California Conservative

As expected, the Pennsylvania GOP endorsed Lynn Swann as their candidate for governor. The GOP also endorsed Jim Matthews, the brother of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, to be Swann’s runningmate.

“I haven’t cried this much since I was inducted into the Hall of Fame,” Swann told the applauding crowd as he wiped tears from his eyes. Swann, 53, was unopposed for the endorsement, which came in a unanimous voice vote during a meeting of the 300-plus-member Republican State Committee at a downtown hotel.
Swann is seeking to become Pennsylvania’s first black governor. Though he has revealed little about his political philosophy, he has said the Democratic Party has “taken the African-American vote for granted.” He didn’t shed any new light on his platform Saturday, but castigated Rendell as too willing to raise taxes to finance his initiatives.

I listened Hannity interview Mr. Swann just after Christmas and it’s obvious that he’s a solid conservative. While the report is right in saying that Swann hasn’t announced a big sweeping agenda, I’m fairly certain that a couple of themes that he’ll focus on will be taxes and Democrats taking African-Americans for granted. I suspect that those issues are big winners for him.

That’s why I’m predicting that we’ll be calling “Swannie” Mr. Governor come next November.

Rendell’s spokeswoman Patricia Enright dismissed Swann’s comments as “vague platitudes and baseless attacks.” With Rendell as governor, she said, “Government is leaner and we have an all-time record number of jobs in the commonwealth.”

Ms. Enright is employing one of the oldest tricks in the political handbook, sounding dismissive of her boss’s opponent in order to create the impression that he isn’t to be taken seriously. Rest assured that that tactic won’t work.

The Republican State Committee also endorsed Jim Matthews, the brother of the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews,” for lieutenant governor. He’s now the commissioner of Montgomery County near Philadelphia. Jim Matthews, 56, joked Saturday about going from being known as “Chris Matthews’ brother” to “Lynn Swann’s running mate.”

I’d bet that most people would think that that’s a big step up for Matthews. I would.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2006 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Media, RNC, Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.