Democratic Party

It may come as a surprise to many Pennsylvania voters, but Tuesday is primary election day, with balloting to choose party candidates for judgeships and a variety of local offices throughout the state's 67 counties. In Philadelphia, the marquee race is a three-way contest for city controller between incumbent Alan Butkovitz, who has held the post as the city's financial watchdog the last eight years, and challengers Brett Mandel and Mark Zecca. The city's voters will also be nominating candidates for six vacant judgeships on Common Pleas Court, three on Municipal Court, and three more on Traffic Court, where a ticket-fixing scandal has spurred legislative efforts to abolish the court before any more judges can be seated.

Four of the five men seeking the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen Bob Casey Jr. in the November general election clashed Wednesday night about their conservative credentials. It was a fight egged on by the state Democratic Party, which issued a news release before the debate at the Union League, noting that candidates Steve Welch and Tom Smith are former Democrats. That matters in a Republican primary because both men are fighting for the role of front-runner.

To give you an idea of how desperate the Democrats are post-election, a number of party strategists have expressed a longing for the days of Bill Clinton. The fellow they miss is not the one who messed around with Monica Lewinsky and put the nation through the agony of impeachment. Or the one who used the Lincoln Bedroom as his private fund-raising tool. Or whose campaign efforts this fall didn't amount to much. No, the Bill Clinton they remember fondly is the candidate who got elected twice as a New Democrat, sounding as if he had some fresh ideas.

The primary elections in Camden County last week were not exactly a textbook case of true democracy at work. After all, fewer than one-seventh of the eligible voters went to the polls. But the contested Democratic primary did provide two lessons about the workings of Camden County's long-dominant Democratic Party. For one, the Democratic organization proved that personalities can come and go but the party persists. Four of the seven seats at the freeholder table stay warm with Democratic bodies; only the nameplates change.

In the wake of the Democrats' statewide debacle at the ballot box last month, party officials yesterday announced a plan to give themselves more control in the campaign process. Foremost among the changes, said state party Chairman Larry Yatch, is that from now on the party - not the governor - will decide which candidates to endorse in future statewide elections. The party's next endorsements will come at its March 11 meeting, when it picks candidates to run in the May 16 primary.

HARRISBURG - "Police investigate break-in at Democratic Party headquarters. " For those of a certain age that headline may sound familiar. Only this time, almost 40 years after GOP operatives burglarized the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, the target was Pennsylvania state Democratic Party headquarters in Harrisburg. City police say on July 11, party officials reported someone had entered their eighth-floor downtown Harrisburg offices overnight and removed two laptops and a camcorder.

When it comes to war with Iraq, this is not your father's Democratic Party. At least not if your father protested the war in Vietnam, voted for peace candidate George McGovern, or thought Michael Dukakis looked good in that tank. The coming vote in Congress on war with Iraq is revealing a new Democratic Party, one desperate to shed the antiwar, antimilitary reflex that defined it from Vietnam through the Persian Gulf war. First popularized by challenges to President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 over Vietnam, antiwar and antimilitary sentiments prevailed in the party for a quarter-century.

Buck Scott, the homespun chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, will step down within the next few months, acknowledging that the party needs a leader with more time and commitment. Scott, a two-term party leader whose re-election a year ago surprised even himself, told Democratic officials last week that his resignation would take effect when the 54-member executive committee chooses a successor, probably after the November elections. "I felt the committee needed a leader who could give it more time and effort than what I'm in a position to give," said Scott, 60, a Wynnewood resident, who runs Electrical Energy Enterprises Inc. in Narberth.

It may come as a surprise to many Pennsylvania voters, but Tuesday is primary election day, with balloting to choose party candidates for judgeships and a variety of local offices throughout the state's 67 counties. In Philadelphia, the marquee race is a three-way contest for city controller between incumbent Alan Butkovitz, who has held the post as the city's financial watchdog the last eight years, and challengers Brett Mandel and Mark Zecca. The city's voters will also be nominating candidates for six vacant judgeships on Common Pleas Court, three on Municipal Court, and three more on Traffic Court, where a ticket-fixing scandal has spurred legislative efforts to abolish the court before any more judges can be seated.

WASHINGTON - President Obama passed the 100-day mark of his second term facing questions about whether his political capital is already disappearing. Republicans took delight in his discomfort. But they have their own 100-day question to answer: What have they done since November to turn around their fortunes? The president has had a difficult spring. His gun legislation, though it mustered more than 50 votes, was blocked in the Senate. His advisers are more optimistic about immigration reform, but the measure still faces serious obstacles, especially in the House.

Michael Silverstein is the author of "Fifteen Feet Beneath Manhattan" Looking at the Democratic Party these days from a progressive perspective, one can't help but think of that old blues lyric: "You've been a good old wagon, but you've done broke down. " The broke-down wagon here is a Democratic Party that has moved away from its economic roots. It's now a party not only supported financially by Wall Street and other very rich backers, but intellectually supportive of those at the top as well, at the expense of traditional Democratic constituencies.

Center-left leader is tapped in Italy ROME - Italy's president appointed Enrico Letta as prime minister-designate Wednesday, asking him to form a coalition government representing Italy's main parties to end two months of paralysis. Letta, 46, a center-left lawmaker, said he accepted knowing that it's an enormous responsibility and that Italy's political class "has lost all credibility. " President Giorgio Napolitano charged Letta with putting together a coalition government of the Democratic Party and the center-right party of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the two biggest blocs in parliament.

Another man is dipping his toe into the pool of potential candidates in the 2015 mayor's race, and it's a familiar name - former City Councilman Frank Rizzo, son of the legendary cop-turned-politician who served as Philadelphia mayor from 1972 through 1979. "I'm going to explore that possibility and maybe get myself involved in that next mayoral primary, as a Democrat," Rizzo said in an interview Wednesday. Rizzo, who turned 70 in early March, was a Republican Council member from 1996 through 2011, winning one of the two at-large seats reserved for non-Democrats.

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - A mayor who recently won reelection as a Democrat announced Tuesday that he had switched political parties to run for state Senate as a Republican. East Brunswick Mayor David Stahl has lined up support from Gov. Christie and Senate Republican leader Thomas H. Kean Jr. as he seeks his new party's nod to run for Senate in the 18th District. The seat is now held by Democratic Sen. Barbara Buono, who is her party's choice to run against Christie in November. She has to give up her Senate seat to run for governor.

  K ATHLEEN KANE , the first Democrat and first woman elected as attorney general of Pennsylvania, announced her executive team Thursday in advance of taking office Tuesday. Her selections demonstrate how the state's governmental and political community can be a small circle. Kane and her new righthand man go back two decades. Adrian King Jr. will be her first deputy attorney general. The pair met and dated while attending Temple University's School of Law (class of 1993)

ANOTHER DAY, another Will Bunch column that name-calls, omits inconvenient facts and expresses his dream of one-party rule ("Best of the Blogs," Jan. 3). This time he has the GOP switching to the Democratic Party in droves, similar to the Democratic-to-Republican transition of the 1960s, because an aid bill for Hurricane Sandy rebuilding was postponed from Jan. 1 to Jan. 4 and Republicans were mad at their leadership. To start, Bunch's citing of an infamous newspaper headline is misleading, because about a month after the October 1975 "Ford to NYC: Drop Dead" headline appeared, President Ford asked for and got Congress to approve federal loans for the bankrupt city.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz has hired the state party's finance director for her own political operation, an indication the longtime congresswoman is seriously thinking about a run for the nomination to take on Gov. Corbett in 2014. Aubrey Montgomery, whose fund-raising is credited with putting Pennsylvania Democrats on a sound fiscal footing, informed her colleagues she was leaving in an e-mail Wednesday night. "While my time as a PA Dems staff member will be coming to an end, my commitment to the operation we've built, and the reputation we've earned, will continue as I move into this new role," Montgomery wrote.