PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The four Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to take on Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in the fall will meet for their last scheduled debate Monday night as three of them try to hack away at a strong polling lead built in February by wealthy businessman and first-time candidate Tom Wolf.
The hour-long debate is at Drexel University at 7 p.m. and will be carried live on 22 radio and TV stations and streamed live on Drexel’s website.
Their window to whittle down Wolf’s lead is narrow: The primary election is May 20. Wolf has carried a strong lead in polls after using his personal wealth to outspend his Democratic competitors and to start airing daily campaign ads on TV at least seven weeks before his opponents began.
Corbett has no primary challenger. Every Pennsylvania governor since 1974 has won a second term, but Corbett’s political support remains stubbornly low.
The candidates appeared at a 90-minute forum in Philadelphia Monday sponsored by WURD-AM radio to answer questions about issues concerning the black community. The candidates — Wolf, state Treasurer Rob McCord, former Clinton White House environmental adviser Katie McGinty and U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz — turned primarily to education as a way to even the playing field for the poor and minorities.
“What we are seeing in the United States of America and what we certainly see in this commonwealth is a resegregation of our society,” McGinty said.
The candidates are all white. McCord pointed out during the forum that his wife is African-American.
Wolf said it is important to acknowledge that the African-American unemployment and incarceration rates are higher than those of whites, and that Pennsylvania’s schools are more segregated than they were before the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.
“That’s bad for the African-American community, but we need to acknowledge that that’s bad for all of Pennsylvania,” Wolf said.
Among the questions the candidates were asked was to what degree they would be willing and able to take on the challenges associated with the nation’s historically discriminatory treatment toward black Americans. Schwartz and McCord used the question to contrast themselves with Wolf, citing his relationship with a former York mayor charged with murder and acquitted in the death of a black woman during the city’s 1969 race riots.
“It is so important for elected officials to not stand on the sideline, to recognize when there’s been a violation, when there’s been an outrageous comment,” Schwartz said. “It is not to be left unsaid.”
McCord took on Wolf more bluntly, saying he had failed a test of judgment and leadership by at first standing by Robertson and failing to apologize.
Wolf responded that Robertson had done a good job in his first two terms as mayor and he agreed to be Robertson’s ceremonial campaign chairman during Robertson’s 2001 re-election bid. Robertson was running amid newspaper reports that prompted an investigation into Robertson’s actions at the time, including attending a rally of white gang members the night before Lillie Belle Allen was shot to death in July 1969 and shouting, “white power.”
Wolf, however, said he was instrumental in getting Robertson to drop his candidacy after he was charged and insisted that leadership is not necessarily “a matter of pronouncements, but actually getting something done.”
