The calendar still reads August, but the two major candidates for Pennsylvania governor have already taken to the airwaves to win votes for the Nov. 5 election.
Democrat Ed Rendell, mayor of Philadelphia from 1991 to 1999 and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Republican Mike Fisher, the state's attorney general, will face off later this year in one of the nation's most closely-watched gubernatorial races.
The two men started their television advertising campaigns in early August, a whole month ahead of the traditional Labor Day kickoff for political ads, in a testament to what some experts call the exciting nature of the race.
Frederick Voigt, head of the Philadelphia-based Committee of Seventy, a non-partisan political watchdog group, said Rendell's come-from-behind victory over Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. in the Democratic primary has helped to spur on the early campaigning.
"I'm a bit surprised [the ads] weren't up before they were," Voigt said. "When you look at expectations, the early betting was that Bobby Casey had a lock. We haven't had [a governor] from Philadelphia since 1914 and yet Rendell ran convincingly.... Given Rendell's performance in the primary, it's impossible not to run [early]."
The Pennsylvania governor's race is also seen as very important nationally, since the Keystone State is a swing state in the 2004 presidential election.
"If you look at the presidential race in 2004, Pennsylvania is pivotal and... it is important in any presidential campaign to have the governor be from your party," Voigt said.
Annenberg School for Communication Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson said the candidates have started advertising early partly because of the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. There will be a few days, according to her, when political advertising will be entirely inappropriate, so the candidates need to make up for lost time now.
Jamieson also said both candidates' campaigns are aware that people are watching TV more often lately, at least on a superficial level, so they can reach larger audiences.
People "tune in in the morning to see if anything's blown up," Jamieson said. They are "not watching constantly, they're running in and out."
The candidates' early start guarantees that this race will be one of the most expensive in the country, and certainly the most expensive Pennsylvania has ever seen. Both candidates are skillful fundraisers who are getting significant financial support from their national parties.
Rendell, for example, spent $19 million during the Democratic primary alone.
Rendell was a force of nature during the primary, racing around the state and getting his name out, while Fisher ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. It is this momentum from the Democratic primary, according to the Fisher camp, that allowed Rendell to lead by 15 percentage points in the latest official poll, released on July 21.
"Those numbers we weren't surprised to hear," Phiel said. "We actually expected Rendell to have a more sizable lead after the millions of dollars he spent in the primaries, when we weren't spending. [That money] will buy a lot of name recognition."
Rendell spokesman Dan Fee, however, says his candidate's wide lead cannot be entirely attributed to momentum and higher name recognition.
"The primary was three months ago," Fee said. "This is Mike Fisher's fifth statewide race. They're basically saying that it's name ID? After five times of running, shouldn't everybody know him?"
Both campaigns agree, though, that Rendell's enormous lead will shrink in the next official poll -- to be released shortly after Labor Day -- which will show the effects of Fisher's advertising debut.
Political Science Professor Henry Teune predicts that, in the end, whichever candidate wins will do so by a slim margin.
"It looks like it's going to be close," Teune said. "I don't see any easy walk."
Also running for governor are Michael Morrill from the Green Party and Ken Krawchuk from the Libertarians.
