Meanwhile, In My Congressional District
Published by BG on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 9:39 AM.CQPolitics.com - Keystone Dems Steeling for Run at Rep. Dent After Failed ’06 Bid
House Democratic strategists have few regrets about their political strategy in the 2006 election, in which they captured 30 Republican-held seats and a majority of seats overall.
But in hindsight, they must wish they had a do-over in Pennsylvania’s 15th District, where a stronger Democratic campaign might have toppled freshman Republican Rep. Charlie Dent amid the worst national political environment for the GOP in decades.
Dent won a second term last November with a modest 53.6 percent of the vote against little-known Democrat Charles Dertinger, a county councilman who spent just $89,000 — compared with $1.3 million for the Republican incumbent. Dertinger took 43.5 percent of the vote despite becoming the party’s nominee by waging a write-in campaign in the primary, in which no Democrat even filed to run.
Republican strategists acknowledge that the district is politically competitive. Pennsylvania’s 15th is one of just eight in the nation that voted Democratic for president in 2004 but is currently represented by a Republican in the House. But GOP officials counter that it would be a mistake to extrapolate the political environment of 2006 ahead to the 2008 election.
No Democratic candidate in the primary? Really? Just an idle thought here, but it'd be kind of cool to run for the House, wouldn't it? There's no way I'd be a palatable candidate for the Dems, with the minor skeletons in the closet and more conservative economic ideals, but the fact that the party didn't put anyone up in the primary is a real oddity.
A sincere part of the problem with PA-15 politics is that we're essentially the forgotten country up here in terms of media. We've got a local station, if you want to call it that, but our network channels are out of Philly, to whom Southern New Jersey and Delaware seem to be more important. So our race didn't get a lot of attention, and I can't actually remember seeing ads for Dent or Dertinger on the TV (and there were A LOT of ads on the TV) during election season. It's not a glamorous area, it's not a glamorous race, and it's a fairly evenly-divided and fickle sort of population.
Maybe one day it'll be Representative BG: The Great Allentown Uniter. Heh...
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