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Here's what Swann must do
Colin McNickle is the Trib's director of editorial pages. Ring him at 412-320-7836. E-mail him at: cmcnickle@tribweb.com.
"(W)e understand there's an anxiousness in the public to see the vision" of Republican gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann, GOP political guru and moneyman Mark Holman told a reporter last week after signing on as a senior consultant beginning next month.
"Anxiousness," of course, doesn't mean "eager anticipation," the sentiment an experienced and usually safe-speaking political operative of Mr. Holman's caliber likely was attempting to impart.
Anxiousness is, at the bottom end of the scale, worry. But at the top of the scale, it's distress bordering on anger.
It's a pretty accurate assessment of how many Pennsylvania Republicans have been feeling about Mr. Swann's post-endorsement performance, on the stump and with his decidedly lackluster fundraising acumen.
But if Holman really is saying that the public will be distressed and angry about Swann's vision, well, the campaign is over. Now.
The fact that Holman now is saying Mr. Swann "is going to be extremely clear in laying out his vision" is confirmation that he hadn't been. Which is vindication for reporters and pundits of all ideological stripes who were being sent snarly e-mails by denial-plagued high-ranking campaign staffers and GOP kingmakers for reporting and opining just that.
It's the kind of denial, if not arrogance, that lost this same crew state Rep. Michael Diven's state Senate bid last year.
But, voila!, the Swann campaign suddenly seems to have come alive. Or at least some campaign savant has discovered the e-mail of the campaign's most strident critics.
There are position papers galore -- from tax relief to tort reform, from education to jobs -- and even a reality-check on Sham Shaman (the governor formerly known as Fast Eddie) and his first flight of television advertising.
It's exactly the kind of thing the Swann campaign should have been doing right out of the gate. But now that it's started, it must target its message even better.
Swann may be holding his own in the overall polls but he lags poorly in a key constituency -- blacks. That's likely because, as Capitolwire.com's Pete DeCoursey recently noted on PCN's "Journalist Roundtable," most of Pennsylvania's blacks are concentrated in Philadelphia, Mr. Rendell's home turf.
And Ed Rendell, a demagogue, is a demigod to many of them.
What the Swann campaign must do is expose the myth of Rendell's "Philadelphia Miracle" and show in excruciating detail how Rendell may have offered a pretty facade but built it on a crumbled foundation crumbling to this day still. Then Swann must show in equal detail how his proposals can empower not only black Philadelphians and blacks at large but all Pennsylvanians to help themselves.
Swann must also begin exposing, at every chance and level possible, the outrageous sham of Rendell's "economic development" initiatives. Billions of dollars have been transferred from all socioeconomic classes of Pennsylvanians to underwrite a mammoth program of corporate wealthfare. To wit, three local examples:
Those working two jobs to make basic ends meet are being shaken down by Rendell to help build a new Pittsburgh skyscraper for the very wealthy PNC Financial Group Inc.
That two-wage-earner family that made just too much money to even get a smidgeon of financial aid to send its child to college has been molested by Rendell to move American Eagle Outfitters from one part of Allegheny County to another, all in the name of somebody's sense of "synergy."
And some older couple -- retired and perhaps robbed of their pensions by companies that reneged on promises they made but knew they never could keep and now working at a mall near you in a desperate attempt to at least make up a small fraction of the money -- have been robbed by Rendell to give Consol Energy, coal miner and developer, nearly $1.7 million to move its headquarters from one county to another.
The list goes on and on. And this is the kind of list that the Swann campaign must make, maintain and have its candidate refer to in every stump speech from now through Nov. 7. There is not a corner of this commonwealth that has not been violated by Ed Rendell.
As Rendell's first campaign television commercial claims attest, truth already has been the first casualty of Rendell's re-election campaign; facts -- hard, cold, raw, outrageous and upsetting facts -- must be the hallmark of the Swann campaign.
Rendell must be exposed for the public-purpose fakir he is.
That's the external stuff; here's what has to happen behind the scenes:
Many of the big-money boy-and-girl political power brokers who paved the way and pulled the strings to make Swann the presumptive gubernatorial nominee thus far have been sitting on their wallets. It's time for a come-to-momma meeting. In no uncertain terms, Swann must tell them it's time to pony up or risk being exposed as the purveyors of tokenism that many think they actually may be.
All this said, Swann and his campaign must speak correctly and with precision.
If it makes a mistake, the campaign must quickly 'fess up instead of attempting to blame those in the media who point it out. (Some, especially on the pundit side, actually support Swann's candidacy.) Swann has been as guilty of this as his campaign staff.
And no longer can it afford to have a top adviser mangle the language, as Mark Holman did with his unfortunate "anxiousness" comment.
Neither can it afford to have Swann say, as the Lancaster Sunday News reported, that he's "not really concerned about policies and issues." Never mind that the rest of the quote added "What I'm concerned about is people." Handing an opponent the likes of Rendell such damaging sound bites will be suicide post-Labor Day.
The Swann campaign finally is showing some spark, some details, some meat. And with generally good polling at its back, it's none too early to start driving this campaign in a higher gear and Ed Rendell back to Philadelphia.
