The Pennsylvania Senate race tightens and it's partly my fault

[Undertoad]

According to this story, Pennsylvania's Senate race is tighter.

Santorum has narrowed the gap from an 18-point difference in June, according to the poll, and a recent appearance of a Green Party candidate also is considered a spoiler for the Democrat.

In a three-way contest, the new poll found Casey leading Santorum 45 percent to 39 percent, with Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli picking up 5 percent. Eleven percent said they were undecided or did not plan to vote, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.

As a two-way race, without Romanelli, 47 percent of the same respondents favored Casey to 40 percent for Santorum, with 13 percent undecided or expressing another opinion.

I expect many people are steaming mad at the Green Party right about now, because the Green Party accepted the help of Santorum's campaign to get enough signatures to be on the ballot.

This "deal with the devil" strategy was actually pioneered by me in Pennsylvania.

Sorry...!

See, in Pennsylvania, it's really hard for a third party or independent candidate to get enough petition signatures to be on the ballot. The system has been rigged, pretty much, with a strange set of moving requirements. I could explain it here, but I'd lose you; what it boils down to is, if you don't have $200,000 to throw out, you wouldn't get on the ballot as a third party or independent, in 2006 in this state.

The PA ballot access requirements are amongst the toughest in the country. For example, it was one of the states Ralph Nader couldn't get on in his first Pres run, because he wasn't spending any money.

When my buddy Ken was running for Gov in 2002, it looked like he wasn't going to have the signatures to make the ballot. In a late night strategy session I told him to go to Rendell's people -- the very top guy, the campaign manager, whom I identifed -- and tell him the situation.

Kenny did that, and shortly thereafter he found that he did in fact have enough signatures to get on the ballot.

Kenny's glorious and beautiful campaign made that idea worthwhile, although I advanced it to him because by that time I was in favor of Rendell. The Greens were already in that race, to get their percentage, and Kenny did a beautiful job getting his percentage as well. In the end it wasn't enough for either third-party candidate to have thrown the race. But in sheer dollar per vote, it made sense for the Rendell campaign to keep Kenny's percentage in the mix.

In that race, the signature requirements were about half what the 2006 requirements were. It's possible that the Green guy got on in 2002 without any help.

No Libs had me advising them this year. Kenny's all out of money. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. Throwing a monkey wrench into the system wasn't my intent, but everything's kind of fucked up now anyway.