Allyson Schwartz gets a moment, more to come

U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz got a whole 90 seconds to address the Democratic National Convention yesterday as part of a Sisterhood is Powerful chorus line led by Nancy Pelosi. Actually, it was called the Women of the U.S. House of Representatives, but it sure took me back to 1979.

 

Few people actually saw Schwartz and crew in the early evening on television,  but make no mistake, she’s a comer in the Democratic party and Pennsylvania politics, as I reported in a radio and web piece in May.

And the Inquirer’s Tom Fitzgerald noticed that the blue water bottles handed out as gifts at a Tuesday lunch honoring women of the Pennsylvania delegation bore Schwartz’s name surrounded by stars, but not the office she holds.

That only reinforces speculation that she’ll run for statewide office in Pennsylvania, either challenging Gov. Tom Corbett for re-election in 2014, or more likely U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey in 2016.

And, if you’ll forgive a little media whining, I have to again compliment the crackerjack Democratic press operation, which is so obsessed with message control that they can’t actually provide any real information. I was trying to find out yesterday when Mayor Nutter would be addressing the convention, just so I could let our readers and WHYY listeners know.

It was a closely-held secret until after this morning’s drive time. When I called the press number on the Democratic Convention website yesterday, I was told to call “media logistics” at a different number. When I called that number, they referred me to the first one.

It’s pretty bad when a press operation can’t competently give a `no comment.’