York County businessman Tom Wolf won the Democratic nomination for governor yesterday - defeating U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, state Treasurer Rob McCord and former state Environmental Protection Secretary Katie McGinty - in large part due to a $10 million bet he made on early campaign commercials.
Wolf, comfortably leading with 58 percent of the vote last night, can now turn his full attention to challenging Gov. Corbett's bid for a second term in the Nov. 4 general election.
Corbett and the Pennsylvania Republican Party turned their attention to Wolf weeks ago, zeroing in on the Democratic front-runner before the primary arrived.
Speaking at the restaurant Relish in the West Oak Lane section of Northwest Philadelphia yesterday afternoon, Wolf presented "two different visions" for the state.
Wolf accused Corbett of making massive cuts to public education that "hollowed out schools" and presented himself as a job creator who will responsibly take advantage of resources like the natural gas being drilled for in the Marcellus Shale region.
Wolf wants an extraction tax on drillers to pay for education. Corbett opposes such a tax.
Corbett's campaign issued a statement last night quoting Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, who said they had "detailed notes of Tom Wolf's tax-and-spend policies, and we will waste no time pulling back the curtain and introducing Pennsylvanians, for the first time, to the real Tom Wolf."
Corbett last week was already running TV ads critical of the 18 months Wolf spent as revenue secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell.
