Pennsylvania Senate race a worst-case scenario

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Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania's junior Senator, will be up for election in 2006. I am eager to see him defeated.

Unfortunately, the Democrats seem to have settled on Bob Casey, Jr. to run against him. See, I know about the guy. I ran my ex-wife's Libertarian Party campaign for Auditor General against him.

Background: I was an LPer in a big way in the mid-90s but lost the faith and left it and am now a swing voter.

My ex's campaign was a little more active than most such LP campaigns, partly because of my interest in working it a bit, and partly because it turned out, as an CPA/CMA with senior-level auditing experience with a big-X public accounting firm, she was the only candidate who was actually qualified for the job. This and her good performances in debates, and the fact that she was the only one on the ballot not named "Bob", gave her double the usual LP vote total... around 106,000 votes. Google fodder: my ex was Sharon Shepps when she ran for Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1996; the R in the race was Bob Nyce.

Robert Casey, Jr. was an "empty suit", much like Santorum. He was only electable at all because he was the offspring of previous PA Governor Bob Casey Sr., who in turn was only electable at all because the name "Casey" has a long and somehow beloved history in Pennsylvania politics. When Senior died, the reins of a strange political vortex were handed off to Junior. And the voters, pulling levers for politicians they did not know and for an office they didn't understand, gave Casey a third more casual voters for minor statewide offices.

How much power remains in that bloc remains to be seen. It's based in Scranton, for pete's sake. Scranton, with all due respect to our own BrianR, is not on the map because it is the center of anything much at all, save being halfway between a lot of destinations and thus being a good truck stop location. A fine little town, but an unlikely power center, in a state that contains the big-time politics of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg.

To me, Junior's time at Auditor General was unremarkable until it became relentlessly political. I understand the need for such politics, but I prefer a politician who wins the public interest by, you know, actually doing their job well, not by collecting donors for their next campaign.

The other minor PA office he held was as Treasurer. This is sort of political office that doesn't actually require you to perform, so much as to avoid scandal with the cookie jar to which you were entitled. Some might recall the on-screen suicide of politician R. Budd Dwyer. He had been PA Treasurer, and there were questions about the state of his cookie jar. He considered his public snuff preferable to jail, in that case.

So what Junior is right now, from my perspective, is a guy who started as an empty suit, graduated on name, performed unremarkably in relatively unimportant positions, and is in the position of possibly becoming a U.S. Senator on the basis that he is even MORE pro-life than Santorum - and that, also, only on reputation because his dad pushed the envelope so hard.

Rs often point to the Democrats' refusal to allow Bob Casey Sr to speak at a national convention, as evidence the Ds are a clearly pro-choice party. Ds respond by pushing Casey Jr as their boy, to show they can be pro-life.

Now, my perspective on state politics is not as informed as it once was, and it may well be wrong. I only say all this because, from where I sit, this really is a worst-case scenario, doofus A against doofus B. I think I pick B, as of now, but it just goes to show how the US Senate is not necessarily the best and the brightest... not by far.