Trivedi held a narrow lead late Tuesday night, and Pike’s campaign conceded after it spent Wednesday making sure there weren’t enough uncounted provisional or absentee ballots to make a difference in the race. Pike called Trivedi Wednesday afternoon to congratulate him and offer his support.

“Manan would be a much better member of Congress than Republican Jim Gerlach,  a career politician who has let working families down again and again,” Pike said in a statement. “I endorse Manan Trivedi—a doctor and veteran who served on the front lines in Iraq—and I urge my supporters to unite behind him.”

The concession capped an remarkable turnaround in the race from nine months ago, when Pike appeared to be cruising toward the party’s nomination. Trivedi came on the scene in September as an insurgent candidate, but quickly won over party leaders and rank-and-file activists alike, several of whom changed their endorsements in the race to back Trivedi, a Reading doctor. Pike, a former Inquirer editorial writer and the son of a former Long Island congressman, spent about $1 million of his own money on the race.

The primary was bitter throughout, but ended on the kind of cordial note Democrats will need to unite and set their sights on Gerlach, a fierce campaigner who has withstood fierce challenges ever since his first campaign for the suburban Philadelphia district in 2002. The race is currently ranked No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

“To the hundreds of people who worked their hearts out to send me to Congress: I will always remember and appreciate your dedication,” Pike said. “Today is the end of our campaign, but it’s not the end of my service to others—and I know it’s not the end of yours. Thank you.”

Action in the close race extended well past midnight and ended with the possibility of a recount in the air, as both candidates spent most of the night huddled away from their supporters. As returns came in, the mood at Trivedi’s election night party here was incrasingly optimistic, while the atmosphere among Pike supporters grew more anxious. At one point Pike said votes remained to be counted in Chester County, but county records published online indicated that all votes had been tallied, and that Trivedi was hanging on to a 672-vote lead, or 1.6 percent. Trivedi won Berks County by a large margin and edged Pike in Montgomery County. Pike won big in Chester County.

If the results hold, it will amount to an extraordinary change in political fortunes from nine months ago, when Pike appeared to be cruising toward the party’s nomination. Trivedi came on the scene in September as an insurgent candidate, but quickly won over party leaders and rank-and-file activists alike, several of whom changed their endorsements in the race to back Trivedi, a Reading doctor. The closing chapter of the primary seemed appropriate for a race that was bitter almost from the start, and remained heated through the last days of the campaign.

It remained unclear what action Pike, a former Inquirer editorial writer who has put $1 million of his own money into the race, would undertake. If the current margin remains valid, state law allows him to ask for a recount, but only if he pays for it. Incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach easily topped Tea Party activist Patrick Sellers in the GOP primary, winning about 80 percent of the vote. The district is currently ranked No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

After spending much of Tuesday night in a West Reading hotel with his wife and 3-week-old daughter, Trivedi greeted about 20 supporters at a restaurant here, who greeted him with applause as he walked through the door about 1 a.m.

“We’re not calling anything for sure right now but things look good,” Trivedi said. “We’re waiting for the final word.”

He said the next step was to double-check returns from each county and await word from the Pike campaign.

“We’re still waiting for the official word, but it looks like Manan won,” Trivedi campaign manager Ed Niles said.

Pike’s election-night gathering in Bryn Mawr was a roller-coaster ride, as supporters started out with high hopes in a race that many political watchers still expected Pike to win on the strength of his paid media campaign. He aired TV advertisements in the closing days of the race while Trivedi did not, and blanketed the suburban Philadelphia district with more direct mail. Shortly before midnight, supporters brought out a chocolate cake and sang “Happy Birthday” as a belated celebration of Pike’s 61st. Pike said the night was still young.

But after a number of hushed phone calls and huddles with campaign staffers, Pike said they would be going to sleep with the race still undecided.

“The race is down to a whisker and not every vote has been counted,” Pike said. “And every vote has to be counted.

“Either Dr. Manan or I would be such a better congressman than the incumbent we’ve got, that it’s not even funny,” he added. “I hope to serve in Congress, but I will assure you that whatever happens tonight or tomorrow, I will continue to serve people.”

Asked about Pike’s comments after it was clear Chester County’s records were showing a full vote-tally, Pike campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin said the results were still too close to call. He also pointed out that military absentee ballots aren’t due until the end of the week—although those are votes that, at least according to conventional wisdom, would trend for Trivedi, an Iraq War veteran.

“It’s too close to know definitively right now,” Eldredge-Martin said. He told supporters that the campaign would be looking closely at the legal basis for a recount.

In Reading, Trivedi said he’d like to hear exactly what concerns the Pike campaign has with the returns, and that “if they are legitimate concerns with the vote, that makes sense to me.”

But if the concerns aren’t legitimate, Trivedi said, Democrats should start to focus their efforts on Gerlach.

“We need to start tomorrow if we’re going to turn this district blue,” Trivedi said. “We have six months and we need every day.”

Pike declined any further comment as he left shortly before 1 a.m., but said he was going to bed in a good mood.

“I’m feeling exhausted,” he said.

Trivedi told staff and supporters that they couldn’t rest for long.

“Tomorrow, the real fight begins,” he said. “Tomorrow, the real work begins.”

Rebecca VanderMeulen reported from Reading and Amy Brisson reported from Bryn Mawr. See a video clip below of Trivedi’s speech to supporters.

In a brief interview after he cast his vote here, Gerlach told pa2010.com that he feels good about his chances in the general election—regardless of which Democrat prevails Tuesday. Gerlach is expected to cruise against underdog Tea Party candidate Patrick Sellers in the Republican primary.

With the political climate working against Democrats, Gerlach said, voters will be apt to reelection a congressman from the minority party. And Gerlach said his office’s constituent service efforts have been considerable.

“We’re not in charge of anything in Washington,” Gerlach said. “I think most discerning voters look at who’s in charge.”

Former Inquirer editorial writer Doug Pike and Reading doctor Manan Trivedi are competing in the Democratic primary. Though most Republicans say Trivedi is a more potent general election candidate, Gerlach would not say which of the two he would rather face in November. Even some Democrats are skeptical of their party’s chances at unseating the incumbent, who has held off fierce challenges in political climates far more hostile to Republicans.

The suburban Philadelphia district is ranked No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

And considering the amount of cash Burns has personally injected into his campaign, that wisdom seems to be well-founded.

Burns is hardly the first, and more than likely won’t be the last, political candidate to expend a great deal of personal wealth in an attempt to win office. Heck, in this primary season alone, two candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the 3rd District, Paul Huber and Mike Kelly, along with Democrat Doug Pike in the 6th District, have done the same.

But that doesn’t mean that the practice shouldn’t give voters pause, and prompt them to ask themselves—why?

Why would someone pay a small fortune out of their own pocket to earn a job that may reward them with just a fraction of that in salary?

Is it ego-gratification, just another notch on the belt or a line in the resume? A power-grab, with the hopes of securing some sort of gain for oneself and one’s associates? A desire to get close to the “seat of power,” to feel like “an insider,” one of the “movers and shakers?”

Whatever the reasons, one can be reasonably confident that the last one on the list, if it’s even on the list, is “to do good work for the people.”

No one spends hordes of their own money or buys themselves something because they think it’s going to be to someone else’s benefit. Oh, we can all try and convince ourselves of those sorts of altruistic intentions when we really don’t want to have to admit our own selfish motives to ourselves, but they’re there, nevertheless.

What is driving Tim Burns, and the other candidates for office this time around, to use so much of their own personal fortunes to try and gain political office for themselves?

The answers might be as varied as the individuals involved.

But one common thread runs through all of the races—the behavior itself should cause voters to stop and ask themselves that same question.

Join me tonight from 8-10 p.m. for a live-chat at WPSU.org.

The latest flare up came when the prominent group NARAL Pro-Choice issued a statement Friday clarifying that it has not endorsed either candidate, and that neither candidate has been given a formal rating. The public reason for the statement was simply to clear up confusion. But interviews later indicated the group was clearly pushing back against Pike, who has a campaign mailer which claims the former Inquirer editorial writer “has a 100% pro-choice rating” from the group. NARAL doesn’t formally give percentage ratings to candidates, only to incumbents. Efforts to clear up the misunderstanding through back-channels proved unsuccessful.

“It’s a little frustrating that it has been made to seem that one candidate is being favored over another, when in fact that’s not the position of NARAL,” Elizabeth Shipp, the group’s political director, told pa2010.com. “We tried to resolve it. I think we have a disagreement of opinion about how this is being used.”

The organization considers both candidates to be “fully pro-choice,” Shipp said. And despite the fact that the candidates agree mostly if not entirely on the issue, it has been a contentious one since late last year, when Pike wrote a pa2010.com op-ed in which he described himself the only “publicly pro-choice” candidate in the race. That led to a heated exchange with the Trivedi campaign, which brought up Pike’s 1990 newspaper column supporting a state lawmaker who he described as a “zealous opponent of abortion.” Pike wrote at the time that “I support a woman’s right to an abortion,” but that the lawmaker’s “leadership and independence on other issues are more important than his crusade against the right to an abortion.”

More recently, the National Organization for Women endorsed Trivedi, and a former NARAL president cited that column and other writings in saying that “I as a woman would not trust that he understands and respects the fundamental rights of women in a way that will result in his standing for and protecting those rights.”

In a statement, Pike campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin said the campaign had received a letter from NARAL that said Pike’s questionnaire “received a fully pro-choice rating” from the group, which led to the campaign mailing.

“We have never claimed that Doug was endorsed by NARAL,” Eldredge-Martin said, “so we have no problem with NARAL’s statement reiterating that no candidate has been endorsed. Doug hopes to win the endorsement of NARAL in the future.”

Trivedi, a Reading doctor, has done plenty to keep the issue alive. A direct-mail piece from the campaign says bluntly that “Doug Pike Degrades Democratic Women,” and goes on to reference the same newspaper column passages that were cited by Kate Michelman, the former NARAL president who also endorsed Trivedi. The Pike campaign has said those passages were taken out of context, but also said Pike “regrets it and apologizes.”

NARAL’s statement was also partly a response to confusion created by Michaelman’s endorsement of Trivedi, but the group was more concerned with Pike’s mailer.

“What is disappointing is Manan Trivedi’s attempts to mislead Democrats by using out-of-context newspaper columns from two decades ago to imply that Doug isn’t pro-choice,” Eldredge-Martin said, “when Doug’s writing actually shows a decades-long commitment to Democratic values and women’s rights, including a woman’s right to choose.”

In a statement, Trivedi campaign manager Ed Niles said that Pike’s past writings are fair game because he is running on that record.

“As promised, Manan Trivedi has and will continue to run an honest and truthful campaign on issues that are important to voters in the district,” Niles said, “but when Doug Pike decides to run on his written record as a journalist we feel it is important that voters have a chance to look at his full record, rather than the convenient quotes and anecdotes Doug provides. Leaders on women’s issues like Kate Michelman … and groups like the National Organization for Women have looked at the records of both candidates and they have decided to endorse Dr. Trivedi.”

Trivedi, a Reading doctor, loaned his campaign $36,000 late last week, according to newly-filed campaign finance data. He entered the month facing a large cash-on-hand deficit against Pike, a former Inquirer editorial writer who has put about $1 million in his campaign over the last year.

“Manan has always intended to make an investment into his campaign, and he has been saving up to do so,” campaign manager Ed Niles told pa2010.com. “Now that the campaign is in the middle of an aggressive voter contact program, it seemed like the best time for Manan to make that investment.”

Pike took his message to TV over the weekend, and has also done two large direct-mail campaigns. Trivedi is also doing direct mail, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to afford any significant amount of TV time. The majority of the local party establishment is behind his campaign, while much of the organized labor community is with Pike.

The two are competing for the chance to take on Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-6). The district is currently ranked No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Pike, the former Inquirer editorial writer who faces Manan Trivedi in the hotly-contest 6th District primary, appears to have first gone on the air over the weekend. Though pa2010.com has not yet seen his first ad, multiple reports were received of it airing on TV. His first ad buy is on both cable and broadcast, and the first ad is about jobs.

Pike holds a huge cash advantage of Trivedi because he put $1 million of his own money into the campaign. Pike has also been undertaking a considerable direct-mail campaign, and Trivedi, despite being backed by a majority of the local party establishment, is unlikely to be able to afford any TV time. It remains to be seen what kind of penetration Pike’s ads can achieve, in an expensive media market where Democratic candidates in statewide primaries are saturating the airwaves.

The two are competing to take on incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach.

See the ad below.

Trivedi, a Reading doctor, has brought in about $442,000 since getting into the race last fall. Three weeks before the primary, his campaign had about $151,000 in the bank, according his pre-primary campaign finance report. Trivedi’s fundraising has picked up speed in recent months, but he never seemed to turn the corner in a way that would allow for any significant narrowing of the cash-on-hand gap.

Pike, meanwhile, has struggled to raise money from contributors other than himself, despite rolling out a finance committee last year full of big names. He raised less than $10,000 during the period, and for the first time in months, he did not put more of his own money into the campaign. He still enjoyed a large campaign war chest of $1.1 million. He spent lightly, and did not shell out cash for his first direct-mail campaign until after the reporting period closed on April 28.

Trivedi spent more, dropping about $72,000 on, among other things, more than $30,000 in various consulting fees and about $6,300 on a poll conducted by prominent Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

Incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach raised more than $56,000 and finished the period with about $295,000 on hand. The race is currently ranked No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Trivedi was endorsed by the National Organization for Women’s political action committee, a powerful force in Democratic politics. “Manan Trivedi has demonstrated to us that he will stand up for the full equality of girls and women,” the group’s chair Terry O’Neill said in a statement. “We are looking forward to joining forces with him in that pursuit.”

The Reading doctor also won the backing of Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, who went after Pike in an interview with Politico, specifically citing what she called “disturbing” things Pike wrote about women in the past.

Taken together, the developments briefly reignited a primary debate over abortion that originally flared up late last year, when Pike used a pa2010.com op-ed to call himself the only “publicly” pro-choice candidate in the race. They also underscored the fact that, rightly or wrongly, Pike’s political opponents can try and use his large boy of written work against him.

“Whether Pike says he’s pro-choice or not,” Michelman told Politico, “I as a woman would not trust that he understands and respects the fundamental rights of women in a way that will result in his standing for and protecting those rights.”

She was referring in part a 1988 column in The Inquirer in which Pike said the abortion rate should “turn the stomachs” of those who supported the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, as well as his 1990 column supporting the reelection of state Representative who he also called a “zealous opponent of abortion.” She also cited two articles Pike wrote for The Orlando Sentinel in the 1980s, including one in which he said that the “best looking women … tend not to identify with have-nots. … Why are women who look like models virtually incapable of developing the compassionate liberalism of, say, stubby Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland?”

Pike campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin told the Web site that “Doug Pike has been publicly and proudly pro-choice in his writings for 19 years and as a candidate for Congress has been rated 100 percent pro-choice by NARAL Pro-Choice America. For anyone to suggest that Doug has not been consistent in his pro-choice views is nothing more than an effort to mislead voters.”

He added that Pike has not used abortion “as a litmus test for supporting candidates,” and referring to the Orlando Sentinel columns, Eldredge-Martin said that “over 20 years ago, Doug made a poor attempt at humor in a column. He regrets it and apologizes.”

The latest emphasis on abortion came 11 days before the contours of the primary showdown between the two candidates have largely been defined, with Pike enjoying an overwhelming money advantage while Trivedi boasts support from the majority of the local party establishment.

Trivedi added another party figure to that list Friday, with an endorsement from state Representative Kathy Manderino (D-Montgomery).

“Having served on the Health and Human Services committee in the state legislature, I can tell you that Pennsylvania will benefit by having the unique perspective of a doctor serving them in Congress on important matters like continuing the work of health care reform,” Manderino said in a statement.
In these final days before the primary election, I will be encouraging undecided voters in the 6th congressional district that a vote for Manan Trivedi is in our best interest.”

The two are competing for the party’s nod to take on Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-6). The race is currently ranked No. 6 in the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

It is time for Washington to act. President Obama and Congress have made a good start, but much more needs to be done. They must take additional bold, smart actions to create jobs and growth.

First, the good news. Thanks to the investments and targeted tax cuts in last year’s Economic Recovery Act, nearly 2 million Americans have jobs who would otherwise be unemployed. This $800-billion jolt to the economy was absolutely the right thing to do, as it channeled new spending to specific priorities that strengthened our economy, such as transportation upgrades, clean energy investments, scientific research, and housing modernization. The tax relief it provided helped working families pay their bills, gave first-time home buyers a break, and encouraged businesses to hire new workers and to invest in innovative technologies like renewable energy.

Yet there is so much more that needs to be done. Congress and the Obama administration need to spur a new wave of job creation in America. This plan needs to include three key points.

The first step to making our economy steadily stronger is to end the tax incentive for companies to ship jobs overseas. Let’s export U.S. products—not U.S. jobs.

Second, our international trade policies are key to revitalizing our economy. President Obama recently issued a bold plan to double U.S. exports by 2015. To do this, the administration needs to get tough and stop China from manipulating the value of its currency. This manipulation has flooded our country with artificially under-priced imports, and has devastated our manufacturing base. We need to level the playing field.

Finally, our economy cannot be strong for the long term unless Congress and the President steadily reduce federal deficits. Barring this action, at some point in the future, lenders will raise interest rates to a point that stifles business investment, explodes mortgage rates – and makes it extremely difficult for the government to bear the interest cost on its own debt.

Last year’s Senate vote to stop purchasing additional F-22 fighters that the Pentagon did not ask for demonstrated the kind of discipline that’s needed. To pursue fiscal responsibility, I support the mission of President Obama’s recently appointed, bipartisan budget commission.

Simply put, rebuilding U.S. economic strength and creating new jobs depends on a combination of smart and tough policies that will help put America back to work and encourage long-term fiscal responsibility. This would be a breath of fresh air after the Bush-era, let-the-good-times-roll policies that enabled this disaster in the first place.

The writer, a former editorial writer at The Inquirer, is a Democratic candidate in the 6th Congressional District.