With Dent leading 49-38 in a September poll, Callahan will need to win over some of the incumbent’s support if he is going to overtake Dent: With Towne polling at three percent, only one in ten voters were left undecided.

This might explain why, despite the VFW’s and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America’s endorsements of Dent, Callahan took a particularly adversarial stance in attempting to characterize him as unsympathetic to veterans’ issues.

“[Dent] voted against a bill that would allow widows and orphans of our troops to receive full benefits after their loved ones were killed in combat,” Callahan said. “It’s not just about going to the hospitals — it’s about supporting [veterans].”

Callahan is referring to a Dent’s nay-vote on a motion to reconsider the 2006 Defense Authorization Bill, from which House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) nixed a provision that would ensure widows would receive full death benefits of a fallen spouse. As it stands now, the Department of Defense deducts regular death benefits from any supplementary life insurance purchased from the military, called Survivor Benefits Plans.

“The most decorated veteran in Congress, Sam Johnson, voted the same way I did,” Dent pointed out.

But although the IAVA endorsed Dent this election cycle, the organization gave him a C- rating in 2006, citing Dent’s nay-vote on extending Tricare to Reservists and members of the National Guard.

Since Callahan first raised this line of attack in a previous debate, his campaign has mailed out campaign literature depicting an apparently wounded soldier, with criticism of Dent’s record on veteran affairs on the reverse.

That caught the attention of one the debate’s moderators.

“You say [Dent]… has turned his back on our soldiers: What do these negative portrayals add to this race?” asked Lynn Olanoff of the Express-Times.

In a statement to reporters after the debate, Callahan spokesman Jared Smith defended the attack.

“More than 61,000 widows have lost out on more than $60,000 because of Dent’s vote.  This is still effecting [sic] widows today and the IAVA’s current legislative agenda lists ‘Complete repeal of the Widow and Widower’s Tax (also known as the SBP-DIC offset)’ as a top priority.”

Clinton will headline a get out the vote rally Thursday afternoon at Northampton Community College’s Spartan Center. Less than a week before the election, Clinton will try to motivate voters to come out and support Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan (D) who is challenging three term incumbent Charlie Dent to represent the 15^th Congressional District and Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato who is running for governor against Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Traditionally campaign volunteers spend the weekend before the election phonebanking and canvassing for candidates in a last minute effort rally support for their candidates.

The Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee (DCCC) is committed to Callahan’s race. The DCCC has listed Callahan as one of its 2010 Red to Blue candidates, a list of 29 challengers receiving support for surpassing fundraising goals.

Despite recent Democratic gains in Pennsylvania and nationwide, both Callahan and Onorato have significant ground to make up by Election Day. A PPP poll released Oct. 20 shows Onorato down two points to Corbett and that the so-called “enthusiasm gap” has narrowed to five points, meaning Democrats are more likely to come out to vote.

The polling for Callahan, on the other hand, is all over the place. Muhlenberg College released a poll of likely voters Oct. 14 showing Callahan trailing Dent by 17 points. The DCCC released its own poll Oct. 11 showing the race as a statistical dead heat. As always, internal polls from parties or candidates should be taken with a grain of salt (or two).

One more has been added to the schedule, and this one is set to go down Oct. 18. It’ll be aired on the local ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, giving Republican Tom Corbett and Democrat Dan Onorato what could potentially be their biggest debate audience of the campaign.

That debate will come just two days after the candidates have their second debate, a televised one in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of outside ad buys in the Senate race recently.

First, there was this latest TV spot from conservative group Crossroads GPS, those guys who just love to hit Democrat Joe Sestak on spending.

Then, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chimed in with its latest ad, which tries to frame Republican Pat Toomey as China-friendly outsourcer of jobs.

And to top it all off, Toomey’s buddies at the Club for Growth have yet another ad of their own taking Sestak to task for stimulus spending.

There’s also a new ad in the 15th Congressional District, where Democratic challenger John Callahan is pushing back against criticism from incumbent republican Charlie Dent that he’s not the budget-balancer he claims to be.

Check it out below.

And last but not least, it appears that Republican Mike Fitzpatrick has snagged an endorsement from a local police union. We haven’t yet seen a release from the Fitzpatrick campaign, but The Inquirer reported that FOP Lodge 5 had made its decision.

As The Inky notes, that’s something of a blow for Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8), who’s the son of a retired cop and has boasted police support before.

Christie, who headlined a fundraiser for Republican Pat Meehan last month, will be in the Lehigh Valley on Oct. 20 as part of Dent’s American Leaders Lecture Series. He’ll also do a $1,500-a-head reception for Dent, and a policy roundtable discussions that couples can attend for $5,000, with the money going to Dent’s victory fund.

Dent faces Democratic challenger John Callahan.

The race is currently No. 7 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Yes, there’s yet another set of numbers we missed, this one from McClatchy Newspapers and Marist. Like every other pollster under the sun, these folks found Republicans Pat Toomey and Tom Corbett leading in the races for senate and governor, respectively.

Toomey leads Democrat Joe Sestak by nine points, 51 percent to 42 percent. And Corbett leads Democrat Dan Onorato by 12 points, 53 percent to 41 percent.

Those results are largely consistent with where the polls were a couple weeks ago, though there have been other indications that both races are getting tighter.

Meanwhile, Congressman Patrick Murphy’s (D-8) chief of staff has a new gig: running Rahm Emanuel’s campaign to be mayor of Chicago. Politico broke the news Sunday morning of Scott Fairchild’s new job. The influential and connected operative has been with Murphy since his first run for Congress in 2006. He’s going to stay with Murphy until after his Nov. 2 rematch against Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.

And Congressman Charlie Dent (R-15) has a new TV ad. It takes advantage of what appears to be a moment of wonkish confusion by Democratic challenger John Callahan during a recent debate.

Check out the ad below.

Correction: This blog post originally misstated the timing of Scott Fairchild’s departure as Patrick Murphy’s chief of staff. He is leaving after the Nov. 2 election, not before.

The radio ad, released by Callahan’s campaign Thursday, comes after Congressman Charlie Dent (R-15) used a new TV to call into question Callahan’s financial management of the Lehigh Valley city (pa2010.com has not yet fact-checked that spot). Callahan’s radio ad notes that Bethlehem is now reporting a budget surplus, and notes that the city’s elected Republican controller also pushed back against some attacks on the city’s finances.

Click here to listen to the radio ad.

The race is currently No. 7 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Callahan’s campaign released the clip as part of a larger campaign video Wednesday. In it, Dent, joined by House Minority John Boehner at a recent fundraiser, jokes that “I asked [Boehner] for the Appropriations Committee and he put me on the Ethics Committee.

Laughter ensues, and Boehner interjects with a smile: “Oh, it was appropriations you wanted? You know, listen, you can’t have, you can’t have the dessert until you eat your vegetables.”

Dent didn’t deride the committee’s role or work, but Callahan’s campaign called hypocrisy, citing statements Dent made at a recent campaign debate lauding his work on the committee.

“Congressman Dent is part of the problem in Washington DC,” Callahan campaign manager Justin Schall said. “People have lost faith in their elected officials because of hypocrisy like Dent saying one thing to voters, but another when he’s hanging out by the pool with Republican Leader Boehner and his donors. Charlie has forgotten that it is his job to represent voters, not make jokes at their expense.”

Dent’s campaign quickly fired back.

“Representative Dent takes his work on the Ethics Committee very seriously and he puts a lot of time and effort into this Committee,” Dent campaign manager Shawn Millan said. “Apparently, the failing Callahan campaign can’t even grasp at straws correctly.”

See the Callahan campaign’s video below.

Dent’s 30-second spot, which started airing Monday, cites a recent audit that found the city facing a deficit.

Flashing pictures of President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the ad closes: “Callahan: Big spending, big deficits, financial disaster. Sound familiar?”

See the ad below. It will be fact-checked later as part of pa2010.com‘s new AD WATCH feature.

The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College survey published over the weekend found Dent garnering 49 percent of the vote in the 15th District, compared to 38 percent for Democratic challenger John Callahan. Independent candidate Jake Towne nets three percent of the vote, according to the poll. Only 10 percent of voters are still undecided.

Dent’s lead is almost identical to the margin he held over Callahan in April, but the proportion of undecided voters has dropped from one third. As the first public look at the state of the race in months, the poll indicates that there is still a path for Callahan, albeit a difficult one in a perilous political climate for Democrats. If Callahan can make headway with undecided voters while Towne, a conservative candidate, pulls more votes from Dent, the race could prove to be a close one.

In a troubling sign for Callahan, his the proportion of people who view him unfavorably has more than doubled since April, while the percentage of respondents that view him favorably has been static. In April, only 13 percent viewed him unfavorably; this month that number was 29 percent. Such a jump seems hard to account for considering that paid media efforts in the campaign only recently began in earnest.

The survey was conducted Sept. 11-16, about two weeks after both candidates began airing TV ads.

Towne’s small showing means he won’t get to participate in an Oct. 14 debate, for which the organizers agreed that only candidates netting at least five percent could participate.

Both major-party campaigns saw good tidings in the results.

“[Dent] has high name recognition and no room to grow,” Callahan campaign manager Justin Schall told pa2010.com. “We’re going to start taking away from his lead once people learn more about his voting record.”

Said Dent campaign manager Shawn Millan: “Obviously, [the poll] is good news, but it’s not November yet.”

The poll of 496 likely voters had a margin of error of five percent.

Click here to see the poll.

Callahan’s first ad depicts Dent as a friend of Wall Street over Main Street, a familiar message this year. Dent’s first spot hits Callahan for having supported property tax increases and pushing a sales tax increase. Both commercials omit information to paint a more simplistic picture than actually exists.

But some questionable rhetoric aside, the factual claims made lead us to award both ads a score of MOSTLY ACCURATE.

[Click here to read more about our AD WATCH fact-checking series and the different scores.]

In his first introduction to the Lehigh Valley district, Callahan, the Bethlehem mayor, opens with his own voice:

The typical Washington politicians help Wall Street. I’m focused on Main Street.

Callahan goes on to say he’s created jobs in Bethlehem, and he has indeed been widely credited for the lively state of the downtown area, thanks in part to a financial package that kept a shopping center open after a fire and the opening of a new casino on old Bethlehem Steel land.

He then shifts his attention to Dent, saying the congressman “supported bank bailouts, big CEO bonuses and job-killing policies that led to the recession.”

Dent did indeed vote in favor the TARP bailout of the financial system, which was supported by wide coalitions in both parties and, despite its political toxicity, is credited by most economists for averting a much deeper recession, perhaps even a full-blown depression. He also did indeed vote against measures that would have restricted executive bonuses and compensation and bailed-out banks; his office says he did so because there is already language in TARP that grants the Treasury Secretary some regulatory powers over compensation.

As for supporting “job-killing policies,” this is the political rhetoric very much open to debate. Callahan cites votes in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement; against a measure to restrict companies incorporated abroad from getting transportation contracts; and against legislation to restrict how much mortgage liability Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could assume. The votes he cites are accurate—how much they contributed to a financial crisis with many seeds is a more complicated question.

For its part, Dent’s campaign goes local in its first ad against Callahan. A narrator opens:

John Callahan raised property taxes four times.

Callahan did indeed enact property tax increases of six percent in 2005 and 13 percent in 2006. Before that, he voted for 2003 and 2004 tax increases as a city councilman. The ad omits the fact that Callahan hasn’t proposed any such tax hikes the last four years.

The ad then hearkens back to a presentation Callahan gave to the Lehigh County Congress of Governments last year, in which he sought to build support for state legislation that would authorize county governments to raise their local sales tax by one percentage point. The video has been used by Republicans before. In the 40-minute speech, as the ad spotlights, Callahan at one point says, “there’s politics here, right? We all recognize that this is, after all, perceived as a tax, and we’re trying to give everybody adequate cover.”

Dent’s campaign uses this to say that Callahan is “scheming” and “plotting” to raise taxes. Dent’s facts are right, but the context is more complex. Callahan is pushing a proposal that enjoys bipartisan support across local county governments, including from some of Dent’s allies. The plan, originally floated a decade ago by a local business roundtable group, would give county governments permission to enact the sales tax, but would make it optional. Some of that money would be mandated for reductions in local property taxes, but there’s wide agreement that the plan would also result in more operating revenue for county governments that are being stretched thin by the recession.

So both campaigns have their facts right. And both campaigns are oversimplifying complex intersections of politics and public policy.

See both ads below.