When former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell announced his candidacy for
governor of Pennsylvania in January 2001, he was defying history in a
number of ways.
No one from Philadelphia had been elected governor since 1914. Indeed,
no Philadelphian had even won a gubernatorial primary in either party
since 1962.
More recently, no Pennsylvania Democrat had won a gubernatorial or Senate
race since 1991. Republicans had controlled both chambers of the legislature
since 1994. And with the exception of a special election win by Harris
Wofford in 1991, no Democrat who was not named Bob Casey had won a gubernatorial
or Senate race since 1974.
And Rendell's primary opponent was named Bob Casey -- Bob Casey, Jr.,
the state's auditor general and son of the late governor.
Thus, despite a successful two terms as a reforming mayor widely credited
with saving his city from economic decline and fiscal ruin, Rendell began
his gubernatorial race as a distinct underdog. As the Philadelphia
Inquirer summarized it on primary election night: "The campaign
began more than a year ago as Casey's race to lose. He had The Name. He
lined up support from the state's labor leaders and much of the creaky
machinery of the Democratic Party. He raised as much money as Rendell
did early on, and, as the highest-ranking elected Democrat in the state,
took on the air of inevitability. Then the campaign happened."
Early polls consistently gave Casey a double-digit lead. But as the Inquirer
suggested, the actual campaign was another thing altogether.
Rendell did two things that turned around the primary contest and laid
the foundation for a general election victory as well.
First, he developed a classic New Democrat message focused on reviving
the state's economy, dealing with a burgeoning budget crisis through tough
management without sacrificing key priorities like education, and equalizing
education funding by reducing dependence on regressive local property
taxes.
Second, his campaign worked hard to build overwhelming support among
Democrats, Republicans, and independents in southeast Pennsylvania who
best knew and appreciated his record as mayor.
As Casey's lead began to slip, the auditor general went negative, attacking
Rendell for insufficient loyalty to Democratic traditions -- much in
the way some liberal Democrats attacked President Clinton during the 1990s -- with
special emphasis on Casey's opposition to welfare reform. And without
question, Casey relied on a political strategy that assumed southeast
Pennsylvania would produce a lower turnout than "Casey country"
in central and southwest Pennsylvania.
In the end, Rendell won a landslide primary victory, beating Casey by
a 56-44 margin. Turnout in southeast Pennsylvania led the state, with
an estimated 16,000 voters in the Philadelphia metropolitan region changing
their registration from Republican to Democrat, mostly in order to vote
for Rendell. In an impressive tribute to his mayoral record and his pro-growth,
pro-choice, pro-education, and pro-fiscal responsibility message, Rendell
took nearly 80 percent of the vote in southeast Pennsylvania. Showing
an ability to put together an urban-suburban coalition even outside his
base, Rendell held Casey to a narrow win in Pittsburgh's Allegheny County,
where the auditor general needed a lopsided margin.
"I think Ed Rendell ran one of the most brilliant campaigns I've
ever seen in Pennsylvania," said State Rep. Stephen H. Stetler on
primary night. And Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jill Porter
commented: "Our charismatic former mayor buried Bob Casey and many
a myth about Pennsylvania politics."
The Rendell primary strategy pointed to a similar general election strategy:
Build up a big margin in southeast Pennsylvania, run on a positive message
of change, and hold down Republican efforts to win over Democrats in other
parts of the state through culturally conservative "wedge issues"
like guns and abortion.
In November, Rendell replicated his primary win, beating Republican Attorney
General Mike Fisher by a comfortable 53-44 margin in a year when GOP voters
appeared to be especially energized in Pennsylvania and around the country.
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summarized Rendell's appeal: "Pre-election
polls showed that Rendell was not only the overwhelming choice of members
of his own party, but that many Republicans, particularly those who had
followed his career in Southeastern Pennsylvania, also were voting for
him.
"Rendell's rising strength in Allegheny County [Pittsburgh] prompted
the Fisher campaign to air one of the most memorable commercials of the
campaign. In an attempt to appeal to his Western Pennsylvania neighbors,
Fisher appeared before the camera, proclaiming his allegiance to hometown
institutions including Primanti Brothers sandwiches."
In effect, Rendell replicated the success of Democratic presidential
candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Like
Rendell, Clinton began building breakthrough margins in Pennsylvania suburbs,
especially around Philadelphia, in 1992, and expanded that beachhead in
1996. Even more strikingly, Al Gore won Pennsylvania, which was considered
one of the two or three major battleground states in 2000, by a surprisingly
comfortable margin. He did it not by winning the socially conservative
coal- and steel-belt voters that were the target of his "people versus
the powerful" populist message, but by winning very big among independents
and moderate Republicans in the suburbs.
As general chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2000
elections, Rendell had a front-row seat to Al Gore's successes and failures
in that ultimate agony-and-ecstasy presidential campaign. And there's
no question he paid attention to how, exactly, Al Gore won Pennsylvania.
Rendell's 2002 win, along with that of another New Democrat, Michigan's
Jennifer Granholm, offers important lessons for Democrats in the Northeast-Midwest
Industrial Belt, where down-ballot candidates have recently had so much
trouble keeping up with the national ticket. The most important are these:
First, stringing together Democratic constituency group endorsements
no longer guarantees Democratic primary wins. In fact, running without
them seems to better position Democrats for general elections.
Second, it's easier to build a majority with a pro-growth, pro-reform,
pro-education message that unites urban and suburban voters, than to try
to win socially conservative voters, either by moving to the right on
cultural issues or by trumping those issues with economic "populism."
Moreover, as both Rendell and Granholm are demonstrating in office, the
New Democrat message is a good way to prepare for governing in tough times.
Rendell promised to find money for education by cutting waste. He's not
inhibited by deep links to constituency groups that oppose changes in
state programs or increases in programs' efficiency. Indeed, he recently
struck a historic agreement with state employee unions that significantly
restrained wage growth and cut the rising costs in employee benefits.
And in his Management Productivity Improvement Initiative, he's promising
to significantly reinvent and modernize state government operations, saving
as much as a billion dollars that can be reinvested in other progressive
initiatives.
Longtime New Democrat and former Bethlehem, Penn. Mayor Don Cunningham
joined Rendell's cabinet as secretary of the Department of General Services,
which deals with state property and contracts. In May of this year, in
a DLC forum, Cunningham tartly responded to complaints that no constituency
group supported moderate Democratic policies by saying: "Actually,
there is a constituency for moderates. There's a constituency for good
fiscal management of government. Because the more we reinvent the government,
the more we make it financially effective, the more we can put those dollars
into things that matter, like education and economic stimulus."
That's how a Rendell Democrat looks at the connection between politics
and policy. And it makes sense far beyond Pennsylvania.
