The new governor of Pennsylvania is Tom Corbett, a Republican elected in 2010 to replace Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who was term-limited after eight years in office. Corbett was a popular two-term attorney general. Read More

The new governor of Pennsylvania is Tom Corbett, a Republican elected in 2010 to replace Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who was term-limited after eight years in office. Corbett was a popular two-term attorney general.

Corbett was born in Philadelphia but grew up in Shaler, a Pittsburgh suburb. His father was a lawyer, while his mother battled cancer for years before she died of a heart attack when he was in high school. He attended Lebanon Valley College during the Vietnam War era, joining the Army National Guard and eventually reaching the rank of captain. It was at college that he met his wife, Susan, whom he married while in law school at St. Mary’s University in Texas. After a stint as a high school civics and history teacher back in Pennsylvania, he worked as an assistant district attorney for Allegheny County, and then spent three years as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. After a stint in private practice, he was appointed by President George H.W. Bush as U.S. attorney.

Corbett was briefly a policy advisor to Republican Tom Ridge, who was then serving in the U.S. House, and worked on Ridge’s successful 1994 gubernatorial campaign. When state Attorney General Ernest Preate was indicted for mail fraud, Ridge appointed Corbett to fill the remaining 15 months of Preate’s unexpired term. But Corbett decided against running for re-election the following year, choosing instead to start his own law firm in 1997. He kept the practice running until 2004, during which time he also worked as a counsel to the trash-removal and recycling company Waste Management Inc. of Houston, the largest landfill operator in Pennsylvania.

Corbett ran for attorney general in 2004, touting his experience as a federal and state prosecutor. His Democratic opponent, Jim Eisenhower, proved no pushover and kept the race close. Eisenhower—a distant relative of former President Dwight Eisenhower—sought to make an issue of Corbett’s work with Waste Management, which included defending the company to the media when its trucks were cited for nearly 900 safety and environmental violations. But Republicans had controlled the attorney general’s office since it became an elected position in 1980, and Corbett managed a narrow 50%-48% win. During his first term in the job, he launched a wide-ranging investigation into state legislative corruption, which resulted in criminal charges against 12 people with ties to the House Democratic Caucus for allegedly using state resources for campaigns. (Eventually more than two dozen people would be charged, with several convictions and guilty pleas.) The probe, which became known as “Bonusgate,” was controversial. Rendell said he didn’t understand why only members of his party were charged after two years of investigating. Corbett responded that he first targeted House Democrats because they had given out far more money in bonuses to staffers. Corbett’s 2008 re-election essentially became a referendum on the issue, as Democrat John Morganelli picked up the charge of playing politics and called for the appointment of an independent prosecutor. But Corbett withstood those charges and the Democratic electoral sweep across Pennsylvania that year to win another term, 52%-46%.

Corbett’s victory established him as the GOP frontrunner for governor, and he entered the race in September 2009. He ran on a pledge to clean up corruption, calling for a ban on all gifts to state officials and eliminating WAMs, or “walking-around money,” which lawmakers used as a form of earmarking to help their districts. But most of his focus was on fiscal issues. He said Pennsylvania needed to become more business-friendly, vowed not to raise taxes, and said he would use future federal economic stimulus dollars only for infrastructure needs. In March 2010, he joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn the federal health care law as unconstitutional, a move that Democrats harshly criticized as a sop to the tea party movement. Most activists in that movement, though, cast their lot with Republican Sam Rohrer, a state legislator who waged an insurgent candidacy highlighting issues such as home-schooling and morality. But he proved little match for Corbett, who won the primary 69%-31%.

Awaiting Corbett in the general election was Democrat Dan Onorato, the Allegheny County executive who already had spent millions of dollars in television ads to become acquainted with Eastern Pennsylvania voters. Though Rendell had promised to stay out of the primary, his biggest allies and campaign donors backed Onorato. He sought to depict himself as a solid manager who had brought fiscal discipline to the county, and attacked Corbett for a remark that some unemployed Pennsylvanians would rather collect benefits than work. Corbett responded by criticizing Onorato for advocating a severance tax on natural gas from the Marcellus Shale and other areas, a move he contended would chase away industries. The race tightened by mid-September, but Onorato failed to pick up much ground following a series of October debates. With Pennsylvania joining the national Republican tide, Corbett coasted to a 54%-46% victory. He outraised Onorato, $25.5 million to $21 million. Except for the Philadelphia region and blue-collar Lackawanna County to the north, he dominated the rest of the state, even taking advantage of his Pittsburgh ties to edge out Onorato in Allegheny County.

Taking office, Corbett talked of modeling his administration after that of neighboring New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie, who drew national attention for his hard-nosed stands against labor unions and for making deep budget cuts to state departments. Corbett unveiled his own budget proposing severe reductions, including $1 billion to public schools and a 50% reduction in aid to colleges and universities. During his early months in office, polls showed that voters were willing to trust him to handle such problems, and he was able to avoid the confrontations with unions that ensnared other GOP chief executives, including Christie and Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin. But a Franklin & Marshall College survey in March 2011 showed that some key planks of Corbett’s agenda were proving increasingly unpopular. In particular, the poll showed strong opposition to his refusal to tax natural gas extraction as well as his proposed cuts in public education. But Corbett was unfazed. To bolster his case, he repeatedly stressed the state’s $4.2 billion budget shortfall, which he compared to a stack of $1,000 bills piled 250 miles into the sky.