Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, which as Pennsylvania Avenue notes, continues to be raising more questions than it answers, has apparently finally picked a state director to manage the day-to-day campaign in the state.

Craig Schirmer, a Californian with little if any Pennsylvania experience who was involved in Obama’s South Carolina, Wisconsin and North Carolina primary operations, will run the Pennsylvania campaign.

Does anyone else find McCain’s comments more than slightly distasteful? He’s very directly telling these rich people “I’m running so you’ll get far richer.”

Sen. John McCain picked up $1.5 million for his campaign and the Republican Party during a cocktail reception Monday night in an air-conditioned tent on the grounds of a Bryn Mawr estate.

The GOP’s nominee-in-waiting also may have discovered a new housing policy.  read more »

Happily, she doesn’t owe Keystone Politics any money…

Brad Koplinski is a Harrisburg city council member, lawyer, delegate to the Democratic National Convention and is seen as an up-and-comer in local Democratic circles.

Now he can add a new title: Hillary Rodham Clinton creditor.

Koplinksi, who quit his state job to work full time for Clinton’s presidential campaign in Pennsylvania, is one of dozens of individuals, businesses, municipalities, schools and universities in the state owed more than $231,000 by Clinton’s campaign.  read more »

I’m surprised to see that Barack Obama is leading in Florida, but not too surprised about Ohio and Pennsylvania. What do you think?

It’s certainly early, but Barack Obama gets some good news this morning out of a new Quinnipiac University series of swing state polls that shows him leading John McCain by a double-digit margin in Pennsylvania and about half as much in Florida and Ohio.

First the overall numbers:

The Pennsylvania poll of 1,511 likely voters showed Obama leading 52-40 percent with a 2.5 percent margin of error.

Governor Rendell, one of Clinton’s most vociferous supporters, gave Democrats seven days to get over her loss and start working for Obama. Honestly, I can’t imagine that it will take a week to get used to something that you should have been aware of for at least a month.

At this weekend’s meeting, the New York senator’s most vocal Pennsylvania cheerleader, Gov. Ed Rendell, gave Clinton loyalists until June 14 to lick their wounds and mourn the demise of her candidacy.

‘‘You’ve got seven days,’‘ Rendell said Friday. ‘‘You can use every curse word you know.’‘ he said.  read more »

Unity was the buzzword among Democrats yesterday, and no more so than in Pennsylvania, where almost all the big power brokers – and many of the smaller ones – had until now thrown their support behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But with Sen. Barack Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee, top state Democrats yesterday were left figuring out how to best position the Illinois lawmaker for victory in their swing state, which carries 21 electoral votes.

“Any time, any place, anywhere under any set of circumstances that I can be helpful, that’s where I’m going to be,” Mayor Nutter said yesterday. “I’ll campaign with him here in Philly or in the suburbs or anywhere else they would like.”

“I’m a Democrat,” he added. “I’m supporting the Democratic nominee.”  read more »

As Chris Satullo says in this fantastic column, the forces of the status quo are once again looking to kill reform efforts. Read his column:

A bill to curb gerrymandering is in trouble in the Pennsylvania legislature. Gerrymandering is the dark art of drawing electoral districts to stack the deck in favor of incumbents and the party in power. Pennsylvania is the second-most-gerrymandered state in the land.

House Bill 2420 “is a key pillar of fundamental, transformational reform,” says Barry Kauffman of Pennsylvania Common Cause.

So, of course, friends of the status quo are trying to bury this bill in committee.  read more »

Maybe small businesses should begin to request cash up front, at least when it’s coming from Hillary Clinton’s faltering campaign for President…

Despite Barack Obama’s seemingly insurmountable lead in delegates, Hillary Clinton has been quick to list reasons why she should stay in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Some Pennsylvania business owners would add one more: So she can raise enough money to pay them back.  read more »