Don¹t Make Me Pull Over

by Howard Altman

Standing on the oil-splattered blacktop of I-76, which by now is a miles-long snaking parking lot, thanks to a series of vehicular mishaps, I look around at all the unhappy motorists and their unhappy kids, some of whom are bickering, as kids do, complaining about how this one touched me and this one is sitting on my side of the seat. I listen to the sighs and the arguments and think that being stuck out here, waiting for emergency crews to remove the wreckage, is kind of like being stuck on the Democratic gubernatorial primary road to hell. Just when you think you can see an exit up ahead, bam, there’s another accident, way up the road.

We're not moving anywhere soon.

And so the kids keep bickering. And the headache keeps pounding, and all anyone wants to do is get the hell off the highway.

Nobody likes a political campaign as much as I do. There’s something about the competition and the stakes and the gamesmanship that makes it like a sporting event.

But sometimes, you get a race where the level of nastiness and vituperativeness is so high that watching the race is painful, like the kind of pain that bored and cramped children can inflict when seated too long in an automobile.

Bob Casey Jr. versus Ed Rendell for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination is one of those races.

For the past several months, my e-mail inbox and my fax machine have been choked with the kind of silliness that is more fitting of my 11-year-old and my 8-year-old going at it than two men running for the state's highest office.

Casey's campaign calls Rendell a "serial prevaricator," sending out a constant stream of press releases asking "When Will the Lying Stop?"

Rendell's campaign accuses Casey of "two-bit plagiarism" for "recycling quotes" from former Gov. Dick Thornburgh.

It's enough to make anyone forced to share a car with these two to turn around, wag a finger in the air at the back-seat transgressors and threaten to pull over and break out the belt.

If we could just make it to May. If we could just make it to May.

That was the mantra. Make it to the May 21 primary and the bickering and babbling will abate. At least until around September, when the winner’s campaign gets into full gear to take on Republican Mike Fisher.

But my mantra plan went to hell last week, when a U.S. District Court three-judge panel ruled that the state's congressional redistricting plan was unconstitutional and that more than 70,000 people would have to be moved around like peas in a shell game. The ruling also necessitated a change in the primary date, pushing it back so that the state's voters will be treated to at least another two months of the Bob and Ed show.

Earlier this week, the state Senate, in all its infinite wisdom, approved a measure delaying the primary until July 16, when a good portion of Philadelphians, so vital to the Rendell campaign, will be grilling under the hot Jersey Shore sun, far from the cares and, worse for Rendell, far from the levers of the voting machines. The measure is now before the state House of Representatives.

How absurd is all this?

I find myself agreeing with the publicly stated wisdom of Vinny J. Fumo, the helicopter-flying Mensa genius and all-powerful state senator, who was quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer bitching, rightly so, about how "this is like telling the candidate for governor you're in a 500-meter race ... and you've got one lap left, and then you move the finish line another 200 yards."

What the Casey campaign thinks in private is anyone’s guess. Spokesman Troy Colbert offered up a terse “no comment” when CP’s Daryl Gale asked him about the proposed primary delay.

My guess is that the Casey people have to be loving this, despite comments like Fumo's and from Casey's running mate, Jack Wagner -- who was quoted in the Inky as saying, "We have a problem with low voter turnout already. This will severely impact voter participation."

Who does low voter turnout affect more than anyone?

Ed Rendell. Who needs about 70 percent of at least a 50 percent Philly voter turnout to beat Casey.

Hold the primary in July and you might get 30 percent turnout.

Besides, what's another month or two to Casey, who will continue to duck and weave and dance his political rope-a-dope, avoiding direct confrontations with Rendell whenever possible, knowing that, anytime he and Rendell are in the same room, Rendell will score a knockout.

As I said before, nobody likes a campaign more than I do.

So, as crazy as this sounds, as painful as it will be to endure another four months of this mishegoss, here’s hoping that the House of Representatives will do the right thing, vote down the Senate proposal and move the primary to after Labor Day.

Sure, the kids in the back seat are driving us crazy.

But they are way too important just to dump off on the side of the road.




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