Pennsylvania Democrats have chosen York County businessman Tom Wolf as Governor Tom Corbett’s opponent in the fall. Wolf hopes to be the first to unseat an incumbent governor in Pennsylvania.
90.5 WESA Senior News Editor Mark Nootbaar anchored election night coverage of the political races, and talked about what he thought of Wolf winning the election by such a large margin.
“I think where he stole most of those votes was from Allyson Schwartz. If we were talking about this a few months ago, it was her race to lose. Tom Wolf came in and flooded the airwaves and got out there and rode his Jeep around the state. It just can’t be name recognition, something must have resonated somewhere, but 58% is a very big number.”
Allyson Schwartz was not able to win Philadelphia from Wolf. Even though Schwartz spent five years representing Pennsylvania's 13th district in Congress, Nootbaar said she failed to gain support from Ed Rendell and others in Southeast PA.
Other noteworthy results from Tuesday night included the race between Thomas Michalow and AdamRavenstahl, brother of former Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, and the incumbent in the 20th district. Ravenstahl beat out Michalow with 52% of the vote. Nootbaar thinks this is something to follow going into the general election, as he believes Ravenstahl has been generally quiet while in office. And he said voters may face some confusion with the Ravenstahl name.
Overall voter turnout for the primary election was abysmal, according to Nootbaar. Areas such as Philadelphia saw better numbers than Allegheny County. He said this is not uncommon for a mid-year election and there was no real drive for Allegheny county voters to get out to the polls.
