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Wolf looking like ‘two-term Tom’ as 2018 approaches

HARRISBURG — He’s starting to look like two-term Tom.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf likely has wrapped up his biggest first-term fights with the Legislature’s huge Republican majorities and his record is largely set a year before voters decide whether to give him a second term. He now heads into the 2018 election year with political winds at his back.

Wolf’s polls currently resemble those of former Gov. Ed Rendell’s, the Democrat who won a second term in 2006, rather than former Gov. Tom Corbett’s, the Republican who Wolf beat in 2014 to make the first Pennsylvania governor to lose re-election and the original “one-term Tom.”

“That is a decent spot to be in for an incumbent governor who’s been through lots of fiscal battles the last three years,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “All in all, you probably take that if you’re Tom Wolf.”

In recent days, eyes increasingly have turned to next year’s election.

The budget battle of 2017 ended, if four months late, and the four-candidate Republican primary field appears set with the entry of House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny.

Wolf’s potential adversaries attack him in relatively boilerplate terms: he’s a serial tax hiker, an out-of-touch elitist and a lousy leader. The state Republican Party calls him “America’s most liberal governor.”

To be sure, Republicans have blocked the vast majority of Wolf’s proposed tax increases, billions of dollars primarily to fix yawning budget deficits and funding disparities in public schools.

Wolf, 69, was virtually a political novice when he took office in 2015, and his strategy in the Capitol has evolved.

In this year’s budget stalemate, Wolf allied with Senate Republicans against House Republicans. He also agreed to versions of legislation long-sought by Republicans — and long opposed by public-sector labor unions — such as breaking the state’s monopoly on wine and liquor sales.

Those concessions and the drumbeat for a tax increase make Wolf’s record a “mixed bag,” said Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, which backed Corbett in the 2014 campaign.

Wolf signed robust medical marijuana legislation — something Corbett opposed — and a package of measures designed to fight Pennsylvania’s opioid-addiction crisis. Meanwhile, his administration has been relatively scandal-free, Pennsylvania’s uninsured rate has fallen to the lowest on record, unemployment is at a post-recession low and hiring has picked up.

As of September, Pennsylvania had the nation’s 29th fastest 12-month job-growth rate — better than the bottom-10 ranking it racked up over the past three decades.

Wolf faces no Democratic Party challenger in the May 15 primary election, despite complaints from the left’s coalition of labor unions and environmental advocacy organizations about the deals Wolf cut with Republicans.

To some extent, he is forgiven for having little choice with historically large Republican legislative majorities — the biggest since the 1950s — and some in the coalition see 2018 as an existential election if a Republican governor joins those majorities in power.

FILE – In this Feb. 25, 2015, file photo, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf meets with reporters after speaking to a business group about his upcoming budget proposals at the Musikfest Cafe in Bethlehem, Pa. With Wolf’s first-term record by and large established, political winds are at his back as the Democratic governor’s campaign for a second term ramps up in advance of the November 2018 election. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
FILE – In this March 8, 2016, file photo, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf meets with diner patrons before discussing his executive order to increase the minimum wage for state government employees and workers on jobs contracted by the state, during a news conference at the Trolley Car Cafe in Philadelphia. As the Democratic governor’s campaign for a second term ramps up in advance of the November 2018 election, Wolf’s first-term record is by and large established and political winds are at his back. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
FILE – In this June 30, 2015, file photo, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf discusses his disagreements with lawmakers about the Republican-crafted state budget, while speaking to reporters at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. As the Democratic governor’s campaign for a second term ramps up in advance of the November 2018 election, Wolf’s first-term record is by and large established and political winds are at his back. (AP Photo/Chris Knight, File)