Election Day

  Today is Primary Election Day in Pennsylvania. I've just finished casting my ballot. I voted in the Republican primary (we have closed primaries here in the Keystone State). I am conservative by nature and Republican by convenience, since the Grand Old Party seems to support more of the positions I favor.

   Pennsylvania is drawing national interest today because Democrat-turned-Republican-turned Democrat  again Arlen Specter is being challenged by insurgent Joe Sestak, a congressmen from suburban Philadelphia. Sestak has an unimpeachable liberal voting record in two House terms; however, he's run afoul of the Obama administration by alleging that the White House tried to bribe him with a Cabinet or sub-Cabinet appointment in return for dropping out of the race against Specter, the endorsed candidate. An inconvenient breach of federal election law.

   The political Wise Men are framing this as yet another referendum on the Obama administration, similar to Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

   The weather here today is cold and rainy which should favor Specter, who is endorsed (bought and paid for might be a more accurate term) by Big Labor. Expect Labor to mobilize the vote for Specter, while the suburgan latte liberals who support Sestak probably will want to keep their Coach bags dry on a day like this and stay home.

  On the Republican side, things are a bit more civilized. Former congressman Pat Toomey, is expected to easily win the nod to be the GOP Senatorial candidate. I voted for Toomey, who nearly defeated Specter in the 2004 Republican primary.

   In the race for governor I voted for the tea party candidate Sam Rohrer. The endorsed establishment candidate Tom Corbett, current attorney general, is a competent candidate, but part of a system where Democrats and Republicans can be a little too cozy. If you have two business partners who think alike you have one partner too many. And if you have two parties that cut too many back room deals you've got a one-party state. Count me as one voter who's not too concerned when the needle gets pegged on the volume of our polical debates.

   I also voted for my local state representative Chris Ross. Chris understands constitutent service, and that all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill famously said.

  Also on my ballot was incumbent Congressman Jim Gerlach, a fiscally conservative back bencher. Gerlach is a former businessman, and Lord knows we need more of them in Congress. If even a quarter of the Congress had ever had to make payroll in their lives the national fisc would look a lot different than it does now.

   Primaries are generally categorized by low turnout. I try to never miss an election, even if I have to vote absentee. I count myself in that first generation who benefitted from the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. I remember how special it felt to walk into my polling place as an 18-year-old and cast my first ballot. I remember it clearly: The polling place was a small town barber shop in Ohio. The booth was a curtain set up around one of the three chairs. I voted by Xs on a paper ballot. How times have changed.

   One thing that hasn't changed: No matter how inconsequential the election is, whenever the election worker hands me my ballot, the hair still stands up on the back of my neck as much as it did that first time I voted, .

Just thought you might like to know.

Pennsylvania Looking for Descendants of African American Civil War Soldiers

   Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is known for many things. It is the capital of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is home to one of the most splendid and historic state capitols. Abraham Lincoln's funeral train stopped there in 1865, bearing the body of the nation's 16th president back to Springfield, Illinois. In 1901William McKinley's funeral train stopped there bearing the president's body back to Washington, DC, accompanied by his successor Theodore Roosevelt. (However, the new president refused to be photographed with the local Pennsylvania politicians, so bad was the national reputation for corruption by the Keystone State's sordid solons back in the day.)

  And this November it will be notable for another historic achievement: a re-enactment of an 1865 celebration march by black Civil War soldiers.

   At the end of the Civil War thousands of victorious blue coats marched through the city of Washington in what was called the Grand Review of the Armies. But none of the more than 180,000 black troops who fought in the war was invited to march.

   So black troops staged their own march in celebration of the end of the war. It took place in Harrisburg in November 1865. Troops representing more than 24 states marched through the streets of the city.

   This November Pennsylvania will commemorate that historic march with a re-enactment in the state capital.  As part of the plan, the state wants to identify descendants of the soldiers who took part in the march. The African-American Historical Society  of South Central Pennsylvania will be holding a workshop in Lancaster to help people identify ancestors who may have fought with the U.S. Colored Troops.

   The Pennsylvania Tourism Office is heading up the event in Harrisburg. For more information on the march, or identifying troops who took place in the original event, contact either organization.

   Should be a great event.

Just thought you might like to know.