Rs line up to challenge Wolf

[DeminPennswoods]

R state senator Scott Wagner, a central PA trash hauling magnate, has formally announced he will run against Tom Wolf. Others reportedly thinking about running are R state senate leader Jake Corman (Centre County) and R state house speaker Mike Turzai (Pgh, North Hills area).

[blue neen]

2. Mike Turzai. Ugh!:

Yeah, that guy...

[DeminPennswoods]

3. Only Wagner is officially in

Turzai and Corman are only thinking about it.

[JPZenger]

4. Many mainstream Repubs hate Wagner - he will have a primary challenge

Remember the PA Republican party spent a fortune on TV ads a couple years ago to try to keep Wagner out of the Senate. He is extremely Trump-like. A mainstream conservative Repub will challenge him in the primary.

[DeminPennswoods]

5. Corman would be the most formidible R imho

His senate district includes State College/Penn State and isn't a guaranteed R seat, so he's had to keep his policies more toward the moderate. Corbett was done in by the votes of many angry Penn State alums going to Wolf, but Corman (and McCord) were the ones who sued the NCAA and made them back off the sanctions on the school. That will be a plus for him.

But Wolf will be a lot harder to beat than many pundits think. IMHO, he is going to put the state GOP in a box with his upcoming budget. Some pundits think he'll propose some gimmicks to close the 2B structural gap, but he's already said he won't ask for income or sales tax increases. I think he'll call for an extraction tax on shale gas and has already cut all state jobs that were vacant, but otherwise, I think he's going to cut funding for everything else and let the Rs deal with the screaming that's going to come when Pennsylvanians see what a balanced budget really looks like. He'll probably agree to some state pension "reform", but state stores won't be closed/sold because they provide over .5B profit to the state budget per year.