
Just one more day. Remember to vote tomorrow. Why? Maybe this will inspire you:
"Voting is a civic sacrament." - Theodore M. Hesburgh, President, University of Notre Dame
"Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves -- and the only way they could do this is by not voting." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president
"Democracy is not only service, action, brotherhood -- it is spirit -- spirit free, indefinable, all-pervasive, that holds us to its revelations even when we seek to escape them." - Agnes E. Meyer, U.S. journalist
"Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism." - May Wright Sewall, U.S. suffragist
"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution." - Rosa Luxemburg, German revolutionary
"What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?" - H.L. Mencken, U.S. journalist
OK, ignore that last one. Moving on ...
Casey v. Santorum
Bob Casey pulled into a West End senior center late Monday morning. He got a warm reception from voters who looked like they already had their AARP cards when his father was governor.
After addressing the crowd and shaking every hand available, the Democratic challenger ducked into a side office that had been transformed into a makeshift studio for a live interview with MSNBC. Don't be too concerned if you missed it. The disciplined Democrat's answers would never be described as extemporaneous:
"Ninety-eight percent ... rubber stamp," -- you get the drift.
Mr. Casey did have a new line countering Vice President Dick Cheney's weekend statement that the nation's Iraq strategy was "full-speed ahead," regardless of political results.
"If you hit a brick wall you shouldn't say full speed ahead," Mr. Casey told the interviewer.
Mr. Casey predicted a victory for himself, and also professed to be optimistic about the chances of Democrats running for U.S House seats across the state.
"I think there's a better than 50-50 shot at [capturing] five [GOP districts]," he said. "That would be huge, if you think about one state giving them a third of what they need," he added, referring to the 15 House seats Democrats need to recapture the majority.
... Early Returns didn't get a chance to see the retail campaigning by the two statewide Republicans by mid-afternoon. We weren't ignoring them; it's just that the schedules worked out so that the two Democrats were traveling from west to east, while the two Republicans, Lynn Swann and Sen. Rick Santorum, were moving from east to west, as all of them were intent on ending their day in their home bases to vote tomorrow and wait for the returns.
Early Returns will be there this evening for Mr. Swann's South Side rally and Mr. Santorum's get-out-the-vote event in a Crafton fire hall.
... More fun with YouTube: with a hat-tip to politicspa.com, we point you to an ambush video of Santorum's "security" team (which happens to be wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers windbreaker) as it engages in minor fisticuffs with a protestor driving a truck. Next, with a hat tip to SantorumBlog (which is not affiliated with Santorum HQ's campaign blog, we might add; we made that mistake a few months ago, and it led to some hurt feelings over there at SantorumBlog), we offer an ambush video from the Daily Pennsylvanian blog, which was made after the cancellation of John Kerry's scheduled appearance with Mr. Casey.
... The Santorum campaign passed along a new poll this morning that conveyed the startling news that the incumbent was "closing hard," in a race in which he has consistently trailed by margins in the low double digits in most other polls. This one, however -- giving new meaning to the term "statistical outlier" -- showed Mr. Santorum within four points of his challenger. The survey was conducted by Fred's Political Research & Auto Body Repair.
Wait, check that. Upon closer inspection of our press release, it was McCulloch Research & Polling, a Chicago firm that until yesterday had never weighed in on one of the most thoroughly polled contests in the nation.
The Casey campaign dismissed the results, while passing along news clips reporting that the Republican operative who conducted it was currently under indictment for felony counts of forgery and perjury, as well as a misdemeanor count of election fraud, in connection with suspect filings in a local Illinois campaign.
C'mon, Santorum HQ. That's just lazy.
... Another Republican firm, this one with more of a track record of assessing the Pennsylvania contest, released a poll yesterday more consistent with the consensus of recent surveys. The poll, from Georgia-based Strategic Vision, showed Mr. Casey with the support of 52 percent of likely voters compared to Mr. Santorum's 40 percent. Those numbers were almost identical to those found in a survey released the previous day by Mason-Dixon Survey & Research. SV found Mr. Rendell leading his challenger, 58 percent to 35 percent.
... Tuesday night, Casey HQ will be in Scranton's cultural center. Santorum will be at Pittsburgh's Omni William Penn in Downtown.
Swann v. Rendell
It's finally come to this for Lynn Swann: Vote for me, because I'm a Pittsburgh Steeler.
"Dear Steelers Fan: Our friend and former teammate Lynn Swann is coming down the homestretch in his historic race for Governor. That's why we are asking you to join the 4th quarter Get-Out-The-Vote Challenge today! Earlier this year, our teammate John Stallworth issued a challenge for Lynn's friends to raise $50,000 to fund his campaign's air war. Thanks to your help, John's appeal exceeded that goal, and Lynn Swann is closing the gap with Ed Rendell. Today, we need you to help make sure Lynn's ground game is successful on November 7. Lynn needs your help today and tomorrow to get out the vote ... Sincerely, Mel Blount #47, Jack Ham #59, John Banaszak #76, Andy Russell #34, Gerry 'Moon' Mullins #72, Mike Wagner #23"
Our only question is, what took him so long? He may have wanted to try this sort of thing back when the Steelers were defending Super Bowl champs, instead of 2-6 chumps.
... On the eve of the last day of his last campaign, Gov. Ed Rendell was making a last-minute push for votes at the Steel Plaza T stop. Was this renowned flesh-presser feeling nostalgic? After campaigning his way to two terms as Philadelphia district attorney, two as the city's mayor, and now -- unless the polling profession is about to be unmasked as grotesquely unreliable -- two terms as governor, did he have any regrets about leaving the campaign trial behind? "No regrets; none; zero," he said emphatically. "I can't think of anything that I would miss.
"You know I'm a person who likes people, likes to mix it up. I like to go places and swap stories, and that's fun," he said between mustering smiles for morning commuters. "But the bitterness of it and the lying and -- it's not the partisanship, because elections should be partisan -- but its just all the negative stuff, it's just terrible."
So tell us what you really think, governor.
"And the debates are silly. 'What are you going to do about the economy, and you have 60 seconds to answer' -- ludicrous."
Mr. Rendell lauded a campaign format that was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Economy League and PIN four years ago, where the candidates were quizzed in depth in separate 90-minute appearances. He said such long-format programs could provide more substance for voters.
"But no, we don't want to do it that way; we want bread and circuses. We want Santorum and Casey to slug each other."
Sounds good to us.
... Mr. Rendell offered a more bittersweet observation as he recalled that, on election eve four years ago, he had been shaking hands on almost the exact same spot as had the late Bob O'Connor, one of the few figures in Pennsylvania politics to rival the governor as a natural campaigner.
"I thought of that as soon as I came down here," Mr. Rendell said. "Such a cruel thing; he fought so hard for something he wanted so much."
... The capitolwire.com juggernaut says Ed Rendell is pursuing a high-risk, high-reward strategy during the 2006 midterms. In 2004, he supported Democratic candidates for the state House and Senate, but avoided open campaigning against incumbent Republicans. He has lifted those self-imposed restrictions this time around, but at the same time he risks alienating the House Republicans with whom he has worked cooperatively during his first term. One GOP insider said of Rendell: "If that bum thought we were delaying him before, when we voted for his stuff and finally got it on the floor, in real battles in our caucus, wait until after the election. He will have very few friends now in the southeast, and he will not know what will hit him next term. Even if he wins the majority, he is uniting the Republican caucus."
An ally of Republican House Speaker John Perzel offered similar warnings: "[Rendell] only got this far because John had to hold his hand when it got tough ... Now he will be fighting Ed, as speaker or minority leader. And if Ed thought the conservative rank-and-file were tough, wait 'til he fights an angry John Perzel."
... Swann will be at Pittsburgh's Hilton, with a reception starting at 7:45 p.m. Rendell will be at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia's Center City.
On the campaign trail
Plenty of good stuff from the Pee-Gee's weekend editions, if you didn't read it. Go here to read about the candidates making their final push; here to read about the prospects of young voters having an impact in the 2006 midterms; here to read about get-out-the-vote efforts; here for Brian O'Neill's views on Teflon Mike Veon; and here for our own Jack Kelly and his piece on the cipher versus the senator. Last, click here for a message from a diehard, but disaffected, Republican pastor from Beaver County.

... The Washington Post is in Election Hyperdrive
, and pays a visit to Blue Bell, Pa.: "With Sen. Rick Santorum in trouble and three GOP congressmen in tight races in the Philadelphia area, Republicans are counting on their ground game to save their seats. Party leaders said their volunteers called 77,000 voters Friday night and knocked on 5,000 doors Saturday. 'That's going to have an impact, because I know the other side isn't doing that,' Santorum told a crowd of party stalwarts here."
... Au contraire, say the labor groups. The story continues: "The other side, of course, was doing exactly that. Minutes after Santorum finished, more than 1,000 Democrats packed a community center in Norristown to hear Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stump for Santorum's challenger, Robert P. Casey Jr., as well as Gov. Edward G. Rendell and House candidate Lois Murphy. Pennsylvania labor leader Bill George warmed up the crowd with an odd joke about how it would 'make a million people happy' if Santorum, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were all thrown out of a plane."
Watch for Bill George to use the "botched joke" defense sometime in the near future.
... More from labor: "The AFL-CIO 'Final Four' program will put 6,000 union volunteers on the ground tomorrow, Election Day, to get-out-the-vote in Pennsylvania. Union volunteers will walk and phone out of 100 locations across Pennsylvania. Saturday, 1,167 union volunteers and Working America members kicked off the first day of the AFL-CIO 'Final Four' program, which is mobilizing 100,000 volunteers nationwide in the final four days of the campaign. Volunteers are knocking on doors and making phone calls to focus on electing working family candidates in key, targeted areas throughout Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia suburbs and Allegheny County."
... A November surprise from the Evening Bulletin: "A Villanova University law professor accused Democratic congressional candidate Lois Murphy of committing 'fraud' on her professional resume by taking sole credit for the published works of other authors. Professor Patrick Brennan made the charges during a phone conference organized by the Jim Gerlach campaign, Lois Murphy's opponent in Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional District. On her resume, available on-line at her law firm of Heckscher, Teillon, Terrill & Sager, Murphy takes credit for a law journal article she didn't author, followed by three other publications that she either co-authored or provided consultation. Nowhere does she give credit to the other authors."
... Our new favorite righty blog, for this week: Ohligarchy. Our new favorite lefty blog, for this week: A Spork in the Drawer. This puts them in the running for Early Returns' Blog of the Year title. The winner gets Pennsylvania's 21 electoral college votes, as well as a handsome set of steak knives (and by "handsome," we mean "fictitious").
Early Returns' Useless Fact
On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederate States of America.
Now get out there and vote, people.
First Published: November 6, 2006, 5:00 a.m.