Without John Murtha, Johnstown faces a choice
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Democratic congressional candidate Mark Critz waits outside the rod and wire mill in Johnstown to shake hands with departing workers during a shift change. Mr. Critz is tied statistically in the polls in his quest to succeed the late U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha. -
Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, center, makes a point while campaigning on behalf of Republican nominee Tim Burns, right, during a stop Monday in suburban Johnstown. Mr. Burns has enjoyed an upswing in the polls in his quest to succeed the late U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha.
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JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- Almost four decades after John Murtha stood at the Rod & Wire Division gate and shook enough hands to loosen his arm, Mark Critz's stayed firmly in its socket, a testament to the possibility the 12th Congressional District could soon be in very different hands.
"Mr. Murtha told me once, when they're coming out, shake their hand and let them go, because they want to go home. When they're coming in, they'll want to stop and talk," said Mr. Critz, who was awarded the Democratic nomination to Congress after Mr. Murtha, his boss, died three months ago.
In those days, the Rod & Wire Division was owned by Bethlehem Steel. Thousands worked the mills here and Johnstown was the geographical center of the 12th District. A generation and multiple recessions and industrial shifts later, Johnstown is one end of a dumbbell-shaped district and Cambria is no longer the most populous county in the district.
Bethlehem Steel is now a ghost, and the Rod & Wire Division is now an independent company, a place where more than a thousand men -- invariably labor Democrats -- once walked through its gates. Fewer than 200 work here now. On the afternoon he pressed his case to succeed as congressman, perhaps 40 men filtered through to meet Mr. Critz. Some, like Ed Baldish, who shook hands and took the campaign fliers pressed into his hands, don't even live in the district.
The action was a hillside away, where Tim Burns, a Johnstown-born businessman who now lives on the other end of the dumbbell, in Washington County, was revving up a crowd of 100 true believers who had come out to cheer him and his latest celebrity endorser, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, a conservative heavyweight in the House.
Standing alongside Mr. Pence was Rob Gleason, the Pennsylvania Republican chairman who was on hand in 1974 when Mr. Murtha narrowly defeated Harry Fox, an aide to Republican Rep. John P. Saylor, who died in office. The special election to replace Mr. Saylor came months after President Richard M. Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, setting off a chain reaction in national politics and riveting attention on the 12th District as a potential test of whether a president's declining fortunes would tip the district away from the GOP.
First Published May 12, 2010 12:00 am
