It’s always been a mystery to me why Pennsylvanians, who normally have no love of the City of Philadelphia, would elect its Mayor as their governor. Rendell made inroads among suburban voters because he has a reputation for turning the city around. That reputation is largely undeserved. Philadelphia rode the same economic boom everyone else in the 90s did, but was greatly outpaced by other cities. Ed Rendell never really fixed any of the cities problems, and to some degree, dumped a lot of those problems on John Street, who was unable to deal with them any reasonably effective manner.
It’s even more of a mystery why gun owners in this state didn’t work harder to defeat him. There are very few politicians more anti-gun than Ed Rendell. He is one of the true believers in gun control. He was smart enough as a politician not to push his gun control agenda very hard during his campaign, and during his first term. Gun owners got complacent, and he was elected to a second lame duck term. Now that he no longer has to face the voters, there will be no arm Ed Rendell won’t twist to get his way, and everyone in Pennsylvania knows Rendell is a pit bull when it comes to fighting for his agenda.
We have to stop this tide now. We all know there will always be Just One More Law, because none of what’s being proposed will fix Philadelphia’s crime problem. I do hope everyone makes at least a few phone calls before this vote on the 20th. If this does make it out of the assembly, we stand a good chance of being able to stop it in the senate. Remind your state representatives that you oppose this. Ed Rendell may be a lame duck, but if we punish his party for this behavior in the next election, the next anti-gun governor will have a much harder time twisting arms. Elections matter, and now it is time to pay the piper for handing Rendell a second term.
It’s political wisdom in Indiana that no Indianapolis mayor can ever be elected Governor, and indeed, many have tried, but never has one been elected (yes, I know, Lugar, but he was never the Governor). Hoosiers don’t want Indianapolis and Indianapolis politics running the state. Then, because of the demographics, even if every city dweller in the state voted for a candidate, he’d have to get at least 35% of the rural vote to get elected. And demographics is why Pennsylvania state laws are so different from Indiana’s.
As for Fast Eddie’s re-election, I lay a lot of the blame on the state party, who were asleep at the switch, and didn’t even pretend to support Swann, much less do anything to keep Rendell from being elected again. A Steeler and a hall-of-famer. There was no excuse for him not to have won the election — except that the party machine wasn’t interested in helping. Again, a sharp contrast with Indiana. In 04, the party was working their butts off all the way up to election day. In 06, nobody answered party headquarters phones here in the county even on election day. It was as if they couldn’t be bothered.