GOP victories, Specter’s ouster top political news in Pa. for 2010

Associated Press

HARRISBURG

The election of Tom Corbett as Pennsylvania’s first Republican governor in eight years and the ouster of Arlen Specter from the U.S. Senate seat he held for three decades topped the state’s political news in 2010.

Voters, who chose Corbett by a large margin, also replaced a fragile Democratic majority in the House of Representatives with a lopsided Republican majority to match the GOP’s long-standing domination in the Senate.

Corbett, 61, the state attorney general from the Pittsburgh suburbs who built his reputation on his agency’s prosecution of criminal misconduct in the Legislature, is slated to take office as Pennsylvania’s 46th governor on Jan. 18. He will succeed Democrat Ed Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor who will have served the maximum two terms allowed by law.

The executive and legislative branches will be controlled by one party — the Republicans — for the first time since 2003, as Corbett looks for spending cuts to reconcile the constitutional mandate of a balanced state budget with a projected $4 billion-plus deficit for the next fiscal year and his campaign promise not to increase taxes or fees.

Republicans picked up 13 seats in the state House of Representatives, lifting them from minority status for the first time since 2006 and giving them a 112-91 majority. In the Senate, the GOP maintained its 30-20 edge over Democrats.

For whatever Corbett proposes — spending reductions, privatization of the state-controlled liquor and wine trade, and an expansion of tax-financed alternatives to public schools are likely examples — the road to legislative approval was repaved on Election Day.

Corbett, 61, was endorsed by his party for the nomination and easily overcame opposition in the May primary from a more conservative opponent.

In Washington, conservative Pat Toomey is poised to be sworn in as Specter’s Senate successor.

The story of Specter’s career-ending primary defeat and Toomey’s election was a national news staple throughout 2010. It was a gripping political drama in its own right and emblematic of voters’ frustration over the economy and big government that helped the GOP seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives and 29 governorships in the Nov. 2 election.

The battle for Specter’s Senate seat began in 2009, when Specter defected to the Democratic Party to avoid a showdown with Toomey in this year’s May primary. Toomey, a former congressman from Allentown, had nearly unseated Specter in the 2004 primary and Specter was convinced, that the increasingly conservative GOP would nominate Toomey this time around.

Specter wound up being defeated anyway — in the Democratic primary — by Joe Sestak, a congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs. A former Navy vice admiral and tireless campaigner, Sestak billed himself as the true Democrat in the race and suggested the 80-year-old senator was more concerned about keeping his job than advancing his new party’s agenda.

In the general-election campaign, Sestak portrayed Toomey, a free-market advocate and former investment banker, as a Wall Street lackey who was out of touch with the middle class, while Toomey painted Sestak as too liberal for Pennsylvania.

Toomey, 49, won a six-year Senate term with 51 percent of the vote.

In Harrisburg, the GOP takeover also will significantly enhance the party’s influence over the politically charged redrawing of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts to conform to population shifts revealed in the 2010 census.

The state will lose one of its 19 U.S. House seats because its population growth has lagged the national average, and the new 18-district map will require approval by the Legislature and the governor