Pennsylvania ready for yet another historic political moment

AMERICA'S CRAZY patchwork of a presidential election system - including the Electoral College that still confounds voters and pundits alike - was born in the back rooms of Philadelphia at the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Ever since, candidates have been fighting here for votes. The state's mix of rural and urban, and its religious and ethnic diversity, have made Pennsylvania a battleground state in practically every election since 1796.

So, the only thing that's really different about the current six-week slog between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - in what may prove a decisive battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination - is the crush of newfangled media from around the globe.

There is a good chance that the April 22 primary will be highly memorable - but that doesn't make it a lock for a future list of Pennsylvania's top 10 presidential election moments. The list below is tough to crack.

Let's do it in reverse order, beginning with some honorable mentions:

2008:A poor showing by Sen. Hillary Clinton in an October 2007 debate at Drexel University paves the way for a Barack Obama comeback.

1992: Bill Clinton makes a triumphant visit to the Mayfair Diner on the final weekend of the fall campaign, on the way to the first of two big Pa. victories.

1976: Ronald Reagan, just a few delegates behind Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, taps Pa. Sen. Richard Schweiker as "running mate," in a failed gambit to win nomination.

1940: The Republican Convention, held five times in Philadelphia over the years, nominates attractive newcomer Wendell Willkie.

Now, the Top 10:

* 10 2004, and John Kerry's cheesesteak: Thus read the headline in the Daily News on Aug. 14, 2003: PREZ HOPEFUL ASKS FOR SWISS CHEESE!

Former People Paper reporter Don Russell wrote that "we may have just witnessed the unraveling of the Democratic front-runner's campaign for the White House right here in South Philadelphia, at 9th and Wharton. Let it be recorded: At lunchtime on Aug. 11, 2003, under the familiar awning of Pat's King of Steaks, Sen. John Kerry attempted to eat a cheesesteak."

OK, you may be wondering what eating a cheesesteak badly - by asking for swiss cheese and then posing for a picture showing the Boston blueblood looking terrified as he attempted to bite in - had to do with the major issues of the 2004 campaign, such as the war in Iraq.

Nothing - but the ridicule that Kerry received on the trivial matter, amplified for months by talk radio - foreshadowed tougher attacks like the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, and epitomized the modern media news blender. Kerry actually carried Pennsylvania in November, but lost the national contest to President Bush.

* 9 1800, and the first true election: It seems as if Pennsylvania has always been a battleground state - and it always has been. It was critical in swinging the first truly contested race in U.S. history, the bitter election of 1800 - to "small-r" republican Thomas Jefferson.

Before that pivotal year, Pennsylvania had been largely in the camp of the rival Federalists, although there was simmering anger over the government's handling of the western Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion.

But in 1799, a legendary early figure of Pennsylvania politics, Thomas McKean, was elected governor. A former Federalist who feuded with that party's giant, Alexander Hamilton, to become a supporter of Jefferson, McKean and his backers helped engineer a law change that gave Jefferson a net gain of one electoral vote here, eight votes to seven.

Jefferson defeated incumbent John Adams by just eight electoral votes (although he also had to deal with a messy tie with supposed running mate Aaron Burr) so the eight votes he won from the Pennsylvania were arguably decisive.

"The 1800 election was when Pennsylvania became the Keystone State," said Randall Miller, professor of history at St. Joseph's University, noting that the showdown led to the formation of the two-party system.

* 8 1980, and the legend of "street money." Another famous episode in Pennsylvania presidential lore occurred when President Jimmy Carter, locked in a tight primary battle with U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, dispatched his vice president, Walter Mondale, here to campaign.

The effort included a luncheon with Philadelphia's Democratic ward leaders, at which Mondale gave his standard pitch on Carter's policies on the economy and human rights. As recounted in the Washington Post two years later:

"[Ward leader Sam Grillo] interrupted the candidate in mid-response to get right to the long-range imperatives of the making of the next president. 'That's great, but tell me something, Mister Vice President,' Grillo said. 'On Election Day are we going to have street money?' "

It's not clear how that turned out, but the nearly broke Kennedy campaign narrowly defeated Carter that April in Pennsylvania. Carter won renomination anyway and went on to lose Pennsylvania, and the White House, to Reagan in November. The anecdote cemented Pennsylvania's image as the last bastion of ward politics.

* 7 1972, and the "Deer Hunter" voters. Before 1972, voters in Pennsylvania had no direct say in the presidential process; political insiders were picked as convention delegates and typically did the bidding of state bosses. After the political chaos of the 1960s, Pennsylvania joined the fast-growing list of states holding primaries in 1972, and the race was a doozy.

The Democratic primary pitted four political giants - Hubert Humphrey, the party's 1968 candidate, still backed by big labor; Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the Cold Warrior from Washington state; George Wallace, the Alabama segregationist-turned-populist; and liberal anti-Vietnam War candidate George McGovern.

In the end, the primary was an homage to union power in Pennsylvania, as Humphrey secured the key endorsements and rode the votes of steelworkers and coal miners to capture every county west of the Susquehanna River, and win decisively. But it was McGovern, who carried the Philadelphia suburbs, who won the nomination.

* 6 1856, and the birth of Republicanism. If you've ever passed the Musical Fund Hall near 8th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, you may not have realized its special place in American history.

It was there, 152 years ago, that the two-year-old modern Republican Party held its first presidential-nominating convention. The Evening Bulletin called the event the most important political gathering in Philadelphia since 1776, considering the brewing storm cloud over slavery that ultimately led to the Civil War four years later.

Rallying under banners that read "Free Speech. Free Press. Free Soil. Free Men. Fremont and Victory," the Republicans nominated California slavery-foe John C. Fremont, while there was a failed vice-presidential push for an ex-congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln.

Ironically, Fremont lost in November to the only Pennsylvanian ever elected president, Democrat James Buchanan, from Lancaster County. But the road to Lincoln's victory in 1860 began here.

* 5 1980, the rise of the Reagan Democrat. Yes, 1980 makes the list twice, because the GOP's successful wooing of pro-gun and pro-life union members who were heavily concentrated in Rust Belt Pennsylvania truly marked a political revolution.

In late October of that year, nominee Reagan breakfasted with union leaders in Pittsburgh and addressed a large rally there, before he touched base with another lunch-bucket crowd in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby.

In Delaware County, Reagan said that President Carter was a "little bit like the fellow who can identify the 50 parts of an automobile but he can't drive it or fix it."

Few experts thought that Reagan could win Pennsylvania, a cornerstone of FDR's New Deal coalition, but he carried the state in 1980 and 1984 and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, won in 1988, the last Republican presidential candidate to do so.

* 4 2000 and the "compassionate conservatives." The Republicans - in a sign of Pennsylvania's importance as a battleground state - held the first party convention in Philadelphia in 52 years, at what then was called the First Union Center.

If George W. Bush, who was nominated, had plans for the sharply conservative direction he ultimately would lead the nation, there was little talk of it in Philadelphia. Instead, as mapped out by strategist Karl Rove, the GOP confab highlighted "compassionate conservatism" and a stream of black and Latino speakers, culminating with a balloon-drop to the music of Puerto Rico's Ricky Martin.

Jet magazine wrote that summer that "this year's convention courted African-Americans much like a schoolboy would a pretty girl a week before the prom." One of the black speakers, ex-Eagle-turned-preacher Herb Lusk, even spoke on the video screen from his pulpit in North Philadelphia.

Did the move work? It didn't sway Pennsylvania, which went for Democrat Al Gore that November, but Bush became our 43rd president.

"What I recollected was that it was the most dishonest election I'd ever seen," said Jon Delano, a longtime newsman who teaches politics at Carnegie Mellon University. He and others also remember the protesters who were arrested in the hundreds.

* 3 1960, and JFK storms Pennsylvania. In perhaps no election was Pennsylvania as much of a battleground state as in 1960, as both the GOP's Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy crisscrossed the state in the final week.

Kennedy, who would become the nation's first Catholic president, drew an estimated 500,000 people to see him in the coal country near Scranton; at the new sprawling suburb of Levittown in Bucks County; and, finally, at a large Philadelphia rally on Oct. 31, 1960.

History buffs say that while Philadelphia congressman William Green Sr., father of the future mayor, was JFK's big early backer, the late if somewhat reluctant backing of Gov. David Lawrence was also crucial, as Kennedy defeated Nixon in the state by a margin of 51 to 49 percent.

Kennedy's appeal to Catholics was critical. "Catholics really mattered, because they were located in the right states," said G. Terry Madonna, a Millersville University political scientist and pollster.

* 2 1976, and the Great Debate. The race between incumbent Republican Ford and Democrat Carter brought on the first presidential debates since Kennedy had faced Nixon in 1960. The first was held in Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre, a nod to the Bicentennial.

Ironically, the debate may best be remembered for what the candidates didn't say: Shortly before the closing statements, the TV sound failed for 27 minutes, and both candidates stood motionless waiting for the problem to be fixed.

Beforehand, sparks flew over Ford's controversial Watergate pardon of ex-President Nixon, which Ford defended, saying that he needed to address issues like Vietnam and inflation, and it "seemed to me that Mr. Nixon had been penalized enough by his resignation in disgrace."

Although the debate was watched by millions, it would be the second one in San Francisco - at which Ford said that Poland wasn't dominated by the Soviet Union - that swung the election to Carter.

* 1 1948, and the end of the solid South. To say that the eyes of the political world were on Philadelphia in the summer of 1948 would be an understatement: Both the Democrats and Republicans held their conventions at the Civic Center, and even a liberal splinter party started by former FDR vice president Henry Wallace met here.

While Republicans left town confident of victory with their candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, the Democratic event held here in mid-July was a gloomy affair, so much so that party officials were seen giving away tickets to the hall.

The event - and the Democratic Party - was roiled by a pro-civil rights speech from Humphrey, then the mayor of Minneapolis, who said that Democrats needed to "get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."

Instead, Southern delegates walked right out of the convention and nominated South Carolina's Strom Thurmond to run on a segregationist States Rights Party ticket. The split marked the beginning of the end of the solid South for Democrats.

Meanwhile, President Harry Truman used the platform to assail the Republican-led "do-nothing Congress" - the theme he would ride to an upset victory.

One other thing about those Philadelphia conventions in 1948 really changed politics for good: They were the first to be televised.