The battle for Pennsylvania
Posted: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:19 AM by Domenico Montanaro
A new poll: Franklin & Marshall has Clinton at 46%, Obama at 40%.
The Philadelphia Inquirer previews the debate. Clinton and Obama “yesterday prepped for tonight's Philadelphia debate as Obama and his backers expressed a desire to get beyond the flap over his remarks about small-town Pennsylvania and address issues of substance… Tonight's debate will be far from the only time the two candidates appear on area televisions between now and Tuesday's primary. The two campaigns have bought at least $4.5 million of time for commercials in the closing week.”
Also: "Tonight's debate will be far from the only time the two candidates appear on area televisions between now and Tuesday's primary. The two campaigns have bought at least $4.5 million of time for commercials in the closing week. According to industry sources, Obama has bought more than $3 million of time, breaking the Pennsylvania record he set last week. About 60 percent of the money is going for ads in the Philadelphia market. Clinton has purchased at least $1.4 million, her largest buy to date in Pennsylvania."
Will this be the final Clinton-Obama debate? North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring in his state’s primary, NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann reports. But he’s siding with Clinton on at least one issue -- a proposed CBS debate on April 27th that Obama has not yet committed to attend. Easley, a superdelegate, penned a letter to Obama yesterday urging him to accept CBS’s invitation to the forum, arguing that the explosion of new North Carolinian voters deserve a head-to-head competition between the candidates. “By participating in a nationally televised forum,” he wrote, “you will send a message to those newly registered voters, as well as millions of other North Carolinians, that their vote will count and their voice is being heard.”
Clinton announced her agreement to the debate during an April 3 conference call with reporters, but only after nixing another date -- one that Obama had agreed to -- because it conflicted with Jewish holiday Passover. Spokesman Dan Leistikow says that the Obama campaign is “still determining whether the new date will work for our schedule.” Although Easley has not formally endorsed a candidate, many insiders believe that he is more closely aligned with the Clintons than with the New York senator's challenger.
Uh oh. One of those outraged by Obama’s comments in Hillary Clinton’s TV new ad is actually registered to vote in New Jersey, although he just moved to Bethlehem. “He said he has been volunteering for the campaign in recent weeks, handing out literature and making phone calls. He said the campaign approached him about appearing in the ad, which was filmed in Bethlehem, a city of about 72,000 residents in eastern Pennsylvania where Bethlehem Steel once stood tall. ‘They gave me no script,’ he said.”
Another fun Rendell profile -- this one from the Washington Post: "A reporter asks Rendell if he ever gets pressure from the Clinton campaign to stay on message. ‘I dutifully call in on Saturday nights, I call in to either Howard or Howard's assistant and I get, dutifully get, my instructions,’ he says, grinning. ‘Sometimes I go off message a little bit but -- but I think on balance they're pleased with what I've done. Anyway,’ he adds, ‘I'm not sure they have much choice.’”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Executive Editor David M. Shribman, former Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief, pens an op-ed in the Globe and writes of Pennsylvania’s influence on the talking points of this race. “Now that Pennsylvania isn't a coda to someone else's sonata, this state has changed the subject. In Iowa they force the candidates to talk about ethanol, and the result is a surge in corn-based fuels that may be efficient only if your main motivation is to raise the price of corn. In New Hampshire they force the candidates to talk about taxes, which is good if you think that you can't have a strong economy if you actually collect taxes.
“Pennsylvania is worried about rusty manufacturing industries, to be sure, but that was your father's Pennsylvania. Today the state's preoccupation, along with trade, is high-tech and hospitals, and if you examine it carefully you might conclude that the medical industry is the new steel industry here.”
