Shapiro, a three-term state lawmaker with a big profile in the region, confirmed to pa2010.com that he asked the Pike campaign to remove his name from the endorsement list on its Web site, which it did recently—and quietly. Like others who have either gone neutral or switched to Trivedi’s camp altogether, Shapiro cited the fact that Pike was the only candidate in the race at the time of the endorsement. Pike quickly lined up Democrats behind him last summer, from leading lawmakers to the rank-and-file, before Trivedi entered the race in September and began making a huge dent in that support. That dent culminated with Trivedi being the favored candidate among party insiders across the district, even in the face of Pike’s significant financial advantage in the campaign.

Shapiro also cited concerns about Pike’s policy positions toward Israel, but didn’t get into specifics.

Pike was recently endorsed by the left-leaning Israel policy group J Street, and his campaign is working to address concerns that he may be more critical of Israel than suburban Jewish leaders and voters in the district would prefer. Shapiro didn’t mention the J Street endorsement.

“We respect Representative Shapiro’s decision, and look forward to working with him to turn the 6th District blue in the general election,” Pike campaign manager Andrew Eldredge-Martin said.

State Senator Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery) also got back on the fence in the primary last year. Reading Mayor Tom McMahon switched his endorsement from Pike to Trivedi earlier this year. The battle for individual endorsements recently shifted to jockeying for support from the county party organizations, where Trivedi seemed to leave Pike in the dust. He was endorsed by both the Chester County and the Montgomery County parties. And while Berks County doesn’t do formal endorsements, Trivedi is from the county and it’s seen as his base of support.

Clarification: This article may have left the incorrect impression that Josh Shapiro cited J Street’s endorsement of Doug Pike in his decision to pull his endorsement. Shapiro never mentioned J Street in the course of his interview with pa2010.com, and only alluded to more general concerns about Pike’s policies toward Israel.

And that was before Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham stepped aside. The candidates that remain are perceived front-runner Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County Executive, state Auditor General Jack Wagner and Philadelphia businessman Tom Knox. While those candidates would surely wave off such a perception, there’s no denying that people on both sides of the aisle consider the Democratic field, at the moment, to be relatively weak.

“There’s got to be someone else who’s going to come up, right?” one Democratic consultant not involved in the race asked pa2010.com recently.

With that in mind, we offer up a list of the five Democrats who could potentially turn next year’s primary upside down. An important caution: There’s little if any reason to believe that any of these folks would even consider making a run for the Governor’s Mansion.

But in the world where political blood sport equals priceless entertainment… we can hope.

5. Josh Shapiro

Probably the least likely on our list to even think of such a move right now, the Montgomery County state Representative is known to have ambitions for higher office and was stymied in his attempts to run for Senate when Arlen Specter switched parties. He’s being encouraged to run for Lieutenant Governor. But when you’re young, handsome and a tireless campaigner, why settle for second fiddle? Still, as he works to avoid alienating his fellow lawmakers during a contentious budget season, a run at the Governor’s Mansion is almost certainly the last thing on his mind.

4. Chris Doherty

The Scranton Mayor is emerging as a political powerhouse from a major population center that is increasingly important to winning statewide elections. He’s flying high after winning the Democratic nomination for reelection while, in a rare and fascinating quirk, also winning the Republican nomination as a write-in. Yes, that means his name will be on both sides of the ballot this November. He’s also thinking of a run for Lt. Gov. But like we said above, why settle?

3. Joe Sestak

That’s right, the same Delaware County Congressman who won’t stop talking about his all-but-definite “intention to run against” Senator Arlen Specter next year. In spite of all the noise he’s made, some people still just can’t seem to believe he’s going to run against Specter and the entire Democratic establishment. In the meantime, a statewide media blitz is likely to do wonders for his name recognition. Maybe he’d like to be Governor instead?

2. Allyson Schwartz

The Montgomery County Congresswoman might do more than anyone on this list to completely change the dynamic of the Governor’s race if she wanted to. Yes, she’d be the only woman running from either party. But she would also bring a different, lower-key, down-to-business style than some of the other candidates we’ve named. She’s holed up in Washington trying to help push health care reform through Congress, so until that happens, don’t expect any political movement from her. But hey, it could happen, right?

And the No. 1 Democrat who could shake up the Governor’s race is… Bob Casey

The first-term Senator, former gubernatorial candidate and son-of-a-governor is the big kahuna on this list, the man who could throw all our assumptions about the race out the window. Though he lost the primary to Ed Rendell in 2002, his credentials as a conservative Democrat remain ideal for a state still coming to terms with its increasingly liberal identity. As a close ally to President Obama, he could have more help from the White House than one might think. He’s sitting in a Senate seat that’s probably his for as long as he wants it. But the beautiful part? As a Senator not on the ballot in 2010, he wouldn’t even have to give that up to make another run at the Mansion.

So now it’s all out there. Any takers?

“It’s something he will look at seriously,” the Democrat said on condition of anonymity because Shapiro hasn’t made any decision. Shapiro, the Democrat added, is not currently making moves toward the race, and will not consider doing so until a new budget is in place.

A little over two months ago, Shapiro was laying the groundwork for a Senate bid. But he quickly called that off when Senator Arlen Specter defected to the Democrats. The thee-term Montgomery County lawmaker would surely be a strong candidate if he ultimately enters the race. In his short time in Harrisburg, he has crafted a reformist reputation, even though that hasn’t always endeared him to legislative leaders. He has been praised by Gov. Ed Rendell and others as one of the party’s rising stars, and his public profile got another recent boost when he was named to President Obama’s health care reform panel of state legislators.

Known as an energetic campaigner and fundraiser, he had about $612,000 in campaign cash last month, according to campaign finance data. He raised another $200,000 in one night at a recent fundraiser, the Democrat close to Shapiro said.

Shapiro’s political director did not return calls seeking comment on Tuesday.

Former Philadelphia City Controller Jonathan Saidel is currently the only Democrat to say he is seeking the party’s nomination for Lt. Gov., and he has been using his time alone in the field to build an impressive head start. Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty is also considering the race. With many party leaders expecting the top-ticket gubernatorial nominee to come from western Pennsylvania, Shapiro would provide the same kind of geographic balance to the ticket. And unlike a run for federal office that would have restricted his use of campaign funds raised by his state political action committee, he would be free to roll whatever money he has directly into a race for Lt. Gov.

Even though some insiders peg his immediate ambition for higher office to the perception that he has alienated some lawmakers in Harrisburg—he was one of the first Democrats to call for former House Speaker Bill DeWeese to step aside—Shapiro and his proponents wave this off.

“He did the right thing, but I think it’s probably hurt him with some of the Old Guard in the Democratic Party, the guys who don’t like reform and were probably a little jealous of Josh’s high-profile role,” Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel, a mentor of Shapiro’s, told pa2010.com in a recent interview. “I’m proud of Josh. He’s stuck by his guns and stood against some of the old practices.”

Asked what role that was playing in Shapiro’s thinking, the Democrat close to him said simply: “None.”

•Also on pa2010.com: Saidel’s head start in Lt. Gov. race growing formidable

With less to lose and an open field, Shapiro inches toward Senate race

However, I wonder whether he is the best candidate. How about Josh Shapiro or Robin Weissman? The Lt. Governor primary is about partnership, so, if Saidel finds a way onto the Onorato ticket, things look good. If not, at this point, someone is going to have to deal with him.

What a difference a day makes.

Specter’s decision yesterday to leave the Republican Party after more than 40 years and seek reelection as a Democrat was a game changer in every sense of the word. It shook the political world, from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to Harrisburg and Washington. It reverberated across the blogosphere and echoed on cable news, prompting at least one cable host to notice that Specter had amazingly bumped the president’s first 100 days down the news cycle.

And by the end, Specter seemed to have offered a lesson in political survival, the kind of lesson that still surprises people even though he’s done it before. In the process, all conventional wisdom was turned on its head.

“This decision unsettles the politics of the state in ways that few political decisions in modern history have,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College.

The speed at which events transpired was stunning, even in today’s 24-hour news cycle. Word started to spread late morning, with The Washington Post apparently getting the scoop. Within minutes, the phone lines at Specter’s campaign office were busy, surely tied up by reporters calling from across the country.

By early afternoon, Specter was on TV, denouncing the party to which he had belonged for decades, going so far as to finger the voters who had turned on him.

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate, not prepared to have that record decided by that jury.”

In case anyone missed it, he quickly repeated the target of his scorn: “The Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

Within hours, state Representative Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) said he wouldn’t run in the primary. And soon enough, Gov. Ed Rendell had moved the state’s Democratic Party apparatus behind Specter, his old boss from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. All the while, political insiders were frantically working the phones, calling friend and foe alike to figure out just what the heck was going on.

By the time he spoke to reporters on a late-afternoon conference call, Specter, clearly enjoying the limelight, was boasting of impending endorsements from Rendell, Obama and the party’s Congressional delegation.

His foes cried political opportunism, and in his own politically savvy way, Specter didn’t deny the charge. He talked about the polling he had done and the realization of how “bleak” his political situation had become. Even as he lambasted what he called the GOP’s narrowly conservative ideology, rarely, if ever, did he imply the decision was guided by anything but politics.

How could he?

“This was a political calculation, pure and simple,” Madonna said.

His like-minded moderate allies, meanwhile, couldn’t help but be happy for him.

“I would hope that he’ll do whatever he damn well pleases now,” said Elliot Curson, a longtime Republican ad man who worked on Specter’s first campaign for the Senate in 1976. “He’s even more of a pivotal vote now.”

Specter had repeatedly said he wouldn’t change parties, and to hear the Senator tell it, his decision was a relatively quick one. His campaign finished compiling and analyzing poll data late last week, and presumably saw numbers as troubling as those in numerous independent polls. Gauging support throughout the state, he said, the hopelessness of a Republican primary became clear. Rendell, Vice President Joe Biden and others had already spent years encouraging him to make the switch.

Specter told reporters he spoke with his family last weekend, slept on the decision Sunday night, and told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday.

He called Rendell and Obama Tuesday morning, and the circus was on.

For Specter, it was a journey come full circle. With voter registration closed until after next month’s primary, he’s still technically a Republican. But when he does switch, it will come 44 years after he ran for Philadelphia District Attorney as a Republican—even though he was a registered Democrat. Only after winning the election did he register as a Republican, embarking on a decades-long quest to bring GOP politics back to Philadelphia, a drive he’s often the first to admit has failed miserably.

“He’s chosen to write his last electoral chapter the way he began,” Republican political consultant Charlie Gerow said.

Now, he’s back and, at 79, presumably to stay. Win or lose next year, the first round of verdicts on his latest political calibration have largely been raving. In a moment not lacking in irony, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, who had been considering a Democratic run against Specter himself, seemed to call the race Tuesday evening.

“Didn’t he just win reelection today?” Matthews asked on Hardball.

The victory talk is premature, but the political skill it took to instantly line up the support of a party he had spent much of his life opposing was formidable, if not unexpected. The political chaos he leaves in his wake, however, is more complex.

Surely more Republicans will now oppose Pat Toomey for the Republican nomination, feeling license to enter a race that before had too many big personalities to yield any more spotlight. Either way, Toomey has lost in Specter his political foil and his lightning rod for support.

At the national level, Republicans spent Tuesday struggling to explain why Specter’s departure wasn’t their fault, with some saying it didn’t matter anyway. Descriptions of him as a “lefty liberal,” already common before his defection, proliferated on cable news.

And if Democrat Joe Torsella, a Rendell protégé, stays in the primary field as he has vowed, the risk of an intraparty split is real. Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) could add fuel to that fire if he jumps in.

But for now, Specter can bask in attention and praise more glowing than he’s received in years. Even before his formal announcement at the afternoon press conference, after word of his decision had leaked out, he entered one event to hearty cheers of support. His banter throughout the day seemed unusually cheerful.

And on the conference call with reporters, after an aide to wrap things up for a second time, Specter was having none of it.

“Wait a minute,” he insisted. “Daily News is the last one.”

For now.

I agree with Dan Hirschhorn, who suggests on his blog that this is hardly a career-ending defeat for the MontCo Boy Wonder. But I don’t think it’s wholly insignificant, either.

When you rise as fast and as high as Josh Shapiro has, people start to take aim. The kind of blindsiding he was subjected to on the bill—describing a fine as a tax increase or making a racial issue out of cellphone usage—is exactly the kind of thing people do in hardball politics. Think of Arlen Specter in 1992, raising the issue of Lynn Yeakel’s father having been a segregationist in 1950s Virginia. Somebody on Specter’s staff is probably checking now into everything Shapiro’s second cousin said about Israel, Wall Street bonuses, you name it . . . just as somebody in Harrisburg was obviously ready when the cellphone bill came up.

None of this means Shapiro couldn’t win in a race against Specter or anyone else. It just means that things get a lot tougher when you move into the “A” league. Nobody gets a free ride forever.

He certainly had higher hopes. Appearing on WHYY’s Radio Times on Tuesday, Shapiro sounded confident the vote would go better.

“The time has come,” he said.

Shapiro is nothing if not determined, so I can’t imagine this will be the last we hear of the bill. The Inquirer quoted him as saying yesterday: “I’m not going away. This is a fight worth fighting and I’m going to continue to press the case.”

Yesterday’s business on the state House floor did not do his chances for a potential bid any favors, as the House debated his hand-held cell phone ban. If you watched any of the seemingly endless debate on the House floor, you would certainly be justified in questioning his credentials. It was an embarrassing display for Shapiro and showed a bunch of weaknesses in him as a candidate.

First of all, I will try to get past the fact that, while our state is facing a record budget deficit, Shapiro and Democrats in the state House thought that it was in the Commonwealth’s best interest to debate whether soccer moms should be handcuffed if they make a call in a parking lot when they should be working to cut costs. It will be difficult to get past that point, but I’ll try.

What was so alarming about the theatre I witnessed on the House floor—and watching House conduct business under Democratic “control” is always great entertainment everyone should witness—was learning through the interrogation process just how poorly Shapiro’s legislation was written. There are a lot of members, Republican and Democrat, who are concerned about drivers using cell phones, and many were willing to support a ban of hand-held cell phones while driving. Nevertheless, this legislation was so sloppily written and so poorly defended by Shapiro that supporters of a cell phone ban were ganging up against him. Among the many mistakes and oversights in the bill, his legislation basically said that anyone in a running automobile in Pennsylvania parked, driving or otherwise, with a cell phone in their hands, whether they were using it or not, would have been found guilty and given a $50 fine, which really amounts to a new tax on hardworking Pennsylvanians.

It was not a strong showing for an individual who has aspirations of being a U.S. Senator one day. Josh Shapiro couldn’t cut it an institution where debate is the number one order of business every day.

“I’m just an ordinary steel worker, but I’m running for all the right reasons,” Kortz told pa2010.com a day after he declared his candidacy for the Senate. “And I want to give the people of Pennsylvania a choice between a working-class guy and these career politicians and appointees.

“But i know i’m the underdog, there’s no doubt about it,” he added.

It’s a tack that has worked well for Kortz during his brief political career. He vaulted into office thanks to the uproar over the 2005 legislative pay-raises that cost many incumbents their jobs. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s editorial page called him the “unpolitician” in first endorsing him for the 38th Legislative District in 2006. Whether it works as well on a statewide level is the question his candidacy will answer.

Kortz was a steelworker for decades before entering public service, at one points serving as operations manager for the U.S. Steel Irvin Plant. In the interview, he said his identity as part of the working-class would resonate with voters.

Referring to the steel plant closings in the 1980s, he said: “I lived through all that. I saw my friends lose their jobs. I saw many people thrown out of work. It was a bad time.”

Former National Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella is the only other Democrat to enter the race. State Representative Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) is heavily considering the race, and Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) is said to be giving it another look after leaning away from it in recent months.

But it seems very likely that Kortz will be the only Democrat running from western Pennsylvania, a dynamic he’s clearly hoping will work in his favor.

“From a strategic standpoint,” he said, “if I’m the only person from the west and there are three or four people from the east, I think it would give me a little bit of an advantage.

“I take nothing for granted,” he added. “I’m goign to work hard and run a good grassroots campaign based on the issues.”

State Rep. Bill Kortz (D-Allegheny)

Kortz is only the second Democrat to declare his candidacy, following former National Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella. He is almost certain to be the only candidate from western Pennsylvania, which could give him a large amount of the primary vote uncontested. State Representative Josh Shapiro is also considering the race.

“I understand this is a monumental task and that I will be the underdog,” Kortz told The Daily News in a statement . “However, I am entering this race for all the right reasons.”

Kortz’s announcement is almost sure to catch the Capitol by surprise. His name as hardly, if ever, been mentioned as a possible Senate candidate.