More groups join Wisconsin fight

More groups join Wisconsin fight
By: Alexander Burns
March 15, 2011 06:50 AM EDT

The fight for control of the Wisconsin state Senate looks increasingly like a toss-up, as national groups continue gearing up for the recall campaign triggered by anti-union legislation passed last week.

The conservative organizing group GOPAC is the latest national outfit to join the fight with television advertising.

GOPAC has bought airtime to defend Republican state Sen. Randy Hopper for his vote to scale back collective bargaining rights for most government workers.

Previewing one likely Republican message for the upcoming recall fights, GOPAC praises Hopper for voting “to create jobs and fix government spending.”

“Amid all the shouting and contention in Madison, let’s remember these facts: State government is broke. Wisconsin has lost over 150,000 jobs,” says the ad. “Without these reforms, taxes will go up and more jobs will be lost.”

The ad is paid for by GOPAC Wisconsin and targeted to conservatives in the Fond Du Lac and Osh Kosh media markets, according to a source familiar with the buy.

Hopper is one of five Republican state legislators who was trailing in recall polling unveiled Monday night by the pro-recall website Daily Kos.

Tested against unnamed Democratic opponents, three Republican state senators were already behind. Hopper was down 5 points, 44 percent to 49 percent, against a generic Democrat, while state Sen. Dan Kapanke trailed by 14 points and state Sen. Luther Olsen was down 2 points.

Olsen was the first target of television advertising paid for by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, another national group that has vowed to play heavily in Wisconsin.

Two other Republicans, state Sens. Rob Cowles and Sheila Harsdorf, were under the 50-percent mark and also appear vulnerable in a recall.

The surveys were conducted by Public Policy Polling, the Democratic-leaning robo-polling firm. Full information on the polls will be released Tuesday morning.

Democrats would need to flip control of three seats in order to capture the state Senate. Wisconsin Democrats said Monday that they were about halfway to collecting the number of signatures they need to initiate recall elections in eight GOP-held districts.

A key challenge for Democrats in the recall fight will be sustaining the momentum they have now, in the immediate aftermath of the legislature’s vote and Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to sign the new labor law.

That task could get easier thanks to ongoing tension in the state Senate over whether Democrats in the chamber will be allowed to cast votes.

State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican, announced Monday that Democrats who had fled the state to block a vote on the union bill were still in contempt of the legislature and wouldn’t have their votes counted until the Senate lifts its contempt order.

Both parties have zeroed in on the month-old conflict in Wisconsin as part of a larger struggle between organized labor and newly powerful Republican governors and state legislatures.

“All eyes are trained on Wisconsin,” AFL-CIO media director Alison Omens wrote in a memo Tuesday, “but corporate-backed politicians are clearly gunning for working people in every state across the country.”

The memo continued: “Working people are galvanized as politicians spend their time taking away the rights of workers instead of creating jobs and building the economy. That energy will continue as long as politicians spend their time giving political favors instead of creating good jobs.”


© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC


- Posted by PSLC

Location:N 5th St,Philadelphia,United States

Pennsylvania GOP dreaming

DemConWatch posted an overview of Pennsylvania redistricting this morning with a caveat to remember about the powerful Democratic congressman from Philadelphia: “Almost everything … is in flux except CD 1, Bob Brady's district. No one messes with Bob Brady.” 

Brady aside, the Democratic delegation has reason to be nervous about a remapping process where Republicans boast complete control, with ownership of the governor’s mansion, majorities in both state legislative chambers and a majority on the state supreme court.

With the state set to lose one of its 19 seats, here are three coups Republicans would like to engineer, according to recent conversations with Pennsylvania GOP insiders.

Rep. Jason Altmire vs. Rep. Mark Critz
Conventional wisdom holds that Critz is on the chopping block as a freshman Democrat in one of the least populated districts in the state. Republicans could conceivably move his Johnstown base into a heavily Republican 9th District, where he’d almost certainly lose to GOP Rep. Bill Shuster. But a far more appealing option is to wrap parts of Critz’s gerrymandered 12th District--long held by John Murtha--into Altmire’s 4th, which would spark an intra-party battle and force organized labor to choose sides.

Rep. Allyson Schwartz vs. Rep. Chaka Fattah
Republicans can’t beat either Philadelphia-area Democrat, so why not have them battle each other? With a little creative line-drawing, some of the more Democratic areas of Schwartz’s 13th District could be placed in Fattah’s 2nd. As an added benefit, suburban Republican Reps. Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick could presumably be left with slightly safer districts.

Rep. Tim Holden
Republicans tried eliminating Holden when they last controlled redistricting a decade ago, only to see the scrappy Democrat pull off an upset win against aged GOP Rep. George Gekas. They’re still smarting from that defeat, and now they’ve got another chance. Holden lives in the northeast corner of his mid-state district, and could easily find himself pulled north into the heavily Republican district captured last year by GOP freshman Tom Marino.

--Dan Hirschhorn

mmigrant surge: Why area grew

Affordability is credited for luring the Latinos and Asians who gave the Phila. region a census boost.

By Michael Matza and John Duchneskie

Inquirer Staff Writers

Pennsylvania's population swelled in the southeast and dropped dramatically across the west, the 2010 census revealed - with a tip of the hat to Philadelphia's first growth in 60 years.

But the population didn't shift within the state like marbles rolling to one corner of a box, demographers say of the newly released data.

Rather, Southeastern Pennsylvania drew an increasingly diverse international influx, with surges of Latino and Asian immigrants coming here directly or moving from neighboring states because of Pennsylvania's relative affordability, experts said.

Their arrival added challenges and benefits. It put strains on school districts and emergency rooms. It provided ready workers for farms, high-tech industries, and landscapers. It raised tensions in places where ethnic groups clashed. But it brought vitality to communities where immigrants rehabbed abandoned houses and launched businesses.

With comparatively few native newcomers, "Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania have benefited from international migration," said Sue Copella, director of the Pennsylvania State Data Center in Harrisburg, the commonwealth's authority on population analysis. They come to Philadelphia through a reemerging gateway for immigration, she said, or "up from Baltimore and down from New York."

Pennsylvania's population grew 3.4 percent from 2000 to 2010, to 12,702,379. Absent Hispanic and Asian newcomers, however, it would not have grown at all.

Among arrivals spurring growth are Dominican immigrants moving from New York for cheaper housing and business opportunities; Mexicans joining friends and family in the established Hispanic enclaves of South Philadelphia, Norristown, and Kennett Square; Asian Indians joining well-established communities in Bensalem; and refugees from Cambodia, Burma, and Nepal being aided in resettlement by the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians or Philadelphia's Nationalities Service Center.

"As far back as 2006, we saw academic studies that showed a substantial portion of workforce growth was attributable to immigrants," said Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, director of outreach for the Welcoming Center. "Those studies backed up what we were seeing on the ground in our work with work-authorized immigrants - people choosing the Philadelphia area as their destination."

The ranks of Hispanics grew 325,572 - a potent 82.6 percent since 2000. They are the state's "fastest-growing minority group," the Data Center reported Friday.

Having entered the state from the east, Hispanics have tended to settle in Pike, Monroe, and Luzerne Counties as well as Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Asians and South Asians have clustered in Philadelphia, Upper Darby, and southern Bucks County.

From 2000 to 2010, Philadelphia added 58,683 people of Hispanic origin, which includes Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens. The city added 28,402 Asians.

Delaware County grew by 8,169 Hispanics and 8,122 Asians, Bucks County by 12,777 Hispanics and 10,348 Asians, and Montgomery County by 18,933 Hispanics and 21,228 Asians.

Chester County experienced the region's sharpest population growth, 15.1 percent, and dramatic "percentage growth" in Hispanics and Asians. The addition of 16,377 Hispanics and 10,816 Asians to the county since 2000 drove their respective shares of the county's population to 6.5 percent and 3.9 percent.

Nelson Carrasquillo, director of CATA, the Farmworkers Support Committee, with offices in Kennett Square, said many of his group's members worked in the 120 mushroom farms that dot the countryside from Kennett to Reading.

He attributed Hispanic growth to a 1986 change in immigration law that gave amnesty to many undocumented Mexican farmworkers.

"People received papers and established permanent residence. Many became citizens" and applied to bring their wives and children here, Carrasquillo said.

"It took them a decade or more to save money and go through" the immigration paperwork process, he said, "but by the end of the '90s and into the 2000s, they began bringing in their families, and they still are."

The arrival of the wives from Mexico, Carrasquillo said, has resulted in more women working on the mushrooms farms, usually as packers.

As their children become voting-age citizens and move into other lines of work, he said, the political clout of Latinos is expanding.

Congress mandates a census every 10 years for the purpose of apportioning federal aid to the states and so the states can redraw political district lines to reflect population gains, losses, and changing demographics.

The release of the census for Pennsylvania starts the game of musical chairs by which the legislative leadership resketches the boundaries and jockeys for political advantage.

Because Pennsylvania grew at a slower rate than states in the South and West, it will lose one seat in the House of Representatives, dropping to 18.

Commuter access to New York City via I-80 supported dramatic growth in Monroe and Pike Counties. For people willing to drive a couple of hours, I-83 connects Baltimore and Washington to Franklin, Adams, York, and Lancaster Counties.

Still, said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, most of the growth in Southeastern Pennsylvania is attributable to "new immigration waves" rolling and cresting on "the Northeast Corridor" between Washington and Boston.

Access to that string of metropolises "is going to be crucial for overall growth," he said, predicting that Southeastern Pennsylvania's growth will continue.