Inside Politics

Obama’s task

“To win Pennsylvania, Barack Obama must pull off a ’Missouri’ — that is, do what he did in the Show Me State: win a handful of heavily populated, liberal-centric counties and call it a day,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Salena Zito writes.

“Ironically, that is what Ed Rendell (a Hillary Clinton supporter) did to Bob Casey (an Obama supporter) in Pennsylvania’s 2002 Democrat gubernatorial primary,” the writer said.

“Pull out an old red-blue county map of the 2002 race, and it is hard to believe that Casey won 57 counties to Rendell’s 10 and still lost the race. Yet lose he did, 56 percent to 44 percent. His loss was felt throughout the state party organization that endorsed him and the labor unions that invested millions in his campaign.

“In Democrat primaries, Pennsylvania’s political geography is not what party strategist James Carville once cited — Pittsburgh in the west, Philly in the east and Alabama in the middle. It is more like Philly and her collar counties to the east and nothing but a Midwestern state from there to the Ohio border.

“There is much value for the Obama and Clinton camps to glean from the Rendell-Casey showdown, which was the most expensive primary race in state history; the voting trends reflected in that year’s electoral map have only solidified the last six years.

“Ed Rendell won by a small number of counties, but those he won counted big. In the southeast, he racked up Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, Berks, Northampton, Lancaster, Centre, Philadelphia and Lehigh counties. Most strikingly, he won some precincts by 80 percent.”

Union hopes

“Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama visited the House of Labor this week, and Labor can’t wait to invite one back. Which one? Who cares,” Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley A. Strassel writes.

“To read the press coverage, unions are as split as the rest of the country over a Democratic nominee. The giant AFL-CIO has yet to endorse, its member unions hopelessly divided. Locals fight it out state-to-state, squaring off into their candidates’ corners. The upcoming Pennsylvania primary has devolved into a slugfest over a huge union vote, one reason why both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama planned their weeks around speeches to an AFL-CIO convention in Philly,” the writer said.

“Republicans are gleeful about these divides, but the guys grinning widest are union bosses. They understood long ago what even today the GOP and the business community have yet to grasp. This election is their best shot in a half-century of making over Washington.

“Not everyone is thrilled with a Clinton or an Obama, but this matters little next to the big prize. As Gerald McEntee, the savvy head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, succinctly put it, Big Labor is looking for a ’trifecta’ — the Oval Office, the House and a filibuster-proof Senate. And after that, the biggest rewrite of labor law in modern America.

” ’This is an all-in bet for them in 2008,’ says Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, a group that fights down in the trenches against coercive union power. ’As market cycles go, they’re in their peak, we’re in our trough, and they’re looking for a clear two-year run’ in an all-Democrat Washington.”

’Sacred’ dialogue

“The wounds inflicted on Barack Obama by the hateful speech of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are serious and profound,” Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes.

“Why else would ministers gather at Obama’s church in Chicago — Trinity United Church of Christ — to hold a news conference demanding a ’sacred’ national dialogue on race?” Mr. Kass asked.

” ’The intersection of politics, religion and race has heightened our awareness of how easy it is for our conversations about race to become anything but sacred,’ Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, said last week. ’That’s why we are calling for sacred conversations, and for the respect of sacred places to begin right here and now.’

“In other words, listen up, you reporters: Back off.

“Clearly, it’s difficult enough to pray and reflect upon the story of the Good Samaritan without pesky reporters asking you to defend Wright’s indefensible, hateful words.

“It’s got to be tough when reporters ask about that 10,000-square-foot suburban mansion the church bought for Wright, the one along the golf course, the one with the $1.6 million mortgage held by the church. …

“Is this a great country or what? Yet while he relaxes, the rest of us are asked to have another national dialogue on race? I don’t know about you, but my ears hurt.”

A survivor

A former congressional aide may be heading back to Washington, nearly 30 years after she was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip while on a fact-finding trip into the Jim Jones cult.

Democrat Jackie Speier is the favorite to win a special election tomorrow to fill the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat, the Associated Press reports.

It is her second try for the seat once held by her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan, who was killed by Jones’ henchmen in the 1978 attack that seriously wounded Miss Speier.

Mr. Ryan had gone to Guyana to investigate reports that Jones was holding followers against their will at his Jonestown compound in the small South American nation. Four others died at the airstrip with Mr. Ryan. That night, Jones and 912 of his followers died in a mass murder-suicide, most by drinking cyanide-laced grape punch.

Miss Speier’s earlier run for Mr. Ryan’s seat was a last-minute decision made just months after the deaths. She placed third.

Miss Speier is facing fellow Democrat Michelle McMurry, Republicans Greg Conlon and Mike Moloney, and Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson.

All five are on the same ballot. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be a June 3 runoff among the top vote-getters in each party.

• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes .com.