Prospecting for a Primary in PA-12

By Fester:

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is one of the oldest of the old boys. He epitomizes the smoke filled room in D.C. and favor trading. And it is becoming probable that the FBI Public Corruption unit thinks he has stepped over the line between licit favor trading and illicit favor trading. A steady string of Murtha associates have been indicted, or pleaded guilty and talked in return for lighter sentences. The classical FBI profile on a public corruption case is to act as a boa constrictor and squeezing the peripheral non-public official players tighter and tighter until the public official is indicted. At that point, the previously charged individuals often will testify against the public official in return for either immunity or a lighter sentence. The alternative method is to find a $90,000 block of cash in the freezer or hearing massively incriminating evidence from a wiretap that was in place for another corruption probe.

If Murtha is indicted or rumorered to be indicted in the next few months, this opens up significant space for a primary challenge. If the challenger wins, I am betting that the Democrat would be slightly behind whomever the Republicans nominate as the 12th Congressional District is trending Republican. I think a primary challenge is worthwhile and what I wrote in March bears repeating:

think there are grounds for a primary on good government and cover your ass grounds... Pennsylvania Democrats are facing a severe risk of being successfully categorized as corrupt self-schemers with possible externalities going national...

the calculus is not that good as any primary challenger who can get above 30% in the primary will not be anyone who would ever self-identify as progressive. However sending out a candidate as a good government alternative forces Murtha to campaign and to defend his actions to the electorate. That in and of itself is a good thing for political process. In the extremely low probability outcome of defeating Murtha in a primary, the district would probably favor the generic Republican over the generic Democratic candidate in 2010.

Using the Democratic partisan lens, the positive pay-off of a successful primary challenge is significantly larger if the meta narrative can be established that Democrats police their own. This is important to restore the anti-douchebaggery incentives that were absent in 2008. The failure of Democrats to aggressively challenge corruption, the allegations of corruption or the appearance of corruption cost them at least one seat in the House, and potentially more as people shrugged their shoulders. An aggressive primary campaign with any credible Democratic challenger should at least have national positive externalities, if not in-district externalities.

So which Democrats in west-central Pennsylvania are capable of making a credible primary run against Murtha despite the fact it the primary challenge will be cut off from traditional Democratic money sources (institutional and activist, as the activists won't like whomever emerges and their voting profile) and a low probability of ultimate success of taking a seat that has a decent chance of getting dismantled in 2011's redistricting. I can not think of anyone right now.