’s geography and its significance in the state’s fight against gang violence, it is expected to be a topic that will come up in 2010′s electoral debates and campaigns. It is a debate that also touches on the sensitive issue of gun control, as lax gun laws in Philadelphia have allowed gangs to traffic firearms to areas where gun control laws are tighter, such as New Jersey and New York. While few politicians have the moral chutzpah to take on the issue of gun control, it will not be surprising if we see, blasted on television in the upcoming campaigns, some significant accomplishments made to end gang-violence in Corridor 222 .

Two months ago, a conference at the University of Pennsylvania drew a variety of private and public organizations, who argued that Philadelphia would be the future green jobs hub of the United States. As Washington doles out stimulus money, these organizations hope to take advantage of the boost in revenue in order to train new green consultants and analysts, as well as to develop more service oriented jobs geared towards the maintenance and installation of green technologies. The hope is that, by stimulating investment in the development of clean energy sources, Pennsylvania will also stimulate growth in related job markets such as engineering, carpentry, electrical work, and other sectors.

The opening of the center marks the first real step taken to help grow the green job sector here. The movement is starting small (Mayor Michael Nutter welcomed only 20 students to the new center). But the hope is that the idea will resonate in Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania, prompting more industry to come to the Keystone State, while also hepling reduce the state’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. The center was built with a $1.1 million grant from the Knight foundation.

But this small development is part of a much bigger problem. There is some sentiment in Philadelphia that we are better off than many parts of the country and that we have not been hit as hard by the economic recession. Indeed, the large health care and education sectors here typically make it so both the booms and the busts are more modest. So how will the rest of the state cope with the high unemployment rate and will the creation of green jobs be a well-worn line in the upcoming elections? Is the creation of green jobs even a valid answer to Pennsylvania’s unemployment problems or is it just shifting one group of workers to similar lines of employment that are not entirely different from what they are doing now?

This cultural emphasis on green jobs could put Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham in a good position in the coming gubernatorial race, as he has promoted his environmental credentials heavily. Cunningham was responsible for preventing the development of the Trexler Nature Preserves into an amusement park and has advocated for that space to be “a place for generations to come and enjoy nature, to see and experience land in an unspoiled state.” This all sounds very good, but it is Don Cunninghams’s other projects that reflect the trend towards green collar jobs.

In the a presentation of the county’s fiscal outlook last summer, Cunningham highlighted a series of projects that will renovate facilities and add new technologies to buildings to reduce energy usage and promote more efficient energy consumption. Cunningham has also developed a plan to complete the first $5-million phase of energy savings projects in Lehigh County nursing homes and has done a great deal for farmland preservation in Lehigh County, which has spent more money on farmland preservation in the past three years than in the entire history of the preservation program’s existence.

The creation of the center is one example of how politicians are dealing with the high unemployment rates caused by the economic crisis and is sure to be an issue that will come up in the months ahead.

“The key to economic recovery is the development of the clean energy economy,” Liz Robinson, director of the Energy Coordinating Agency, which helped to build the new training center in Philadelphia, said in a statement. “At this moment in tine, we desperately need many more highly skilled energy efficiency technicians, men and women who really know how to save energy.”

But Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham thinks that’s ridiculous. And in his likely campaign against Onorato, Cunningham will look to turn what has been seen as an advantage into a political liability.

“Dan Onorato’s the insider candidate,” Cunningham told pa2010.com. “If you’re looking for the big money guy, with all the connections to the big law firms and hundred-thousand dollar donors, by all means that should be your guy. But I still have hope that politics is about all the people, something beyond who’s got the most connections to people who are writing big checks.”

During an interview at a Main Street coffee shop, the former Mayor here complained—in some ways correctly—that perceptions of Onorato as the Democratic front-runner are fueled by nothing more than the media’s focus on money and the whisperings of a small, political insider class. Many of the same insiders consider Cunningham an underdog, and by portraying Onorato as an establishment candidate, Cunningham is clearly looking to use the dynamic to his advantage.

But his efforts to paint Onorato as an establishment candidate are likely complicated by the simple fact that Onorato has never been a Harrisburg politician, and ties to those insiders may be difficult to paint directly. Cunningham and other Democrats are quick to note that Onorato is close to John Estey, Rendell’s former chief of staff. The two were law school classmates. Beyond that, concrete attempts to define Onorato as the “insider” candidate may founder early.

In a recent phone interview with pa2010.com, Onorato dismissed outright the contention that he is an establishment candidate, and sought to turn the tables on Cunningham for going negative early.

“First of all, it’s interesting that people are already trying to go negative on my candidacy,” Onorato said. “If and when I announce it, I’ll keep it positive. I’m probably the only [potential] candidate that’s not tied to Harrisburg, and the only candidate for true reform,.”

“That’s what I’m about,” he added. “I’m about results, I’m about getting things done. … I’m about as far of an outsider as you can be from Harrisburg.”

If money is all that measures a candidate’s insider support, Cunningham at least has a point. Onorato has more than $4 million in campaign cash, significantly more than any of his potential rivals.

Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said Cunningham’s line of attack would be difficult to pull off without the same kind of campaign cash for which he is criticizing Onorato.

“[Cunningham] could try to play that small-town outsider avenue, and use things like that when he labels Onorato as an ‘insider candidate,’” Borick said. “But it will be a challenge. Half of it is just getting people to hear you and know who you are. It’s going to take resources.

“It’s a Catch-22,” he added. “You can claim that this guy’s got more money, more resources, he is positioned as the insider candidate. But the flip side is, who’s going to hear it if you don’t have the resources to get the message out there?”

“I thought it through, and i decided the Senate race is not of interest to me,” he said, before quickly adding: “At this stage.”

Wagner would be formidable candidate in the Democratic primary, with a long record in elected office, relatively strong statewide name recognition and solid support from military veterans (he served in the Vietnam War).

“I am very seriously considering running for governor, and am leaning heavily in that direction,” he said.

Wagner said his experience and knowledge of Pennsylvania’s fiscal problems was a primary factor driving his decision, which he expects to make later this year.

“The next governor will continue to face significant economic challenges to make sure that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is run in a fiscally responsible way,” Wagner said. “Obviously we are living in very difficult economic times. … That requires good fiscal accountability in office to make sure government is run properly, without waste, fraud and abuse.

“I think I’m better suited to take on those challenges than other candidates,” he added.

Philadelphia businessman Tom Knox is also seeking the party’s nomination for governor. Dan Onorato and Don Cunningham, the executives of Allegheny and Lehigh counties, respectively, are widely expected to enter the race.