American Spectator has a look at the hard road Chris Matthews of NBC has to walk if he wants to unseat U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in 2010.
I think Matthews’ tallest hurdle is Chris Matthews, and this article’s author, Jeffrey Lord, compares a Matthews campaign to that of Lynn Swann’s gubernatorial effort in 2006 (ironically including Chris’ brother Jim as Swann’s running mate):
PENNSYLVANIANS ARE NOTORIOUSLY touchy about being used. Unlike its northern neighbor New York, which fancies itself as the sophisticated home of finance and media too above-it-all to worry about the residential pedigree of Senate candidates like Hillary Clinton, James Buckley or Robert Kennedy, William Penn’s namesake state is decidedly of a different frame of mind. Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum has the “former” in front of his name today because a lot of his constituents — including conservative Republicans — felt that he had “gone native” — representing Washington to Pennsylvania rather than representing Pennsylvania in Washington. The fact that he had acquired a large Leesburg, Virginia home for his family didn’t help. While the state has sent to the Senate people as different as my former boss, the late John Heinz, Specter and Santorum’s victorious opponent Bob Casey, all three had or have very much in common a thorough-going identification with the state. Heinz’s identification with Pittsburgh, Specter’s with Philadelphia and Casey’s with Scranton played a critical role in defining each man to the rest of the state. They were very much a local presence as well as a state presence.
Pennsylvania voters, particularly in the central T and in the blue-collar sectors of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and Pittsburgh, are reluctant to vote for a “celebrity.” Swann lost to incumbent Gov. Ed Rendell for many reasons, and among them was his paper-thin resume. I watched and covered in 2004 Joe Paterno’s Republican son, Scott, get trounced by a Democrat in one of the most Republican congressional districts in the country because, in large part, a lot of voters thought Scott Paterno was trying to cash in on his name. And in the Democratic primary, I argue that one of the main reasons Barack Obama lost to Hillary Clinton is because many Pennsylvania voters saw him more as a “celebrity” than a seasoned, smart, bare-knuckles politician who had paid his dues. I think he could have won the primary and seemed poised to pull off such a colossal upset at the point he uttered the word “bitter” to California Democrats to describe rural Pennsylvanians, but another reason Pennsylvanians were reluctant in the first place to back Obama was his lack of experience coupled a celebrity-like status not entirely of his own creation.
And I think that would be Matthews’ hardest obstacle to overcome if he is to successfully seek Specter’s seat. According to this article, Matthews makes $5 million a year, lives in Maryland and for decades has been deeply imbedded in Washington politics and media. To a lot of Pennsylvanians, he’s one of “them,” an outsider, a Washingtonian, smart and a native but no longer a Keystoner. For now, it’s Matthews’ biggest liability.
