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Pa. politics

April 27, 2008

GOP zeroes in on party switchers

Officials hope to get back on their side the thousands who left GOP for Dems’ primary.

PETER JACKSON Associated Press Writer

HARRISBURG — State Republican leaders hoping to rebuild the party following mass defections in this month’s presidential primary have their work cut out for them with voters like Linda Lemmon.

Lemmon, who lives in Kennett Square outside of Philadelphia, has voted Republican in presidential elections since Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Those decades of GOP loyalty ended this year, when the pull of Sen. Barack Obama’s message of change and the push of her own frustration with the party prompted Lemmon to change her registration to Democrat so she could vote for the Illinois senator in the primary.

Republicans “need to get out of the Dark Ages” on issues like abortion rights, she said. “White men in charge ... that’s the image they give off.”

Exit polls showed that tens of thousands of ex-Republicans cast ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic primary — and that they favored Obama, who is vying to be the first black president, over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the former first lady hoping to become the first female president.

Chances are that Lemmon will be hearing from the state GOP, which just launched a six-week drive to register new Republicans for the general election in November.

Voters have until Oct. 6 to register for the fall election, although — unlike in the primary — they may vote for any candidate regardless of their party.

State GOP Chairman Rob Gleason said the party aims to call every Republican who switched parties in the primary, as well as the nearly 950,000 registered voters who remain unaffiliated with either major party, and make the argument that Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, reflects Pennsylvania values more than either Democratic candidate.

Between last fall and the March 24 deadline for registering for the primary, the state Republican Party’s ranks shrank by more than 59,000 voters, about 2 percent, while Democratic rolls swelled by more than 315,000, about 8 percent, to a record 4.2 million.

Overall, the Democratic turnout was 55 percent — narrowly setting a record for the party in a presidential primary.

Gleason interprets Clinton’s victories in southwestern and Northeastern Pennsylvania as “a huge rejection of Obama” and a signal that some Democrats in those regions might be receptive to McCain’s message this fall.

“We think a lot of people are ripe to come over” to the Republican side, he said.

T.J. Rooney, the state Democratic chairman, said his party will work just as hard to retain its latest recruits even if the party’s nominee is not the one they support, stressing “bread-and-butter pocketbook issues that the Republicans have fumbled.”

The party-switchers “didn’t abandon the Republican Party,” he said, “the Republican Party abandoned them.”

Although Clinton won the primary, Lemmon holds out hope that Obama ultimately will emerge as the Democratic nominee. If not, she’s unsure how she would vote in the general election. She is certain, however, that she does not intend to rejoin the Republican Party.

“I did not make this decision hastily. I thought it over very carefully,” she said.

inside

• Obama’s breakfast leftovers have strange odyssey. Page 2A

• Clinton challenges Obama to Lincoln-Douglas style debate. Page 10A

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