Published: March 15, 2008 11:39 pm            

Different Pa. strategies, missions for Obama, Clinton

Not since 1980, when beleaguered President Carter was being challenged by U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination, has Pennsylvania mattered in the presidential primary.

Now, it’s become the Keystone Battleground, ironically due in part because of state lawmakers’ inability to move up the primary to raise its significance.

But the intense Democratic race between U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may be more about perception than delegates, experts said.

A composite of polls shows Clinton has about a 10-point lead over Obama leading up to the April 22 primary, said G. Terry Madonna, a political analyst from Franklin and Marshall University in Lancaster.

If she wins as expected, she can carry the momentum into other remaining primaries, the Democratic convention and the struggle for superdelegates.

“If she loses the state,” Madonna said, “she’s done.”

Obama’s strategy essentially will be to keep the race close, Madonna said.

“It’s not going to move the delegates very much,” he said. “It can maybe get her seven or eight more.

“But if she loses Pennsylvania ... she can’t make the argument she’s won the big states, the swing states.”

Through the Mississippi primary on Tuesday, Obama has 1,585 delegates to 1,473 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona already has secured the Republican nod.

Early in the year, state lawmakers wrestled with the idea of moving the primary forward into early February to give voters more of a say in the presidential election process. But concerns about cost and the impact the quick timetable would have on local campaigns stymied the idea.

As it turns out, keeping the primary in April heightened its significance, at least for Democrats.

The only other times in the past quarter century when a nomination wasn’t decided before Pennsylvanians voted were the 1980 race between Carter and Kennedy and the 1984 campaign between Sens. Gary Hart and Walter Mondale, experts said.

“One of the reasons it seems important to us is it’s the first time in modern political times that Pennsylvania gets to participate when it’s still an open question,” said Gwen Torges, assistant political science professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, Madonna said, the state can be divided into five regions:

Obama is expected to win Philadelphia, while Clinton is likely to carry the blue-collar, Catholic, union voters in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania and do well in Scranton and the Northeast.

Suburban Philadelphia is considered a tossup, as is the Lehigh Valley and southcentral part of the state.

Cambria and Somerset counties, like other southwestern regions, appear to be Clinton territory, Madonna said.

Somerset County Commissioner John Vatavuk, the county’s Democratic Party chairman, said Clinton is showing strongly in the area, although he has been getting more calls lately from Obama supporters. Vatavuk, originally registered to be a delegate for U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, since has switched allegiances to Clinton.

He said the Pennsylvania primary “is a lot more important than I thought. I said we’d be irrelevant.

“But on the Democratic side,” he added, “it could make the difference in whether (Clinton) stays in for the convention, or she’s out. If she wins Pennsylvania, it’s going to be a showdown at the convention.”

Although Pennsylvania is not a winner-take-all state and the two candidates will split the 158 delegates based on the percentage of the popular vote, Vatavuk said a strong showing by Clinton could play a role in deciding the state’s superdelegates, elected officials and other party leaders who will have a vote at the convention.

Ed Cernic, a Johnstown businessman and political power broker with close ties to Gov. Ed Rendell, agreed that the region will strongly support Clinton.

“Our local race is going to go really big for Hillary,” he said, pointing to the thousands who turned out to hear former President Bill Clinton stump for his wife Wednesday in Johnstown.

The reason is simple: Under former President Clinton, the country was in better shape economically, said Cambria County Democratic Party Chairwoman Helen Whiteford, a Hillary Clinton delegate.

“Let’s face it, this is a depressed area,” she said. “The population is senior citizens. They see what’s happening. They’ve lived through bad times. It’s frightening.”

While Obama’s camp has been subtly trying to downplay the importance of Pennsylvania in an attempt to keep expectations low, both candidates are expected to campaign heavily throughout the state in the next five weeks.

“I think they’re both going to make a big push,” Torges said. “In the end, it may be a case of be careful what you wish for.”

Torges said it will give voters a chance to study the issues more closely than they have in the past.

“We’ll be campaigned out,” she said.

        

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