Governor race could test GOP mettle
likely candidate to win it, and they all think they have enough votes at state committee to win,” said Michael Meehan, Philadelphia’s Republican Party chairman. “Unfortunately, all of them can’t win.”
No GOP-endorsed candidate has lost Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial primary in 40 years.
Still, an endorsement of Mr. Wagner would represent a break with a tradition of backing establishment-style candidates.
Mr. Wagner was endorsed by Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former strategist who, as chairman of the right-wing Breitbart News, backed Roy Moore’s failed candidacy in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race that cost Republicans a seat inthe chamber.
The founder of a prominent trash-hauling company in south-central Pennsylvania, Mr. Wagner touts his business credentials and is rated by the American Conservative Union as among the Senate’s five most conservative senators. His penchant for speaking off the cuff makes him a magnet for controversy, and he has clashed openly with moderate members of his caucus.
He took office in 2014 by winning a write-in bid over the GOP’s hand-picked candidate, a veteran state lawmaker, in an expensive and bruising primary in which top Republican senators spent heavily to try to defeat him. Before that, he donated heavily to conservative candidates and causes, even if it meant challenging sitting Republican public officials.
Starting Saturday, the state party’s regional caucuses will begin meeting with the candidates and holding straw votes ahead of a formal state committee vote. Regional caucus meetings will wrap up Feb. 3, a week before committee members meet in Hershey to decide party endorsements.
“A lot of people in the counties really haven’t made a decision yet,” said Dick Stewart, co-chair of the Central Caucus. “I think they really want to hear the candidates make a presentation.”
In election seasons since 1978, it has been obvious as to who would win the party’s gubernatorial endorsement, said Blake Marles, who chairs the fourcounty northeast central caucus. The promise of an endorsement is typically used as a shield to avoid potentially divisive and expensive primary contests, and the GOP field is usually clear well before the party’s endorsement meeting. Not this year. The prospect of losing the endorsement isn’t scaring candidates away from running without it, and the Republican Party’s cash may be stretched to help save congressional and legislative majorities in a difficult mid-term election.
“So the question is then,” said Charles Gerow, a committee member from Cumberland County, “what’s the endorsement’s true value?”