John Hanger seems to be hanging his name out there. I know nothing about his record on the topic of this blog, but as a former Rendell Administration official, I am not terribly optimistic. Pennsylvania has a long and strong tradition of pro-2A Democrats, but from where I sit they are quickly becoming an endangered species. Given Corbett’s weakness, with low approval ratings, we need to keep a close eye on the Democratic field.
Category: Pennsylvania
Electronic Tolling on PA Turnpike
The Pennsylvania Turnpike wants to go all electronic for tolling. I think the best solution would be to dissolve the Turnpike Commission, and turn the management over to PennDOT (with a stipulation the speed limit remain 65). Then just tear down the tolls and maintain the turnpike with highway funds. Part of the Turnpike’s problem is that Ed Rendell robbed it blind to pay for SEPTA’s inefficiency. I’m not sure how I feel about all electronic tolling, but anything that’ll help prevent old people holding up traffic waiting for a ticket in the EZ-Pass lane is OK by me.
Gun Owner Votes Count
I get so damn sick of the message that individual votes don’t matter. Last election, we had a local state house race that was decided by around 100 votes. That’s so close that it’s painful. Well, this year, we have an even more painful vote – and that’s even with the numbers working in favor of the pro-gun candidate and against the anti-rights guy.
For those who don’t follow Pennsylvania politics closely, we had this legislator named Levdansky. He was the American Hunters & Shooters Association of lawmakers. He proclaims to be a sportsman, but he actively sought to screw all gun owners and even ruin everything for hunters in Pennsylvania by pushing HSUS-dream type bills. He cozied up to anti-rights groups and CeaseFire PA made his attempt to reclaim the office he lost in 2010 their priority House race this year.
Meanwhile, the current incumbent, Rep. Rick Saccone, actually supports Second Amendment and hunting rights.
This year, they are in a rematch. I say are and not were because the race is still to be determined. For a while, Levdansky was up by a few votes, but a more thorough count of all of the ballots in every precinct now puts Saccone up by 36 votes. Three dozen voters.
Because it’s such a close call, it’s going to hearings by the election board which is 2-1 Democratic control. The hearing isn’t until Friday, and the final count isn’t expected until next week, according to various news outlets.
If you happen to know any gun owners who didn’t vote in that race, you might want to give them a piece of your mind. Every vote will matter, and this razor thin margin makes it too close for comfort for any gun owner in the state.
What Pennsylvanians Have to Be Looking out For
We’ll be dealing with Kathleen Kane for the next four years. It’s a safe bet all our reciprocity agreements with other states, if not pulled out from entirely, will at least be revisited to deal with the issue of Pennsylvania residents being able to carry on a foreign license. This will destroy most of our potential carrot for dealing with the problem of Philadelphia abusing its discretion preemptively.
Here’s the other catch: we have two years to fix any issues that come out of the Attorney General’s office. Corbett is wildly unpopular. Unless he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, he’s toast in two years when he’s up for re-election. The Democratic Party has abandoned any pretense of being for gun rights in this state, and is highly unlikely to put up a pro-gun candidate for Governor unless there’s a strong internal push from pro-gun Democrats to moderate the left-wing of the party on this issue.
It gets worse. As many of you may have heard, Kim Stolfer is very sick, and while I expect FOAC to continue, Kim is a tireless bulldog for the issue, and not replaceable. In addition, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs, another group that’s traditionally been able to turn people out to Harrisburg when needed has been in disarray since Melody Zullinger got married and moved out of state. We also continue to shed hunters in Pennsylvania, and a lost hunter is often a lost gun owner. I know Gun Culture 2.0 people like derisively label hunters as “Fudds,” but any time I’ve been to Harrisburg, it’s hunters who show up. Fewer hunters means fewer advocates.
So where does that leave us? It is my contention that our lines have been broken. While we are not in retreat currently, we soon will be. The question is whether we do a tactical retreat, fall back, regroup and push forward again, or it ends up being a rout. That’s largely going to depend on what we’re willing to do, and how many people are willing to step up. Writing your reps is well a good, but it will take more to push back what’s coming. Defending gun rights in a deep blue state with a major city full of leftists will not be easy, but it can be done. Just ask folks in Washington and Oregon. But will we? Or will we become New Jersey?
Partisan Voting: Yay or Nay?
Pennsylvania is the first state I’ve voted in where I ever recall seeing a button that will vote for all members of one party. In 2010, I was pissed off enough to use it. But this year, I didn’t press that button. Why? I still voted only for Republicans today, but I have decided after trying it that I really don’t like the concept.
Here’s a look at a ballot for a precinct near us and you can see the partisan voting buttons at the top:
I realize I’m overly idealistic in thinking that it would be nice if people were at least minimally informed voters in every race. The fact is that it just won’t ever be true. However, I don’t think that the state needs to make it easier for uninformed voters to blindly cast ballots. Perhaps not having a partisan button would make them hesitate before casting a ballot in a race where they admit to knowing nothing about the candidates, or perhaps even the office.
Most low information voters would still likely cast ballots for one party or the other, but at least they’d have to make a bit more of an effort. To me, it’s just a matter of making elections a little more principled and a little less about party politics.
Time to Question Turnout Models
I know that many conservatives have been attacking polls that show their candidate down, and I have mixed feelings on it. It’s generally not a good idea to question everything you lose. You just can’t win every state. But when people started diving deeper into the presumed turnout models for these polls, it seemed like they were taking 2008 turnout to be the assumed baseline when we know that’s not realistic.
Today, we saw that in person at our voting location. We voted at about the same time of day as we did in 2008, and the sight could not have been any different. We have two precincts that vote in different rooms at the same school, and one has a far higher percentage of Democratic voters while the other is predominantly GOP. Our neighborhood is in the mostly GOP precinct.
In 2008, the Democratic leaning precinct line was out of the room (typical), down the hall leading to the voting room (typical), and down the main hall (not atypical), and out the door (extremely out of the ordinary), and halfway down the outside of the building (unheard of), with poll workers telling people it was more than a 3 hour wait. In 2012, the line was only about an hour long and did not grow while we voted. In fact, I overheard two female voters in the line complaining that they couldn’t get their friends interested in showing up this year.
In 2008, our precinct line was short – a couple of folks in front of us and a few people behind us. IIRC, we were around 140 for the voter count for the day. Today, we were 271 & 272, and the line was longer than anything I’ve seen in 2008 or even 2010 (where it was longer than 2008’s line). Interestingly, it continued to grow while we were voting. It was still only about a 15 minute wait, but the sign in sheet was extremely heavily Republican. My name went on the sheet about 2/3 of the way down, and there were only two Democrats signed in on the page.
Enthusiasm gap much?
Bloomberg’s Price – $257,000
Candidates who cozy up to Mike Bloomberg get a cool quarter million dollars plus in free advertising based on what he’s doing for the anti-gun Attorney General candidate here in Pennsylvania.
A super PAC founded and funded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending over $250,000 to boost Democratic Attorney General hopeful Kathleen Kane. …
The ad is airing on cable and broadcast in the Philadelphia market to the tune of $257,000, according to a buy tracked by the Sunlight Foundation’s political ad sleuth.
This race is a problem for Pennsylvania gun owners. Polls show Kane holding a huge lead, but they often have a high margin of error and still show about 1/3 of voters haven’t made up their minds, even this late in the game. The race is still winnable, but gun owners need to help out.
I’m not just talking about knocking on doors or making phone calls. With so many voters not paying any attention to the race, one of the best and easiest things to do would be to talk to any friends and family members and just let them know your choice. You don’t have to get into the gun issue, just make remarks that Freed is your candidate of choice based on his record as a prosecutor and encourage them to join you.
Kane has already promised CeaseFire that she’s going to work on undoing the concealed carry reciprocity agreements with all other states – not just Florida that has been demonized by the media.
Kane received a perfect score on CeaseFirePA’s questionnaire. In particular Kane has committed toa review of all concealed carry reciprocity agreements currently in place between Pennsylvania and other states,including Florida, and renegotiating or terminating those that do not meet Pennsylvania’s standards.
To give you an idea of how extreme you have to be to get a perfect score on CeaseFire’s questionnaire, not even an NRA D-rated Democratic Senator from Philadelphia could get more than an 85% agreement with them in 2010 when he was running for Governor. That’s how anti-gun you have to be – a solid F with gun owners and more extreme than even entrenched urban Democratic politicians.
Could the “Snor’eastercane†Impact Pennsylvania Elections?
So the “snor’eastercane†maps are tilting a little too close to Pennsylvania for my liking, especially when some forecasters are concerned that if/when it does turn inland, it could be worse than Irene.
I got to thinking, what does this mean for the election? I realize that this is likely to hit a solid week before the election. However, we had parts of our suburban Philadelphia county that were out of power and still had trees blocking roads a week after Irene which was just rain, not snow. The more rural areas of any state that is hit could be out for quite a while since this is supposed to be a slow-moving storm.
If Pennsylvania takes the hit, then the areas that would be hit later and possibly longer are strong areas for Republicans. While this likely won’t impact the presidential race much since Mitt isn’t likely to win, it will likely make a big impact on the closer Senate race and, more importantly for gun owners, the largely ignored and unknown to many voters Attorney General’s race. This doesn’t even get into the many state representative and senate races across the state.
If it follows the bottom part of the cone and heads toward Virginia, well, that could impact the presidential race. During one snow storm that wasn’t totally crazy, but definitely heavier than average, none of the streets in my mom’s Roanoke subdivision were plowed for four days. During the 2008 primary, VDOT left motorists stranded on the overpasses that they failed to clear and treat during an ice storm for about a day – that was right near the DC line, not a rural corner. If there’s one thing I learned living in Virginia, that state does not handle snow clearing very well at all.
Last year, I saw tweets and Facebook updates from people in Connecticut who were out of power for the better part of a week because of storms. Even if they could get out of their neighborhoods, they few places around them had power. That’s not impossible to imagine, either. While Sebastian and I regularly walk up to our polling place, and we’d be willing to freakin’ shovel a path for ourselves and our neighbors up there this year if we had to, what if they don’t have power over a widespread area? How would counties handle that? More importantly, if they had only a few polling places open, how would voters be notified of the changes if few had power?
The good news for any weather issues is that the enthusiasm gap favors the candidates who happen to be pro-gun in this immediate area. However, the bad news is that the areas likely to have any damaged fixed or power restored last is more friendly territory for our candidates. It’s an interesting, and not impossible to imagine, scenario with a very large weather system like Sandy.
The Problems with Making Up Your Own Facts
Our local Congressional race is between an incumbent freshman Republican and a challenger from the Democrats who is trying to make women’s issues a key part of her campaign. Except rather than being knowledgable on the actual issue, Kathy Boockvar has decided to just make up her own facts in the midst of debates. This can backfire, something she should learn today.
For example, she was talking about birth control and said that she believed 99% of Americans use birth control. 99% of Americans. Think about that for a second. She didn’t misspeak, she made her comment very clear – she argues that 99% of Americans use birth control. Now, I assume she factored into that “fact” that any man in a sexual relationship with a woman on birth control pills is also “using” birth control. I’ll accept that. I agree with that. What I don’t accept is her assertion that children are actively using birth control.
No, I’m not talking about 16-year-olds using birth control methods. I have no issue with that at all. I’m talking about her version of statistics. 99% of Americans. The Census says that nearly 7% of Americans are under the age of 5. That means that in Kathy Boockvar’s world of made up statistics, toddlers and pre-schoolers are in need of birth control. This is why you don’t make up statistics on the fly when you’re running for office.
Of course, I don’t expect that Boockvar has any desire to actually correct her statement, even though she has tried to make such issues the highlight of her campaign. When asked in the last debate about her specific ideas for tax reforms, she refused to answer by saying that she doesn’t believe in making promises or giving those kind of answers. Today, she was asked for specifics on what votes she claimed Fitzpatrick has made to deprive veterans of support, and she just answered that he took many, many votes without being able to give any examples. In her campaign, facts are optional and accountability is non-existent. Not to mention, her made up facts are really freakin’ creepy.
Specter Dies
Regardless of the fact that he was never conservative enough for conservatives, and never reliable enough for liberals, Arlen Specter was an icon on Pennsylvania politics. He was diagnosed with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma several years ago, but it seems he recently got a non-Hodgkin’s form of the disease and succumbed to it at 82.