The 30 second ad started airing Tuesday night. In the ad, Trivedi attacks the fourth term incumbent for his vote against the H.R. 4213 (American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act), which the ad frames as supporting tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. The ad also attacks Gerlach for accepting pay raises while opposing increasing the minimum wage.

“So until those jobs come back home, I’ll take a pay cut,” Trivedi promises in the ad.

Watch the full ad, titled “Listen” here.

A Monmouth University poll released Thursday, conducted just as the ad hit the air, shows Gerlach leading Trivedi by ten points among likely voters.

The state’s AFL-CIO rolled out its latest mail pieces Monday, the third week in a row it’s hitting up homes across Pennsylvania. The new mail pieces, targeting Senate candidate Pat Toomey and six GOP House candidates, paint Republican hopefuls as friends of Wall Street who want to outsource American jobs.

They err on at least one count, the same count that has tripped up Democrats for months: As we’ve noted before, signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge does not automatically make you a supporter of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

Anyway, you can check out all the latest mail pieces for yourself. Click here for the one targeting Toomey. And here are the ones targeting Mike Kelly, Pat Meehan, Mike Fitzpatrick, Tom Marino, Lou Barletta and Tim Burns.

Meanwhile, here comes another surrogate for Democrat Manan Trivedi. Michael Dukakis, that former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate who looked bad in an Army tanker, is headlining a fundraiser for Trivedi’s 6th District campaign Thursday in Philadelphia. The invitation we got a hold of says it’s going down early in the evening at the fancy Water Works restaurant, with a minimum $100 contribution. Folks on the host committee include prominent Democratic fundraisers Mark Aronchick and Ken Weinstein.

And lastly, the folks over at Democrat Bryan Lentz’s campaign have been having fun with some video from Lentz’s debate last week against Republican Pat Meehan. Maybe we went a little easy on Meehan in our coverage, because friend-of-the-site Bill Bender wrote (accurately) in The Daily News that “Lentz was clearly the superior debater Tuesday, delivering concise answers, while Meehan, sweating heavily, often fell back on generalities and stumbled through his closing statement.”

Anyway, the Lentz folks put together something of a brief highlight reel, modeled off those very memorable “Priceless” MasterCard ads. We’re not sure where Lentz’s people got their cash figures, and they probably won’t match up with campaign finance data—but hey, it’s a fun watch.

Team Meehan wasn’t laughing.

“For weeks now, Bryan Lentz has shown signs of a desperate and panicked candidate,” Meehan campaign spokeswoman Virginia Davis said. “All he is trying to do is distract voters from his support of Nancy Pelosi and the failed policies coming out of Washington.”

Check out the video below.

At issue is the first 30-second spot of Gerlach’s reelection campaign, which juxtaposes positive messages about Gerlach with the argument that Democratic challenger Manan Trivedi supports a “far-left agenda.” Federal law entitles candidates to cheaper ad rates during the run up to Election Day—what the Federal Communications Commission calls the “lowest unit charge.” But FCC regulations also stipulate that to be eligible for that rate, the ad must close with both “a clearly identifiable photographic or similar image of the candidate” and “a clearly readable printed statement, identifying the candidate and stating that the candidate has approved the broadcast” (the rule applies only to broadcast networks, not cable). In Gerlach’s ad, the incumbent appears at the beginning, but not in a mugshot at the end as is the standard practice for such ads.

In a letter to the Reading branch of WFMZ-TV, obtained by pa2010.com, a lawyer for the state Democratic Party said the station should begin charging Gerlach its full advertising rate, and argued that Gerlach and his campaign “have forfeited their entitlement to the lowest unit charge for the duration of the campaign.” A formal FCC complaint has not been filed, and Democrats are not asking for the ad to be removed. But if the station ultimately sides with them, it could be significant, since WFMZ is often heavily targeted by area congressional campaigns as a cheaper alternative to the expensive Philadelphia media market.

“…your station should refuse to run additional advertisements from the Jim Gerlach for Congress committee unless paid for at the rate your station charges for comparable use by other non-political advertisers,” state party counsel Neil Reiff wrote in the letter, dated Sept. 21.

No further action had been taken as of Monday afternoon. A station representative did not immediately comment, and Gerlach’s campaign waved off the issue.

“This issue is two weeks old and none of the stations have contacted us,” Gerlach spokesman Mark Campbell said. “Jim appears in the entire top part of the spot so there was no attempt to hide who spot was from. Democrats are just desperate.”

Gerlach’s campaign recently noted that for much of the last decade, Trivedi didn’t live in the suburban Philadelphia district. For some of that time, Trivedi was serving as a Navy doctor in Iraq, as he notes in the new ad, his third of the campaign. Featuring other veterans surrounding Trivedi, the ad goes on to hit Gerlach for tax votes and for supporting to financial bailout.

“Jim,” Trivedi says in the ad, “I’ll proudly compare my last eight years to yours—any day.”

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

In case you’re not versed in the intricacies of interstate gun policy, the loophole exists because the Sunshine State issues out-of-state residents permits to carry concealed weapons through its Department of Agriculture, even if those folks couldn’t get concealed-carry permits in their home state. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato has been forcefully calling for Republican rival Tom Corbett to use his power as state Attorney General to close the loophole.

That charge continued Monday, when Onorato used an alleged shooting by a Philadelphia man who had a Florida permit to make the case anew. During a news conference at City Hall in Philly, Onorato and District Attorney Seth Williams said Corbett should end the so-called “reciprocity” agreement with Florida that keeps the loophole open.

“We should never outsource our law enforcement responsibilities,” Onorato said in a statement later. “Tom Corbett should know better, and he should announce today that he is closing this loophole in order to protect Pennsylvanians. The recent shooting provides yet another wake-up call to Tom Corbett—even though he shouldn’t need one.”

The line from Team Corbett is that his office doesn’t have the power to make a change that can only be enacted through legislation—and indeed, state Representative Bryan Lentz (D-Delaware) has been pushing a bill to do just that. But a page on the Attorney General’s official Web site seems to undercut the idea that Corbett has no power here. It notes that in 1995, the General Assembly gave the Attorney General “the authority to enter into reciprocity agreements with other states.” And the state’s reciprocity agreement with Florida signed by an aide to Corbett’s predecessor, which you can read here, explicitly states that the “agreement may be by either Party or their successor upon thirty (30) days written notice.”

Seems pretty clear cut. Regardless, Corbett’s campaign is sticking to its guns (pun intended). Corbett still supports the current law.

“This is what voters have come to expect from career politician Dan Onorato,” Corbett campaign spokesman Kevin Harley told Philly Clout. “He exploits the death of young man and uses it as a political prop. The fact is the Attorney General cannot unilaterally change the laws of Pennsylvania. Only the legislature can do that.”

Speaking of bitter debates, the Senate candidates spent Monday bickering about the estate tax, that revenue generator that Republicans have so effectively branded as the “death tax.” The action on Monday came about as Republican nominee Pat Toomey trekked to Harrisburg, where he signed a pledge supporting the permanent repeal of the estate tax—and said Democratic opponent Joe Sestak should do the same.

“The Death Tax destroys jobs by targeting Pennsylvania’s main economic engine—small and, often family owned, businesses,” Toomey said in a statement. “Simply repealing the Death Tax would create 64,442 jobs in Pennsylvania. Congressman Sestak claims to be for small business, but he has voted multiple times against repealing this tax which hits Pennsylvania’s small businesses and farms. Pennsylvania’s small businesses like Herre Bros. need policies that will help them grow and hire more workers, not high taxes.”

The head of the aforementioned, family-owned, electrical contracting firm joined Toomey to make the case.

“If my children were forced to pay an estate tax next year, when the Death Tax rate returns to 55 percent, it is almost certain that they will be forced to sell our entire company,” Herre Bros. CEO Richard McBride said. “It simply isn’t possible to keep a company profitable when half or more of its assets are confiscated.  With the company would go the 100 jobs we provide in the Enola area – and the hundreds more we would like to provide.”

Toomey’s campaign has been burned before for death-tax-hyperbole, so Sestak’s campaign was on the lookout early in the day. A Toomey TV ad this summer, which claimed Sestak would let the IRS “take half of your savings when you die,” was called “barely true” by PolitiFact. As the Web site noted then, only very wealthy Americans would be subject to the estate tax proposal Sestak supports (individuals with more than $3.5 million and couples with more than $7 million).

Sestak’s campaign on Monday reiterated the congressman’s position, arguing that the legislation Sestak exempts 99.7 percent of Americans and leave just 7,600 of the wealthiest Americans—and only a couple hundred Pennsylvanians—paying any kind of estate tax. Citing figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Sestak’s campaign said that Toomey’s plan would add $1.2 trillion to the deficit.

“This is another attempt by Congressman Toomey to distort Joe’s record in order to distract people from his own extreme agenda which calls for generous benefits for the ultra-wealthy that stick the middle class with the bill,” Sestak spokeswoman April Mellody said in a statement. “Congressman Toomey believes that Wall Street is the answer to everything. Joe believes we need to level with people and start investing in ordinary Pennsylvanians in order to get this economy moving.”

Oh, and our friend John Micek at Capitol Ideas took a look at the small business advocacy group that joined Toomey at his presser—noting “clout” and “cash” they’ve got.

Lastly, there was some golf-style class warfare in the 6th District Monday. Democratic nominee Manan Trivedi’s finance director e-mailed supporters in the afternoon, saying that Republican incumbent Jim Gerlach is having “a big fundraiser at a fairly swank golf course right now.”

“If you were one of the lucky few to be invited, you get to pay $1,500 to play a round of golf,” Tyler Cole wrote. “Must be nice to be one of Gerlach’s friends.Well we decided to have a little fun with this. Manan went to the old Phoenixville Driving Range—a place the average person can afford to go—to smack a bucket of balls.”

Keeping with the low-price theme, the Trivedi campaign even made a video of the candidate driving some balls—and then asked supporters to donate just ten cents for every yard he got off the tee. He had a 225-yard drive (his form looks pretty good), so that’s $22.50 cents.

Below is the video of Trivedi at the driving range—”no caddies, no knickers, no cocktails,” as the campaign described it. “Just a guy in a pair of jeans and his Phillies hat.”

“And with so much still left to be done, and too many families struggling to get by, we need to keep America moving forward—which means I need you to support Manan Trivedi for Congress,” Obama wrote about the 6th District candidate to his Keystone State supporters.

Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11) also got the nod, also with the same language. The Kanjorski campaign seemed to greet the endorsement, well, quietly. “The congressman welcomes the endorsement of anyone who shares the same values and principles,” Kanjorski’s spokesman told The Times Leader. The campaign didn’t publicize the endorsement, as friend-of-the-site Alex Isenstadt noted on Politico.

Republican Lou Barletta’s campaign made sure to note the quiet reception, contrasting it with 2008, when Obama cut an ad for Kanjorski—and when the wave of Democrats he helped turn out seemed to pull the longtime incumbent over the finish line in a tough race. The campaign claimed it was just Obama’s way of saying thanks, after Kanjorski was effectively the deciding vote in the House on health care reform.

“It’s political payback for Kanjorski’s deciding vote to pass the health care takeover earlier this year,” Barletta wrote in a fundraising e-mail to supporters. “But even the President can’t save Kanjorski this year. We, the people, deserve better, and pooling our resources can fight the establishment liberal special interests in Kanjo’s pocket.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have a new attack line against Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey: they’re trying to tie him to the Chan brothers, one of whom was a former Enron director and had to settle a $168-million lawsuit against the company.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line reported on this new tack before it hit the ground. Basically, Toomey worked for a financial firm in Hong Kong in 1991, and the company was owned by the Chan brothers. Democrats say Ronnie Chan is a shady character, and want to tie his lack of enthusiasm for human rights and democracy to the former congressman.

“As the old quote goes ‘you’re only as good as the company you keep,’” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Deirdre Murphy said in a statement. “In Pat Toomey’s case, this means having as a former boss a controversial Hong Kong billionaire financier, who disdains the American political system and was on the board of Enron when the company was accused of defrauding shareholders.  With associates like this, Toomey has a lot of explaining to do to Pennsylvania voters.”

Toomey’s campaign scoffed at the display of Democrats reaching back 20 years to try and make a point. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Toomey did anything for the company other than research on capital in Asian countries.

“The Democrats must be getting pretty desperate to dig up what Pat did twenty years ago,” Toomey campaign manager Mark Harris told The Plum Line. “What voters in Pennsylvania are concerned about is [Democratic nominee] Joe Sestak’s liberal voting record in the last three years.”

And lastly, there was all kinds of news Friday in the world of Congressman Chris Carney (D-10)—and we’re not even counting the revelation that his Republican opponent Tom Marino appears to have fibbed big time about a Department of Justice letter he claims to have.

First, Carney won the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, which called him a “solid defender of the Second Amendment who will stand up for the rights of gun owners in Pennsylvania.”

Later, we got hold of a new Carney campaign radio ad, which keeps hitting Marino on this whole Louis DeNaples thing, taking a similar tack to his recent TV ad. Click here to listen to the radio ad.

And to round things out, the conservative seniors’ group 60 Plus Association has added Carney to the list of Pennsylvania Democrats its targeting in a TV campaign. Having already gone after Kathy Dahlkemper and Paul Kanjorski on the issue of health care, the group now has a very similar ad airing against Carney.

See the ad below. All three are basically identical in their content, so we’ll fact-check them as a unit soon.

Stay tuned.

The political difficulty of achieving a congressional pay cut as a freshman aside, Trivedi’s commercials are filled mostly with the kind of boilerplate biographical information and ideological rhetoric that requires little fact-checking. Because of that, we give Trivedi’s first two ads the score of FAIR GAME.

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

Trivedi’s first ad, in which he advocates a pay cut, makes no claims that require fact-checking.

In his second ad, Trivedi recalls being a battalion surgeon in Iraq and a primary care physician “at home.” Though Trivedi’s opponent has made hay of noting that he no longer practices medicine at his local hospital, both biographical claims are accurate. He did serve in Iraq, and he has been a primary care doctor in Berks County.

The rest of the ad serves as a platform for Trivedi to advocate increased infrastructure jobs and tax incentives to keep jobs in America.

See both ads below.

The 30-second spot, released by Gerlach’s campaign Wednesday after pa2010.com first reported the ad buy Tuesday, paints Gerlach as an independent advocate for taxpayers, while saying Democratic challenger Manan Trivedi is pushing a “far-left agenda that’s wrong for taxpayers.”

Trivedi has already aired two TV ads. Gerlach held a financial advantage earlier this summer, though because of a higher burn rate, that edge was not as big as some expected it to be.

The race in the suburban Philadelphia district is currently No. 6 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

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

Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC), the Majority Whip, will be headlining a fundraiser for the two candidates Sept. 26 in Philadelphia.

Trivedi, who is running in the 6th District, and Lentz, who’s battling for the open seat in the 7th District, have already formed a joint fundraising committee. The event with Clyburn will take place just four days after Howard Dean comes to suburban Philadelphia for a fundraiser benefiting the two candidates.

Obama has made more than a couple trips to Philly recently, and he’s coming again next month. In an announcement that slipped through the proverbial cracks at pa2010.com Central last week, it looks like Obama will headline a Democratic National Committee rally Oct. 10. That’s one of five so-called “Moving America Forward” rallies that Obama will hold in the closing weeks before Election Day, as he seeks to gin up excitement among Democratic activists in the hopes of narrowing that troublesome enthusiasm gap.

“President Obama is committed to delivering the change Americans voted for in 2008,” DNC chairman Tim Kaine said in a statement. “With the help of Democrats in Congress, he has worked hard to get our country back on the right track, but there is still more to be done to repair the damage caused by nearly a decade of failed Republican policies. That’s why President Obama is working hard to elect and reelect strong Democratic partners in Congress and in the states to help move America forward.”

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania competitive Senate race was all about “extremism” on Monday. Republican Pat Toomey has long tried to paint Democrat Joe Sestak as a liberal extremist, while Sestak’s campaign has said it’s Toomey who is out of step. Really, the two candidates are almost as ideologically far apart as any two politicians can be, and one person’s extremist is another person’s standard bearer.

But on Monday the focus was in Harrisburg, where Toomey held a news conference to lambaste his opponent for taking campaign cash from Citizens for Global Solutions. The group bills itself as dedicated to “educating Americans about our global interdependence.” But Toomey’s campaign labeled it a “radical, left-wing group,” noting that it advocates some moves toward greater global governance and has spoken of a so-called “global tax.” Democrats like Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel and Bob Casey have returned money from the group, and Toomey says Sestak should do the same.

“Congressman Sestak has adopted one extreme position after another, but now his ties to the extreme left-wing group Citizens for Global Solutions raises new questions,” Toomey said in a statement. “Does Congressman Sestak support a global tax in additional to all the other tax increases he has supported? Does Congressman Sestak really want to double foreign aid to corrupt and oppressive regimes in a time of sky-rocketing deficits? And will Congressman Sestak join Senator Bob Casey and many others in renouncing his support for this radical group and returning the contributions he received? I hope Congressman Sestak will come forward and answer these questions right away.”

Sestak’s campaign said the congressman understands the importance of American sovereignty. The folks at Team Sestak also pointed us to a contribution that Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-6) received from the same group—Toomey has campaigned with Gerlach.

“Joe Sestak was proud to defend this nation for 31 years in Navy,” Sestak spokesman Jonathon Dworkin said. “He commanded a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to protect America, and has a unique appreciation of the sacredness of ensuring the sovereign security of our country.  This unsubstantiated attack is another strange example of the extremes Congressman Toomey represents both in his attempts to distract and hide from his own record and in demagoguing. What else can you expect from a Wall Street trader who wants to privatize Social Security and eliminate taxes on Wall Street banks and oil companies, while increasing the tax burden on struggling middle class families?”

The state Democratic Party also chimed in, noting that Toomey’s voting record puts him to the right of former Senator Rick Santorum and that he helped bounce moderates out of the GOP during his time as president of the conservative Club for Growth.

“Even Rick Santorum thinks that Pat Toomey is too far out of the mainstream for Pennsylvania,” state party spokesman Mark Nicastre said.

And apparently it’s never too late in the election cycle to issue one of those debate challenges we’ve all come to love. On Monday it was Democrat Manan Trivedi’s campaign in the 6th District saying it wants at least six debates with the aforementioned Gerlach. The campaign wants all the debates to be open to the press and the public.

“I invite Congressman Gerlach to join me, in front of the press and public, to explain each of our plans to represent the 6th District, and how we plan to get them done in Congress,” Trivedi said in a statement. “It’s clear that there is plenty that he and I disagree on, and the choice in this election couldn’t be clearer. It’s time we present ourselves side-by-side in an honest and open debate so that the people of this district can see that for themselves. I know that each person’s vote is a precious and personal thing, something that should never be taken for granted, and I want to ensure that each voter has the opportunity to compare us and make an informed decision.”

Gerlach’s campaign, for its part, seems to think that two debates will suffice just fine.

“We have already agreed to two debates, which Trivedi knows,” Gerlach campaign spokesman Mark Campbell said. “We look forward to hearing him explain his well documented ‘fringe’ left wing positions such as, why Trivedi wants to raise taxes, supports tripling the national debt and cutting Medicare for seniors by $500 billion and a single-payer socialized medicine scheme which will ration care.”