Two new polls now shows longtime Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha in serious trouble for reelection. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/Ra…
His Republican challenger has an internal poll that shows the Republican up 48%-35% and a local newspaper has Murtha up just 46%-41%.
If anything, Murtha needs to quickly start hitching himself to Obama’s coattails if he wants to win reelection. We already appear likely to lose Kanjorski in the solidly Democratic PA-11 and now we may lose Murtha as well. This is not good.
Especially considering Murtha’s opponent is one of the defrauders who isn’t even running a legit campaign.
What’s the problem with our blue-collar PA district Dems this year? First Kanjorski makes an ass of himself and now Murtha.
way Republicans pumped millions into their voracious right wing candidate in 2006 and beat their own drum only to lose in a landslide. The fact is everybody’s known Murtha is corrupt for a long time but they don’t care; he’s still very respected and very popular.
Also, PA-11 is not solidly Democratic. Kerry won it 52-47 and that was an improvement over Gore.It’s a socially conservative, heavily catholic, poor blue collar district, the kind that has increasingly shifted away from Democrats in the past few decades. Native son Biden is helping him in this district that voted for Clinton two to one in the primary, but we shouldn’t expect to see Obama take more 56% of the vote here.
yet, he’s tied, and Barletta is being overwhelmingly outspent. But yes, I’m pesimistic here, because the ads being run by the DCCC and Kanjorski are terrible, while Barletta’s are brilliant. I don’t mind. Let him win. Beat him in 2010, or eliminate his district and throw him in a primary with Charlie Dent, then put Scranton back in Chris Carney’s district, and remove some of the ultra-conservative rural central PA counties at the edge, the result is a newly (re)created swing district that is a very good fit for Carney.
I was born in Murtha district, and I can tell you that even my “racist, redneck” uncle (who says he won’t vote for “that n****r Obama”), swears up and down on how great Jack Murtha is. Any internal Republican poll that shows Murtha at only 35% is too ridiculous to even given a serious look.
For most of the blue collar, socially conservative residents of the old coal and mining towns across western PA, Jack Murtha is viewed as one of them, someone who brings the goods home from DC back to the district. He doubtless annoyed them with the “racist… redneck” comments, but most of the people I know just chuckle when he says something like this and just say “there goes Jack again…”
The Republicans claimed that Diane Arey was going to give him a serious race and he blew her out of the water. This is not the year a Republican is going to beat him.
As for Kanjorski, I think that race is 50/50 at this point — after a dismal start, Kanjorski is back in the game, closing the poll margin he had fell behind to Barletta. This is the kind of a district where the economic fear works in favour of Democrats, and I think there is a very strong chance he will pull it out.
(And hopefully if re-elected both of them will voluntarily retire before we lose either seat to a Republican.)
The 12th was drawn to be safe for Murtha, and even John Kerry managed to win it in 2004, while performing worse in Western Pennsylvania than just about any winning Democrat in history.