Friday news round-up

• Legislative races
  
  
  
  • Rendell chips in serious bucks to Casey campaign -- after all, his race isn't that close... (Note too the contrast to treatment of Hoeffel in '04.)
    
    
  • Dick Cheney will hold a Santorum fundraiser near Pittsburgh tonight, helping his side in the battle for dollars.
    
    
  • The US Senate race isn't the only one that's already featuring negative ads: there's a kerfluffle in the 161st District state rep race between Thomas Gannon and Brian Lentz over some pretty charged allegations made in an ad being run by the state Republicans. Anybody who's been a defense attorney is likely to have occasionally represented somebody guilty of something...
    
    
  • Tom Ferrick offers condolences to Curt Weldon for a series of terrible developments in his re-election campaign that arrived all at once. (Commenters point out that he still has a strong lead in the polls.)
  
  
• Philadelphia City Council news
  
  
  
  • Apparently there was a near-fistfight in Council yesterday over an obscure zoning matter. Undercurrents of power battles in the absence of a District representative from the area in question. (More here.)
    
    
  • Darrell Clarke is giving up on his parks reform efforts, apparently because it doesn't appear to have the votes.
    
    
  • Inga Saffron welcomes the Kenney/DiCicco bill to overhaul city planning, but thinks it's a tiny first step in a system that needs more major improvement, especially in the relationship between Philadelphia's Planning Commission and Zoning Board.
    
    
  • A letter to the Daily News defends Carol Campbell's record and says she doesn't deserve being the scapegoat for frustration with the special elections system.
    
    
  • We at ASFR, however, appreciate our title becoming a theme for cartoons and editorials...
  
  
• Other miscellanious stories
  
  
  
  • School District chief Paul Vallas received an Urban Innovator Award this week for his work in Chicago and Philadelphia.
    
    
  • The feds are suing a local union for not filing its financial records with the Department of Labor. The union claims to be fighting "slavery" and "tyranny" by refusing. Very odd.
    
    
  • The Daily News is plugging next Tuesday's rally in Harrisburg again; there's always more room in the buses for those opposing gun violence in the region. (They also highlight their picks among proposed legislation.)
    
    
  • The Inquirer has set up an expert panel to field questions about political races in Pennsylvania. Been curious about something? Drop them a line.