Six vie for Pa. Democratic Senate nod

April 3, 2000
Web posted at: 10:33 a.m. EDT (1433 GMT)

PHILADELPHIA, (Reuters) - Six Democrats are vying for the U.S. Senate nomination in Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary election for the chance to unseat one-term Republican incumbent Rick Santorum.

But with the presidential primaries decided weeks ago and several office candidates running uncontested races, political analysts are expecting low voter turnout, perhaps less than one-quarter of registered voters in some districts.

"There seems to be a general perception that voter turnout will be unusually low and it's almost being accepted as a fact," said a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters. "A lot of people aren't even aware that there is a race."

A recent poll conducted for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showed U.S. Rep. Ron Klink of Murrysville and state Sen. Allyson Schwartz of Philadelphia in a statistical dead heat. The poll of 439 voters showed Klink with 25 percent and Schwartz with 22 percent. But the results had a 5 percent margin of error.

Former state Labor Secretary Tom Foley had 18 percent of the vote while three others - former state Sen. Bob Rovner of Bryn Mawr, Wynnewood attorney Murray Levin and Lafayette Hill attorney Phil Berg - were all in the single digits.

In fact, the undisputed winner of the survey was the undecided column, which attracted 27 percent of respondents, underscoring the fact that no Democrat has done much advertising or commands statewide name recognition with voters.

"People associate campaigns with television," said Frederick Voigt, executive director of an election watchdog group called the Committee of Seventy. "No ads, no election."

A separate survey showed that the winner of Tuesday's poll would have a formidable challenge against Santorum, who beat each of the three front-runners in hypothetical match-ups.

Schwartz, a trained social worker, has powerful backing in Philadelphia where she has been endorsed by Mayor John Street and has U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah working to get minority voters in West Philadelphia out in strength for her pro-abortion, pro-gun control campaign.

Meanwhile, Klink, a western Pennsylvania hunter who opposes abortion and has accepted contributions from the National Rifle Association, has built his strength in the Pittsburgh area where some polls see him ahead with 60 percent of the vote.

Klink has backing from state Auditor General Bob Casey, son of former two-term Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey.

Polls show Foley, who has backing from senior members of the state Democratic Party hierarchy, has the widest voter support, geographically speaking, leading his supporters to hope that his message of broader health-care access and Medicare stability will draw a large portion of support from voters outside the two main metropolitan areas.

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