With 18 months to go, GOP eyes Casey seat

PETER JACKSON Associated Press

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Republican Party has a message for : We want your U.S. Senate seat, badly.

Energized by the 2010 GOP wave that elected Pat Toomey to the Senate and restored Republican control of the state government after an eight-year hiatus, party leaders are hoping to oust one of Pennsylvania’s best-known politicians and make the state’s Senate seats a matched pair in 2012.

Several potential Casey challengers are considering whether to run, and one Republican has already formed a committee to raise money for his Senate campaign.

But the election is still more than 18 months away. And Casey’s 2006 landslide ouster of conservative Sen. Rick Santorum, then the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, cemented his status as a political force to be reckoned with.

One drawback for the GOP is that the few Republicans who are household names in Pennsylvania are either not interested in running — former Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker — or are preoccupied with other endeavors. Santorum recently set up a fundraising committee that allows him to take the first steps toward a presidential bid next year.

At the other end of the spectrum is Harrisburg lawyer Mark Scaringi, a former Santorum aide who is the only declared candidate.

Scaringi, who has not previously run for public office, has been traveling across the state to drum up support from tea-party activists and similar groups. His campaign committee reported a balance of barely $300 at the end of March.

“We haven’t focused on fundraising at all” so far, said Scaringi’s campaign manager, John Haynes. “It’s all about the hustle.”

That leaves a number of Republican congressmen and at least one state lawmaker who have not ruled out a Senate campaign.

State Sen. Jake Corman, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, acknowledged he has been making the rounds with party leaders about the possibility of challenging Casey’s expected re-election but said Friday that state budget negotiations come first.

“I won’t make any final decisions until after the budget” is approved, the Centre County lawmaker said.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, whose district includes the Lehigh Valley, is undecided about whether to run for Senate, a spokesman said.

U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, who publicly flirted with a run for the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year before he was elected to a fifth term in his suburban Philadelphia district, sent word through an aide that he has "no plans to run for the Senate at this time.”

Political observers said U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy is weighing his options, but his spokesman did not return phone messages Friday.

Rob Gleason, the state Republican Party chairman, cited a Quinnipiac University poll released last week showing President ’s Pennsylvania approval rating dipping to 42 percent as evidence that Casey will be vulnerable next year. Obama carried the state when he was elected in 2008 and Casey has been a strong supporter of the administration’s policies.

“It’s going to be fun,” Gleason predicted.

Casey said the 2012 elections will be mainly about the economy and jobs. He cited the tens of billions of federal stimulus dollars that Pennsylvania received and an array of federal tax cuts as keys to an economic recovery that is still taking hold.

Obama announced his re-election campaign earlier this month. Casey, whose campaign committee had $2.1 million on hand at the end of March, said he plans to seek another six-year term, but will probably hold off an announcement until next year.