Corbett, the state attorney general, could only have smiled. An hour or so after Rendell's comments, he sent an e-mail to supporters eagerly calling attention to the governor's irritation.
The way Republicans figure it, the more the debate is focused on Rendell - whose popularity is so low, you'd need sonar to detect it in wide pools of the state - the harder it becomes for Onorato to establish his own identity before Election Day, Nov. 2.
Corbett over the weekend began airing a new TV ad that proclaims, "You want four more years of Rendell's higher taxes and job losses, then Dan Onorato is your man."
Every day he holds the stage, Rendell does no favors for his party's nominee, said pollster Berwood A. Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College.
"Rendell would have made life hard for Onorato just given his eight years in office and his record and how people are feeling about his job performance," Yost said.
"That's exacerbated by the fact that Rendell continues to stay in the spotlight," Yost said, "and we don't hear that much about Dan Onorato. . . . Onorato has got to separate himself and tell people why he's different."
A Franklin and Marshall poll last week showed that 35 percent of Pennsylvanians approve of the job Rendell is doing as governor.
Only in his home region does Rendell remain popular. The poll showed him with 52 percent approval in Philadelphia; 56 percent in the suburbs.
His rating was 23 percent in central Pennsylvania, 26 percent in the southwest, 29 percent in the northwest, 30 percent in the northeast.
On Monday, speaking about state spending from the ornate Governor's Reception Room on the second floor of the Capitol, Rendell brought up a Corbett ad that has been running for several weeks.
