Vodvarka's return to Senate ballot yet another primary twist

What happens in a Pennsylvania Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate when antiestablishment candidates outnumber the establishment candidate three-to-one?

We'll find out Tuesday.

And the results may take a while to add up in what stands a good chance to be a very close race.

The state Supreme Court threw a wrinkle into the race last Tuesday, restoring to the primary ballot Joe Vodvarka, a semiretired spring manufacturer who had been removed on March 30 in a 5-2 ruling by the state Commonwealth Court.

The high court's 73-word order doesn't explain how the decision was reached or why it came just a week before the election.

In response, the Pennsylvania Department of State has been scrambling to get Vodvarka on the ballot.

Wanda Murren, a department spokeswoman, said Democratic voters in Columbia and Lancaster Counties will be given written instructions on how to write in Vodvarka's name on the ballot. There are 118,662 Democratic voters in those two counties.

Washington County's Democratic voters, 66,786 at last count, will be given a "supplemental paper ballot" for just the Senate primary, said Murren.

Most of the state's counties, Murren said, "moved heaven and earth" to get Vodvarka on the ballot.

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, the front-runner in the Democratic primary, filed the legal challenge to Vodvarka's nomination petition signatures. Sestak, who lost a close 2010 general election for the U.S. Senate to Republican Pat Toomey, successfully had Vodvarka removed from the 2010 primary ballot.

"He's afraid of me," Vodvarka said of Sestak. "He's afraid of my message."

Vodvarka, 72, from McKees Rocks, talks almost exclusively about the impact of free trade agreements on manufacturing jobs.

Self-financing his low-key campaigns, he took 20 percent of the 2012 primary vote as U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. coasted to a win.

Vodvarka's most recent campaign finance report, filed Jan. 29, said he had $1,171 in the bank. He says that's down to $132 now.

"I'm broke," he said. "I'm going to use it until Election Day to become a U.S. Senator. There's no other way to look at it."

Sestak's antiestablishment cred was sealed in the 2010 primary against then-Sen. Arlen Specter, who had switched over from the Republican Party. President Obama and then-Gov. Ed Rendell backed Specter, who lost.

Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president, qualifies too.

That leaves Katie McGinty, Gov. Wolf's former chief of staff, who was recruited by Democratic Party leaders, as the lone establishment candidate.

In any other year, Vodvarka's candidacy might be just what Casey treated it as in 2012, a curiosity with little impact.

But this primary "remains unpredictable," according to a Franklin and Marshall College Poll released Thursday that showed Sestak at 33 percent, McGinty at 27 percent and Fetterman at 8 percent. Vodvarka wasn't listed in that poll, which put support for "other" candidates at 2 percent.

The number that really jumped out: 29 percent of likely Democratic voters who said they don't know who they will support.

That puts "undecided" in second place, just 4 percentage points behind the race's front-runner.

Murren said it will take longer than usual to count Tuesday's vote because of the special measures being used to include Vodvarka. That could make for a very long night indeed.

brennac@phillynews.com

215-854-5973

@ByChrisBrennan