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Ex-mayor first Philadelphian elected governor in 88 years

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor

Fueled by record spending, enormous hometown popularity and a message of can-do optimism, the Rendell campaign bus is on its way to Harrisburg.

	Newly elected Gov. Ed Rendell reacts as he takes the podium at his campaign headquarters last night in Philadelphia. (Rusty Kennedy/Associated Press) Supporters bask in the glow of a decisive Rendell victory Fisher faces the inevitable unflinchingly Column: Fisher absorbs defeat without losing it Election Day Photo Journal Map: Governor's race: By county More Election coverage

The charismatic former Philadelphia mayor trounced Republican Attorney General Mike Fisher and two other candidates to wrest the governor's office from the GOP for the first time in eight years.

Running especially well in Philadelphia but also strong in the Pittsburgh area, Rendell won 53 percent of the vote to Fisher's 44 percent.

He defeated not only his rivals but also the urban myth that Pennsylvania would not elect a Philadelphian as governor. After his landslide victory, Rendell will be the first resident of the City of Brotherly Love to take the oath of office in Harrisburg since 1915.

Al Gore dubbed him America's mayor for his role in revitalizing Philadelphia during his two terms as mayor. Gore and former President Bill Clinton tapped him to be general chairman of the Democratic National Committee because of his fund-raising prowess. Those factors were the foundation of yesterday's victory. The former mayor had a good story to tell, and he had unprecedented resources with which to tell it.

"For 20 months," Rendell said, "I have been to small- and medium-size towns where the despair and pessimism is so heavy in the air that when you walk out of the bus you can almost touch it ... Just like we did in January of 1992, when we inherited a Philadelphia that was bereft of hope, bereft of optimism, bereft of any vitality, we can turn things around all over Pennsylvania, and we're going to begin doing that tomorrow."

Rendell, who was flanked on the podium by his successor, Mayor John Street, and by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, also introduced a new face to most Pennsylvanians -- his wife Midge. Mrs. Rendell had stayed away from the political arena in deference to her officially apolitical role as a judge of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Midge will be a different type of first lady for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but a unique type of personality because she also has a job of awesome responsibility ... which she does brilliantly," said the governor-elect. "But she will still serve as a great role model for Pennsylvania."

Moments earlier, Fisher had appeared before the 250 or so people who gathered in the ballroom of the Westin Convention Center hotel in Pittsburgh.

"We fought a good fight, we made this campaign about issues and ideas, we talked about the challenges our state faces and we laid out the plans to continue moving Pennsylvania forward in the future," Fisher said. "There's no question that this campaign ended up, of sorts, being a referendum on my opponent, Ed Rendell."

	Election Night Audio Governor-elect Edward G. Rendell tells supporters that his margin of victory is a vote for change. (2.8MB MP3) After conceding victory to Rendell, Republican candidate Mike Fisher thanks his campaign workers and the state GOP for their efforts to get him elected. (1.2MB MP3) Download MP3 players at: Real Player Windows Media Player WinAMP

Starting with his primary landslide over Auditor General Bob Casey Jr., Rendell raised at least $37 million in pursuit of the race, and final figures are expected to approach or exceed $40 million. Fisher raised more than $13 million. In the normal context of Pennsylvania politics, that would have been an impressive amount -- but not compared with Rendell's spending.

"We'd run two commercials; he'd run four," Fisher observed hours before the polls opened. "With the amount of money he spent, the over $40 million he spent, he got himself what amounted to a brand name across the state without people knowing particularly what he stood for."

Voters had ample opportunity to find out what the candidates stood for, however. In addition to record spending, the campaign featured at least nine televised debates and forums in which Rendell and Fisher met, sometimes head-to-head, sometimes accompanied by the third party candidates, Libertarian Ken Krawchuk and Michael Morrill, the Green Party nominee.

The Democrat spent more money on television than any candidate in Pennsylvania history, but that was not the arrow in his electoral quiver. He was a relentless campaigner, criss-crossing the commonwealth in a lavishly appointed campaign bus shrink-wrapped with his giant smiling face.

Rendell's victory also meant a return to Harrisburg for his running-mate, former two-term state Treasurer Catherine Baker Knoll. The veteran McKees Rocks Democrat was a frequent target for GOP criticism over controversies in her tenure as treasurer. But the attacks never seemed to stick in the minds of the voters. When she takes office, Knoll, who won her nomination over a field that included eight men, will be the state's first woman lieutenant governor. State Sen. Jane M. Earll of Erie had the lieutenant governor spot on the Republican ticket.

The economy and the related issues of education and property taxes dominated the policy agenda.

Rendell argued that the state should be an aggressive force in spurring development. He outlined an ambitious program of capital borrowing to lure business and rehabilitate the infrastructure of older industrial sites.

While both candidates advocated at least some business tax cuts, a low tax philosophy was the core of Fisher's approach.

Both claimed to be able to ameliorate the burden of property taxes. Rendell said he would do so by increasing the share of basic school costs paid by the state -- increasing Harrisburg's share of the bill from 34 percent to 50 percent. The increased state aid, he said, would allow districts to cut their property taxes by an average of 30 percent or more. Rendell conceded, as Fisher repeatedly noted, that the actual aid increase, and commensurate tax cuts would vary widely from district to district.

The Democrat said his approach would begin to reduce the revenue disparities between wealthy and less-affluent districts, although he never offered a specific blueprint of the district-by-district impact of his proposal. He maintained that those details would have to await negotiations with the Legislature.

Rendell claimed that he would be able to come up with the new money for education by finding savings elsewhere in the state budget. But he acknowledged that he could not rule out a tax increase to support his initiatives while dealing with a looming state budget deficit.

The election debate focused not so much on issues as on Rendell himself, transforming the race for governor into a referendum on his tenure as mayor. Rendell boasted of presiding over an urban renaissance, pointing to the glittering additions to the skyline that sprang through the latter part of the 1990s in a city that had been on the brink of bankruptcy when he was sworn on.

He also pointed to the fact that the city, for the first time in years, saw an increase in employment during his second term. Rather than focus on those 20,000 new jobs, Fisher, like Casey in the primary, focused on a different statistic -- the net loss of 38,000 jobs Philadelphia experienced during Rendell's eight years in office.

In another reprise of a primary issue, Fisher criticized Rendell on the academic and financial condition of the Philadelphia school system, whose condition was so dire that it was effectively taken over by the state two years after Rendell left office.

Fisher argued that the schools' performance belied Rendell's pledge to be an educational reformer at the state level. Rendell's practiced rebuttal to the school charges was the districts test scores, while still too low, went up during his administration. Its financial woes, he contended, stemmed from an overall state problem in school funding. He pointed out repeatedly that approximately one-third of the state's districts also were facing deficits.

The voters at the center of those arguments tended to side with Rendell. His statewide victory margin was padded by the overwhelming hometown popularity. Not only Philadelphia, but its surrounding, normally Republican suburbs again, as in the primary, produced big margins for the Democrat.

While voters were going to the polls across the state, Fisher was trying to prod last-minute votes in GOP strongholds. He voted and greeted campaign workers in his old Senate district in the South Hills, then traveled to the center of the state for a series of appearances before awaiting the results turns in the Westin Convention Center hotel -- not a long wait, as it turned out.

Fisher, after a convincing re-election as state attorney general in 2000, had been unopposed for his party's nomination for the top spot. While some senior Republicans had continued to search for an alternative, the veteran of 22 years in the Legislature was the choice of most of the state's GOP hierarchy, including Sen. Rick Santorum, former Gov. Tom Ridge and his successor, Gov. Mark Schweiker.

One conspicuous dissenter for the party consensus was Treasurer Barbara Hafer, who had coveted the nomination herself and who would end up crossing party lines to endorse Rendell. Fisher, pointing to his long experience in Harrisburg, contended that he was one of the best prepared candidates for governor in the state's history. He offered himself as the state's best hope for a continuation of the economic gains achieved during eight years of Republican rule in Harrisburg, repeatedly noting that the state had gained 500,000 jobs during the Ridge-Schweiker years.

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 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.

Post-Gazette Staff Writer Dennis Roddy contributed to this report.