Tom Wolf meets with the PennLive editorial board

Tom Wolf, the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania in the 2014 election, meets with the PennLive editorial board on September 25, 2014. Joe Hermitt, PennLive

(JOE HERMITT)

As Pennsylvanians vote on Nov. 4, they'll be asked to choose a governor to lead a divided state where politics-as-usual has stymied progress.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, despite four years of single-party control of the Capitol, has been denied victories on two of his three signature issues: liquor privatization and taming the exploding cost of public employee pensions.

Despite broad public support for reform and Corbett's best efforts, including both entreaties and strong-arm tactics, the Legislature broke for the year without acting to defuse the $65 billion pension time bomb. And repeated vows not to "kick the can down the road" now ring hollow.

Even with a major win on a $2 billion-plus highway repair and reconstruction package, legislative victories have been few and far between for Corbett. And that's made it easy to forget that he handily dispatched Democrat Dan Onorato in the Republican wave of 2010.

But as much as the General Assembly was an impediment to Corbett's success, so too was Corbett himself.

Instincts that had served Corbett well during his nearly eight years as attorney general did not serve him as governor.

The prosecutor's tendency to play things close to the vest hampered both his ability to deal with the 253-member General Assembly and to communicate his plans to the public.

In this, he was hampered by an inexperienced staff who were ill-equipped to deal with both the Legislature and the media.

And while it was true that the Great Recession left Corbett a $4.2 billion deficit upon taking office, his poorly explained decision to initially cut spending on basic and higher education, as well as popular social welfare programs, hurt him politically.

His steadfast refusal *to impose a severance tax on the natural gas industry furthered a popular perception that he was balancing the books on the backs of the most vulnerable.

Corbett showed wisdom late in his administration by reversing course and declining to challenge court decisions overturning Pennsylvania's wrong-headed voter identification law and a 1990s-vintage ban on same-sex marriage that was rooted in decades of prejudice and discrimination.

But a regrettable dead-end journey into Lottery privatization wasted both time and money.

And a brick-wall opposition to a simple Medicaid expansion authorized under Obamacare left hundreds of thousands of the state's most vulnerable residents without health coverage while he haggled with Washington over his own convoluted alternative.

A series of public gaffes with remarks about Latinos, the unemployed, same-sex couples and his admonition that women "close their eyes" during an invasive ultrasound procedure alienated him from scores of voters.

And that's been reflected in polls showing him the most unpopular Pennsylvania governor in recent memory. And he faces the genuine risk of becoming the state's first incumbent governor in decades to be denied a second, four-year term.

So the time has come to try a different approach. And PennLive/The Patriot-News endorses Democrat Tom Wolf of York County for governor in 2014.

As we wrote in our endorsement for the May Democratic primary, we believe that the totality of Wolf's experience as a both a businessman and former state revenue official make him well-suited to address the multi-faceted challenges that Pennsylvania must confront in the coming years.

We are encouraged by Wolf's proposal to impose a 5 percent severance tax on Pennsylvania's burgeoning Marcellus shale natural gas drilling industry. The Democrat has said his plan would raise about $700 million.

Besides addressing the environmental costs of drilling, the money would also be earmarked for schools and transportation.

Corbett's local impact fee, which raises about $200 million a year, with the state and counties affected by drilling sharing in the money, seems a token gesture by comparison. That is particularly since Pennsylvania stands alone among major gas-producing states in not taxing gas at the wellhead.

But Wolf's evasions on the specifics of his income tax reform plan, which he says would hand a break to middle-class wage earners, while unsurprising, have nonetheless been disappointing.

He has offered hypotheticals on what the average homeowner might expect to pay, but refused to provide more concrete details, claiming he doesn't have the necessary data.

When pressed, his campaign has said the income tax fix is just part of a broader agenda of tax reform proposals that includes both the severance tax and corporate tax reform.

But it is also inescapably true that the income tax affects the broadest number of Pennsylvanians, and they deserve more detail.

While both candidates have discussed how they would address the current benefit structure for state employees, neither Corbett nor Wolf have offered a plan that gives immediate relief from the huge and growing make-up payments to the pension systems.

And any conversation about reform is incomplete without it.

Like Corbett, Wolf, if elected, will face a Republican-controlled General Assembly that will be openly hostile to his agenda.

In interviews, the Democrat has said he hopes to put his business experience to work and reach common ground with lawmakers. He's also said he hopes lawmakers will listen to their better angels and step up to do what's right for the Commonwealth.

It's admirable rhetoric coming from a man of solid personal integrity. But we hope Wolf will look to both Corbett and another prominent Democrat — President Barack Obama — to see what happens when such rhetoric meets political reality.

Both have been stymied at every turn by a hostile legislative body more attuned to self-interest and political survival.

To be successful, Wolf must somehow find a way to to get his agenda enacted into law. He can start by surrounding himself, as Abraham Lincoln did, with a team of rivals that has the diverse talent and experience to see that work completed.

During the 11 months of the campaign, Wolf has offered sound ideas about where he wants to take the Commonwealth. But as the experience with Corbett has shown, actually getting there can be a difficult, if not insurmountable challenge.

But as a Democratic governor, he has the advantage of being a bulwark against legislative excess.

A Wolf administration, for instance, could have been expected to stand in opposition to recently signed legislation allowing the National Rifle Association to sue municipalities that enact gun ordinances that are tougher than existing state law.

Six years after the great economic crash, Pennsylvania is still nowhere near its full potential. Too many people are still struggling to recover, wondering whether the American Dream -- a good job, a comfortable place to live and a good education for their children – is beyond their reach.

The state needs to get on a different path, one that will produce a widely shared prosperity. Pennsylvania needs a leader who will pursue opportunity for all, instead of relying on corporate tax cuts and business favors whose supposed benefits never seem to trickle down.

That leader is Tom Wolf.

(*This post has been updated to reflect Gov. Corbett's opposition to a severance tax on natural gas drillers.)