Dems’ DC big guns enter Pa. races early

By the time Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived at the Sheraton City Center Hotel by helicopter with an envoy of 13 motorcycles, four cars, nine SUVs and an ambulance yesterday, a few dozen Tea Party protesters were gone.

They missed the Democrats’ big guns.

Hoping to revitalize some of Pennsylvania’s big-money donors, their visit also could mean something to Democratic underdogs in the state’s two biggest races: for governor and U.S. Senate.

Republicans Tom Corbett, running for governor against Dan Onorato, and Pat Toomey, running for Senate against Joe Sestak, are currently favorites in the November elections, many observers believe.

“Pelosi’s job is to raise money. You want to try to create excitement among workers for the party and potential donors,” pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College said.

Amid the lingering recession, however, support from Biden and Pelosi might backfire. Lentz, who also trails in the polls, said it just proves his campaign against Patrick Meehan in a district that’s had a Democrat representative in just 20 post-Civil-War-era years “is the top race in Pennsylvania.”