Gov. Ed Rendell (D) Elected 2002, 1st term up Jan. 2007
Born:	Jan. 5, 1944, New York, NY
Home:	Harrisburg
Education:	U. of PA, B.A. 1965, Villanova U., J.D. 1968
Religion:	Jewish
Marital Status:	married (Marjorie)
Elected  Office:	District Atty., City of Philadelphia, 1977-85; Philadelphia Mayor, 1991-99.
Military Career:	Army Reserve, 1968-74.
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Ed Rendell, a Democrat, was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2002, the first Philadelphian elected to that position since 1914. He grew up in Manhattan, in an apartment overlooking the Hudson on Riverside Drive; his father was a middleman in the women's clothing business and an ardent New Dealer and his mother's family owned a big women's clothing manufacturer that clashed often with unions. That Rendell became a Democrat who, as mayor, clashed with unions is not perhaps a coincidence. After his father died when he was 14, he acted up and was thrown out of Riverdale Country School for a year. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and from the Villanova University law school, and never left Philadelphia. He got a job in Philadelphia District Attorney Arlen Specter's office prosecuting homicides. In 1977, at 33, he was elected district attorney himself, and reelected in 1981. The district attorney is a prominent figure not just in Philadelphia but also in the entire Philadelphia media market, where some 40% of Pennsylvania voters live; prominent enough that former Philadelphia district attorneys are now Pennsylvania's governor and senior U.S. senator. Brash, energetic, cheerful, rumpled (he claims to own only two pairs of shoes), Rendell became a popular public figure in Philadelphia. In 1985 he did not run for reelection but started running for governor; Pennsylvania law requires mayors and district attorneys to resign if they run for statewide office. Since 1955 the two major parties have alternated in the governor's office every eight years; Republican Governor Richard Thornburgh was ineligible to run in 1986, and it seemed the Democrats' turn. In the Democratic primary he faced former Auditor General Bob Casey, who had lost in gubernatorial primaries in 1966, 1970 and 1978. This time Casey won, 51%-40%. Rendell carried the Philadelphia market, but in the rest of the state he seemed perhaps too young, too brash, too Philadelphian. Casey, a father of eight, strong opponent of abortion, with a 76-page blueprint for developing Pennsylvania's economy, proved to be more appealing to economically liberal, culturally conservative Democrats beyond the first Appalachian ridge.

In 1987 Rendell ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary against Philadelphia's first black mayor, Wilson Goode. At 43, Rendell seemed to be through politically. But in 1991 he ran for mayor again. With Goode ineligible to run again and the city's finances in dreadful shape, Rendell, campaigning with his usual energy and ebullience, won the Democratic primary 49%-27%. In the general election he faced former Mayor Frank Rizzo, but Rizzo died of a heart attack in July 1991 and Rendell won easily in November, 64%-30%. As mayor, Rendell cut the city payroll, renegotiated absurdly generous union contracts, weathered a 16-hour strike by city employees and even got down on his knees and scrubbed the bathrooms of City Hall. The city employee unions shrieked, but Rendell was obdurate. It was a bravura performance, memorialized in Buzz Bissinger's A Prayer for the City. The city's finances were repaired, developers built glittering buildings in Center City and in his second term he managed to cut taxes. In 1999 he campaigned hard for City Council President John Street to succeed him; Street narrowly beat Republican Sam Katz, and had Rendell to thank for his victory. In January 2000 Rendell hung his shingle at the Ballard Spahr law firm and was named Democratic National Chairman. He campaigned for Al Gore, who had called him "America's mayor," but during the Florida controversy Rendell was readier to concede than Gore and his top advisers.

Immediately after the 2000 election Rendell set out to run for governor in 2002. Tom Ridge, the Republican governor elected in 1994 and 1998, was ineligible to run and became George W. Bush's homeland security adviser in October 2001; he was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Mark Schweiker, who had previously announced he wanted to spend more time with his family and would not run for governor. In the 2002 Democratic primary, Rendell faced Auditor General Bob Casey Jr., whose father had defeated him 16 years earlier. Until May, all the focus was on the Democratic primary. A Republican contest was avoided when Treasurer Barbara Hafer, the party's hapless nominee in 1990 against the senior Casey (who died in 2000), dropped out of the race in January 2002, leaving the field open for conservative Attorney General Mike Fisher.

Early polls showed a close race in the Democratic primary, and many thought that this year, as in 1986, Rendell would be too Philadelphian for the rest of the state. There was a clear contrast between the candidates on issues. Casey, like his father, opposed abortion and said he would sign a ban on abortion if Roe v. Wade were reversed. He opposed gun control. Rendell favored abortion rights and gun control. There was a clear difference on economic issues as well. Rendell had an economic development initiative for parts of the state that missed the 1990s boom. Casey concentrated on extending government benefits; he advocated low-cost health insurance for unemployed workers and a $1 rise in the minimum wage. Rendell called for the state to pay for 50% of education costs to lower property taxes; he said he would pay for it by increasing the cigarette tax to 62 cents, putting slot machines in race tracks (which was bringing in a lot of revenue in Delaware) and cutting spending in Harrisburg. He was one-upped when Schweiker persuaded the Republican legislature to increase the cigarette tax to $1. There was also a contrast in demeanor. Rendell embarked on a bus caravan traveling all over the state and campaigned with his usual brio; Casey was tightly scripted, polite and earnest.

Pennsylvania allows unlimited contributions to state campaigns, and this was a big money race: the two candidates spent more than $25 million on the primary. Rendell, a tremendous fundraiser, raised huge amounts from his Philadelphia and national contacts. Casey raised over $5 million from unions, including public employee unions still bitterly opposed to Rendell. Neither campaign ran ads on Philadelphia TV stations: Rendell was so well-known and well-liked there that it would have been a waste of money. Rendell started running ads on Pittsburgh TV in January, saying that his performance in Philadelphia--20,000 new jobs, $300 million in tax cuts--showed he had "the right experience for Pennsylvania." Casey ran largely negative ads, calling Rendell's Philadelphia story a half-truth and blaming him for the conditions of the city's public schools, which had just been taken over by the state. Some of the Casey ads were scorching; a Philadelphia police officer was shown saying about Rendell, "He lies. Cops deal with liars all the time, and we have no respect for anybody who lies." The Democratic state committee endorsed Casey, and he counted on local endorsements, from influential state Senator Vince Fumo and union leaders, to dent Rendell's margin in Philadelphia.

Rendell spent $740,000 on Election Day activities, including $450,000 cash to be handed out in the city's 66 wards. But his popularity in the suburbs was even more decisive. Rendell won 79% of the vote in Philadelphia and even more in the suburbs. Altogether he carried the eight counties in the Philadelphia media market 79%-21%. Usually in Pennsylvania primaries the Pittsburgh area has higher turnout than the Philadelphia area--one reason Rendell lost in 1986. This time it was the other way around. The Philadelphia media market cast 46% of the primary votes. In the Pittsburgh media market, where the candidates had spent $7 million on ads, Rendell made some converts, and Casey won by only 58%-42%. In the rest of the state Casey won, as expected, 66%-34%. Overall Rendell won 57%-43%, though he carried only two of the 59 counties outside the Philadelphia market (Lancaster and the county containing Penn State). Analysts agreed that Casey had run too negative a campaign and had not given voters enough reason to vote for him. In contrast, Rendell ran a mostly positive campaign and presented detailed policies.

After the primary Rendell led Fisher in the polls, but not by much. Pennsylvania's pattern of alternating parties in the governorship every eight years goes back to the 1954 election, but it is not a law of nature. Ridge and Schweiker had high job ratings. Pennsylvania elects judges in off-years, the auditor and treasurer in presidential years, and so there is a statewide partisan race every year, and Republicans have been winning almost all of them since 1990. Republicans held majorities in both houses of the legislature, and in 2002 passed some liberal legislation, tripling the cigarette tax, providing $75 million promised to the Philadelphia schools, adding gays and transgendereds to the hate crime law. Fisher had more experience in state government: he had been elected to the state House in 1974 and the state Senate in 1980 and as attorney general in 1996 and 2000; he had been the unsuccessful nominee for lieutenant governor in 1986 and an unsuccessful candidate in the 1994 primary for governor. His opposition to abortion was by no means a political liability in Pennsylvania. Nor was his platform--cutting the corporate income tax from 9.9% to 7%, expanding the state's prescription drug program with slots money, increased research and development tax credits, requiring school districts to give voters a choice between the property tax and an earned income tax. After the primary, Rendell was almost out of money; he had $1 million to Fisher's $5 million.

Rendell started off on a positive note, saying that Fisher had been a good attorney general and a good state senator. Fisher started more negatively, calling Rendell a "tax-and-spend liberal" and said his success as mayor was greatly exaggerated. Fisher got some bad publicity over the proposed sale of Hershey Foods by the trust that owns the company, when it was revealed that a Fisher aide had told trustees the sale, unpopular in central Pennsylvania, was a good idea. But Fisher fought the sale in court and got a judge to halt it, turning a minus into a plus. George W. Bush raised nearly $2 million for Fisher, who eventually raised $13.8 million. But Rendell vastly outraised him, with $42 million for the entire campaign, more than any other candidate in 2002 except California Governor Gray Davis, Texas Governor Rick Perry and New York Governor George Pataki. In the end, what elected Rendell was his popularity in the Philadelphia media market. In Pennsylvania, outside the two big media markets, Fisher led 58%-39%. But in the Philadelphia media market Rendell won a smashing 68%-30% victory. He won 84% of the vote in Philadelphia, but he also won huge margins in the suburbs where Republicans have a huge registration advantage and which they usually carry in statewide races--67% in Montgomery County, 65% in Delaware County, 63% in Bucks County, 57% in Chester County. Turnout was again higher in the Philadelphia media market, which cast 41% of the state's votes. Interestingly, Rendell did not have much in the way of coattails. In only one suburban Philadelphia state House district did a Democrat oust a Republican, and overall Republicans gained four seats in the state House.

Even before he took office, Rendell started working on state problems. He held nine economic summits around the state in December and January, and put forward a plan to deal with the state's medical malpractice crisis. Physicians were threatening a walkout in northeast Pennsylvania and a suburban Philadelphia hospital shut its trauma unit as malpractice premiums spiked. Rendell proposed a one-time $220 million assessment on the surplus funds of insurance companies to cut physicians' premiums by one-quarter in 2002 and called for requiring certificates of merit from an expert panel before malpractice suits could go forward. He also set about paring the state budget, with help from the unlikely quarter of AFSCME, when sent in a proposal to save $259 million by reducing the state work force and restricting overtime; Rendell said he wouldn't rule out layoffs and benefit cuts.

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Office
225 Capitol Bldg., Harrisburg 17120, 717-787-2500; Fax: 717-772-8284; Web: www.governor.state.pa.us.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Ed Rendell (D)	1,913,235	53%
	Mike Fisher (R)	1,589,408	44%
	Other	79,917	2%
2002 primary	Ed Rendell (D)	702,442	57%
	Bob Casey Jr. (D)	539,794	43%
1998 general	Tom Ridge (R)	1,736,844	57%
	Ivan Itkin (D)	938,745	31%
	Peg Luksik (Const)	315,761	10%
	Other	33,802	1%