Posted on 11/04/2010 5:26:31 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
After a more than a year of nonstop campaigning, fundraising and crisscrossing state travel, Dan Onorato can console himself that he was just one of many Democrats swept under in a national Republican wave year. It is what happened at home that must concern him.
The Allegheny County executive lost his home county in the governor's race to Republican Tom Corbett, an indignity in a county where his party has 2.3 times as many votes. That has to be on his mind -- and those of possible GOP or Democratic rivals -- as he considers running for an unprecedented third term as county executive next year.
Mr. Corbett beat the Democrat by 649 votes in Allegheny County, the first time a GOP gubernatorial candidate had taken Pittsburgh's home county since Tom Ridge won re-election over Squirrel Hill's Ivan Itkin in 1998. In an open contest like this year, a Republican had apparently not won since the city's Democratic ascendancy began in the 1930s.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Allegheny County voters, even Democrats, remembered Onorato's notorious drink tax on election day.
Its a heavily Dem county and Corbett ran stronger in Allegheny than Toomey, who lost it to Sestak.
I’d venture a guess that if the unions didn’t turn out the vote, this idiot would have lost by an even larger margin. People DO NOT like him! Us Allegheny county residents pay higher property taxes than anywhere in the country yet we can’t even get our snow plowed. Trust me, Onorato is a screw-up & people know it. THAT, my FRiends, is why he got his ass handed to him, even by Democrat voters.
Reminds me of how Al Gore didn’t even win Tennessee in 2000.
Corbett won by ten percent, Toomey by less than two. Onorato wasn't much of a candidate and some Dems obviously split their ticket to vote for Corbett.
Can someone give me a better handle on Corbett?
I just visited his web site after Jay Cost suggested he ran a model campaign. It seems as if on first blush he’s a Cristie Republican, talking about fiscal discipline and low taxes. Digging further, he’s for such things as eliminating PA’s inheritance tax and enacting tort reform re: health care.
But if you scroll through position by position, it looks like he’s promising all kinds of Democrat-style ‘investments’ in green tech research, small biz funding, lifestyle education and modification, etc.. In short, he looks like a big-picture GOPer with lots of small-bore pet Dem projects added in.
Corbett was touting his Allegheny county roots in his ads, so that may have something to do with it. Also, before O-no-(a)-RAT-o became county executive, there was a GOP county executive, so sometimes, the Allegheny county voters can get it right.
Interesting point: "... a Republican had apparently not won since the city's Democratic ascendancy began in the 1930s."
About the time that people started leaving the city for the suburbs.
They know him best there. That is why he lost his home county.
Interesting that we got the exact opposite outcome in Delaware where a County Exec crushed O’Donnell.
That’s Dan O-N-A-R-A-T-O for you.....lol! What a dumb ad that was
Oops...Onorato...that is!
We have a great opportunity in Western PA to have a tremendous influx of good jobs with the emergence of the Marcellus Shale natural gas discovery. The dems, with Rendell in the lead, want to tax it to death, so it will move to other states (New York, Ohio, Kentucky). Corbett promised to support it and not tax it.
Of course, we still have to deal with the uninformed enviro weenies.
You summed it up perfectly!
I have lunch a couple times a week with an old gentleman (85 years old) who is quite a character. He always has a couple fingers of Jack Daniels during lunch as we talk sports, work or just life in general. He always brightens my day and I think I brighten his as well. He's a WWII vet -- a gunner/radio man on a dive bomber in the Pacific. Was even shot down once and rescued by a submarine.
He was born and raised in the West Virginia coal fields and was always pro Union and a Yellow-dog Democrat. He voted against Onorato and for Corbit, for one reason -- The Drink Tax! He said, "That SOB has cost me a lot of money."
It seems the Dems have even had the Yellow Dogs turning on them now. ;~))
Let’s just see if Corbett walks the walk. He ran an ugly SMEAR campaign during the PA primaries against Sam Rohrer – a descent, honorable man who was for property tax abolishment.
Also, Corbett remains under investigation for corruption himself. I am a die hard conservative – I will never forget Corbett’s dirty pool during the campaign. If – and that is an IF – he does the Commonwealth good, so be it. He is and will remain a back shooter – he IS far better than fat Eddie Rendell, the Philly union lover, but that doesn’t mean much – a potato would have been better that moron.
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