For the past few months, I’ve run a link on the blog roll to the U.S. Senate campaign of Chuck Pennacchio. Two weeks from tomorrow, Pennsylvanians will go to the polls and if Chuck gets much more than ten percent of the vote, he will be having a very good day indeed. The reason is that the state Democratic Party, led by Gov. Ed Rendell, has decided to put its troops, funds, endorsements & energy behind Bob Casey, Jr. Rendell went so far as to push much more viable alternatives like former congressman Joe Hoeffel out of the race to prepare the red carpet for Casey, who will go up this fall against incumbent Rick Santorum, who just might be the most right-wing member of the U.S. Senate. I’m appalled by all of this, and think that Rendell’s machinations just might come back to haunt him.

Casey, as they say, has name recognition. His late father, also named Bob Casey, was a conservative Democratic governor here a few decades back & the kid has used that brand identity to run successfully for a pair of lower echelon state offices, auditor general from 1997 until last year, and then last year state treasurer. Casey actually ran against Rendell in 2002 for the Democratic nomination for governor, but Rendell edged him out, in large part by being pro-choice and a liberal – the term actually fits the ample former mayor of Philadelphia. Casey, like his dad, is anti-choice, enough so that he actually says that he hopes Roe v. Wade is overturned. This isn’t the only issue where Casey actually agrees with Santorum. Both support the President in opposing stem cell research, in Bush’s adventure in Iraq and his current bellicose stance towards Iran. Where do they differ? Casey supports birth control and his election could help swing the Senate toward a Democratic majority, one in which he would become the most conservative member. It’s on those slim grounds that a few “realist” women’s organizations have reluctantly endorsed him.

Rendell’s argument in pushing viable candidates aside was that Casey ran ahead of Santorum in the polls months ago, a fact based almost entirely on Santorum’s increasing visibility as a nutjob and Casey’s name recognition. It may also have been payback for Casey’s support of the governor in his general election campaign four years ago – Rendell is that rarest of creatures, a governor of Pennsylvania who actually served as mayor of Philadelphia, the city much of the state’s large base of rural voters think of as Sodom. He’s Jewish to boot. As it happened, Rendell was fortunate to have had a lackluster opponent in 2002. Had Mark Schweiker, the accidental incumbent (he had no higher ambitions than his job as lieutenant governor when Tom Ridge resigned to set up the Department of Homeland Security for old buddy George W. Bush), chosen to run for re-election, he would have won handily.

Besides Hoeffel, the other potentially significant candidate who chose not to seek the Democratic senate nomination this year was MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews. Matthews served as an aide to Tip O’Neill but has been drifting rightward for years. Matthews comes from Montgomery County in the Philly suburbs & has talked of the idea in the past, but his brother Jim is seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.

The catch in all of this is that Rendell, who squeaked through four years ago and has governed, with a Republican legislature, largely on the theory of do-no-harm, accomplishing little to show for his tenure, presumed that he would have an easy ride to re-election. Then TV commentator & football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann announced that he would be seeking the GOP nomination for governor. The telegenic and articulate Swann is a folk hero in Pittsburgh, and, as an African American, has the potential to cut seriously into the Democratic base. He also represents something akin to the same conservative social agenda Santorum does. So Ed Rendell finds himself unexpectedly in a close race, with a weak record, and needing very much to differentiate himself from this anti-choice candidate. But the decision to take Roe v. Wade off the table as an issue was already made when Rendell decided to promote Casey. If he brings the issue back now, it’s only going to make Pennsylvania Democrats look incoherent in November. And in today’s electoral world, looking incoherent is even worse than being wrong on an issue to most voters.

The only argument one ever hears made for Casey on the Democratic side is that his numbers suggest he can win. The logic is this – only 65 percent of Republicans favor Santorum, whereas polls suggest that 77 percent of Democrats favor Casey. In a state that is roughly 40 percent GOP, 30 percent Dems and 30 percent independent, that would translate to roughly a dead heat among the partisans in a year when independents are expected to swing Democratic.

But Santorum, who has twice the cash in the bank that Casey has, has won as an underdog before. He’s doing all the things you would expect a vulnerable incumbent to do to move ever so slightly toward the center, to the point that when Bush came to Philly recently, he met with Santorum behind closed doors so that Senator Rick wouldn’t have to be photographed with this very lame duck. While the Democrats are right that Bush is a huge liability to the GOP right now, it should be remembered that (a) with the very notable exception of gas prices, the economy right now is humming along, and it’s always the best predictor of electoral success, and (b) an incoherent Democratic slate is not calculated to maximize the number of Democratic voters. As bad and inexcusable as the Iraq war is, it’s not going to be a major factor, especially since Casey and Santorum both are hawks. A lot of Democrats, myself included, won’t give to the party or work on election day if Casey is on the ballot.

So this turns out to be a dispiriting election cycle in Pennsylvania. If Bush has another high-profile disaster like New Orleans, of course, all bets are off the for the fall. But if Swann mounts a credible campaign and Bush can persuade the oil companies to cool it a bit on the obscene profits they’ve been raking in, at least until December, then the very likely result of Rendell’s meddling in the Senate campaign will be to (a) ensure the return of Rick Santorum, who may be the worse member of the U.S. Senate, and even to (b) enable the election of Lynn Swann as governor of Pennsylvania.

So I’m voting for Chuck Pennacchio, a historian who has worked as an aide to Alan Cranston (ah, but long after Charles Olson did the same) & to Congressman Ron Dellums (long after I wrote a a speech or two for the man). He’s not the only good “protest” candidate on the ballot, but he’s the best and most well organized. If Pennsylvania voters cast ballots based on the issues, he’d win in a walk, against Casey and against Santorum. But issues ain’t what it’s about in Pennsylvania, not this year, and Ed Rendell may very well discover that getting what you wish for may not be all it’s cut out to be.