Governor Ed Rendell’s chances of landing a top position in a future Democratic administration is slowly slipping away as the Hillary Clinton campaign locomotive is being surpassed by the Obama Express.  Governor Rendell, hoping to land a top position in DC, endorsed Hillary Clinton shortly after her strong showing in the Nevada caucuses when the polls showed she was likely going capture the Democratic Presidential nomination.  However, Rendell’s grand plan seems to be unraveling as Barack Obama’s recent string of victories has resulted in his pulling ahead of Hillary in the delegate count.

Like any desperate animal backed into a corner, and with his national political future in jeopardy, Rendell has gone on the attack.  In the process, he has insulted the people of Pennsylvania and injected the race card into a campaign that has already seen its fair share of race baiting politics.

Rendell’s recent statement that “many white conservatives won’t vote for a black candidate” is not only a thinly veiled cynical attempt to galvanize the white vote in Pennsylvania’s upcoming April primary for his candidate, but it is dead wrong.  He errantly cites his own recent election as proof that “many conservative whites won’t vote” for a black candidate. 

However, what Rendell fails to do is actually look at the county-by-county results of the 2006 gubernatorial election where he soundly dispatched of Lynn Swann by a 20-point margin.   If Rendell had bothered to actually look at the election results, he would find that the reason Swann lost was because Lynn Swann got absolutely crushed in the Philadelphia region by 80% to 20% ratio, losing the City of Philadelphia by a 90% - 10% margin.  That accounts for about 45% of the total statewide vote. 

It was with the mostly white, moderate-to-liberal Philadelphia suburban voters (those supposedly enlightened enough to vote for a black candidate) that Rendell racked up the big margin over Mr. Swann that propelled him to victory.  Furthermore, in the most liberal part of the state, the “City of Brotherly Love,” black voters voted 95% against the first black gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania of a major party. 

When we turn our attention to the more rural, conservative areas of the state;  we see that in 2006 not only did those areas vote for a black candidate, but that Rendell’s conservative-whites-that-won’t-vote-for-blacks voted for Lynn Swan in a greater numbers than Rick Santorum. In conservative bastions such as Cumberland, Dauphin, Perry and Adams counties Swann ran well ahead of Republican Rick Santorum. This despite the fact Santorum was better funded, better known and, by the way, white. Overall Lynn Swann ran ahead of Rick Santorum in rural central and Western Pennsylvania, where the state’s most conservative voters live. 

It was a horrible year in 2006 for GOP candidates all across the nation, especially in Pennsylvania where numerous GOP office holders were defeated.  Any GOP candidate, regardless of color, going up against Ed Rendell and his money machine in the toxic election conditions of 2006 wouldn’t have fared much better. But as the evidence shows, the areas populated by conservative whites voted for Lynn Swann. It was the areas filled with moderate-to-liberal whites and large black populations that voted overwhelmingly against Lynn Swann.

Rendell’s cynical race card ploy was designed to do two things:  First, it was a desperate attempt to stop Barack Obama’s momentum and aid his fledging candidate Hillary Clinton in the up coming April 22nd primary.  Secondly, Rendell wanted to take a pot shot at the people of Pennsylvania; specifically the central Pennsylvania “T” which voted overwhelmingly against him in 2006, by further propagating a stereotype they are all a bunch of “conservative white” racists who would never vote for a black. 

It’s truly sad that the Governor of any state would single out a large share of the electorate that he clearly despises and portray them as intolerant to the rest of the country out of sheer vindictiveness and for raw political gain. 
 

Ryan Shafik is communications director at the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research, Inc.  His e-mail address is rshafik@lincolninstitute.org.

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