LOWER MERION, PENNSYLVANIA
It had all the makings of a successful press conference. There was the engaging Senate candidate, Representative Ron Klink. There was the prominent national Democrat, Senator Russ Feingold, on hand to offer support. There were endorsements from a number of local politicians, including one who had lost to Klink in the primary. In fact, the media event held last week at the Lower Merion Democratic Headquarters, a boxy storefront in the Philadelphia suburbs, was missing only one thing: the media. Although Klink's challenge to Republican Senator Rick Santorum is supposedly one of the most important races in the country--pitting an "electable" Democrat against a vulnerable incumbent in a crucial swing state--I was the only reporter who showed up.

You could blame the poor turnout on the fact that the event coincided with a (rare) Philadelphia Eagles victory. Or on a local press corps spoiled by nearly weekly visits from doting presidential candidates. But there's another reason: The Philadelphia press barely knows, or cares, who Klink is. And that's because he comes from near Pittsburgh--which, politically, means he might as well come from Guam.

Few states boast as profound a geographic and ideological gulf as Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, together with most of the western part of the state, was settled by white ethnic immigrants attracted by its once-thriving steel industry. Western Pennsylvania's predominantly Catholic population and unionized heritage make it, generally, socially conservative and economically liberal. Philadelphia and its southeastern environs, by contrast, take their cues from a WASP (and now partly Jewish) elite that tends to be socially liberal and economically conservative.

In recent years, this combination has proved disastrous for Pennsylvania Democrats. When the party nominates eastern social liberals, they get creamed in steel country. But when it nominates western cultural conservatives, they come east and encounter what Klink found in Lower Merion: indifference or alienation--even, at times, within their own party. Which is a big problem, because while Greater Pittsburgh is home to plenty of voters, it's Greater Philadelphia that has the one ingredient Klink's campaign desperately needs: money.

Although there are almost 500,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania, Dems hold only one of five statewide offices (the son of the former Democratic governor, Robert Casey, is auditor general). Democrats are in the minority in the state Senate (the House is evenly split) and haven't elected a U.S. senator to a full term in 38 years. In fact, three years ago the party could not even muster a quorum for its state convention. "The Democratic Party in Pennsylvania has never been weaker," says Pittsburgh political analyst Jon Delano.

In the 1950s and '60s, Pennsylvania's regional divide didn't hit Democrats as hard, because the party had so many other advantages. The state's labor vote was much bigger and more reliably Democratic. And Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, while varying in their political styles, were large Democratic bastions. But in recent decades the percentage of Pennsylvanians that belong to unions has declined--from about 40 percent in the 1950s to 17 percent this year. And so has the percentage that live in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, which together constituted one-third of the state's electorate in 1964 but only one-fifth today. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Pennsylvania's growing suburban population has less loyalty to the Democratic Party, and so its regional differences have come to the fore--particularly the west's greater cultural conservatism. As a result, a pattern has taken hold in recent years: Eastern Democrats nominate a socially liberal candidate for statewide office; western Democrats defect to the Republican and hand him the election. In Pennsylvania's 1994 Senate race, Democrat Harris Wofford carried metropolitan Philadelphia but lost the rest of the state by 14 points and the election by two. Four years later, the Democratic candidates for Senate and governor both won Philadelphia and lost nearly every other county in the state.

But, as recently as a few months ago, Pennsylvania's Democrats felt confident that this year they could break the east-west curse. While most of the state's successful Republicans have been moderates--think Arlen Specter, Tom Ridge, and the late John Heinz--Santorum is a conservative firebrand elected in the 1994 Gingrich landslide. His reputation for hotheadedness and his perceived hostility to labor, analysts suggested, made him vulnerable. "When he annoys people," says Tom Foley, a former state labor secretary who ran against Klink in the Democratic primary, "he doesn't just annoy them, he annoys their whole family."

Moreover, Klink isn't an eastern social liberal. Since he opposes both abortion and gun control, Democrats figured he could win Pennsylvania's culturally conservative northeastern and southwestern coal and steel country. What's more, his 14-year tenure as a weatherman and reporter at a Pittsburgh-area TV station would give him a hometown edge.

Klink demonstrated his astute understanding of the Keystone State's peculiar divisions in the primary, when he masterfully used the east-west split to his advantage. While five other Democrats, with electoral bases clustered in the east, jousted for the Philadelphia vote, Klink concentrated on his own backyard. Crucially, this strategy meant that his cash-strapped campaign--Klink took out a second mortgage on his home to prop up his sagging coffers--didn't need to spend a single cent in the costly Philadelphia media market. Decorously removed from the fray, Klink let his opponents hammer away at his socially conservative views. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, a former congresswoman who later dropped out of the primary, tagged Klink "Santorum Lite"; Allyson Schwartz, a state senator who for 13 years headed up a Philadelphia women's health clinic, lambasted Klink for thinking that "his conscience is more important than the conscience of American women." But Klink was not vying for the voters to whom these warnings were directed. Though he received only 10 percent of the vote in Philadelphia, he carried the west overwhelmingly and won the primary by 15 points. "I knew what I was doing," Klink boasts. "There's a certain way you run a campaign."

The national party was impressed. Just days after Klink's victory, Robert Torricelli, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, announced, "This becomes one of the big five [Senate races] for us.... I think the people of Pennsylvania are assured of one of the most competitive and closest United States Senate campaigns in the country." The DSCC's political director, Jim Jordan, agreed. "The race will be very close. Klink will cut quite sharply into Santorum's base, both geographically and ideologically."

Klink looked well-positioned to shake off the curse. Except for one thing: If the west contains many of the votes, the east has most of the cash. As Philadelphia Democratic consultant Larry Ceisler remarks, "The Allyson Schwartz-type liberals are the ones who give the money." In fact, the same qualities that led Klink to victory in the primary--his high profile in the west and his social conservatism--became liabilities once it was over. Wealthy eastern donors who had bankrolled previous Democratic Senate campaigns cringed at the thought of writing checks to a candidate who voted against the Brady Bill, co-sponsored a repeal of the assault-rifle ban, and opposes abortion. Even Klink admitted to reporters that "the electoral profile of Ron Klink is someone who can win. The electoral profile of someone who can raise money in Philadelphia is somebody else."

In June, Klink fired his chief fund-raiser, and when the campaign's accounts were made public at the end of the month, it became clear why: He had raised $565,000 to Santorum's $4.43 million. In desperation, Klink leased an apartment in South Philadelphia and began spending 80 percent of his time in the eastern part of the state. Even so, in July, according to one poll, 70 percent of Pennsylvanians still hadn't heard of him. Says G. Terry Madonna, a pollster from Millersville University: "This race is about Santorum, who is the incumbent, and Klink has not made a case that Santorum is unworthy of reelection, because he hasn't had the money."

That task grew even more difficult in the spring and summer as Santorum dashed toward the center, describing himself on the stump as a "compassionate conservative" and touting his working relationships with Democrats like Joe Lieberman and former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. By midsummer, convinced that the DSCC's money would be better spent on more competitive races, Torricelli removed Pennsylvania from its list of top priorities.

Then came the Democratic convention and Gore's dramatic Pennsylvania bounce; Democratic officials began wondering whether the state might be in play downballot after all. The party arranged for a troop of high-profile national figures to publicly support Klink, including Senators Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, and Tom Daschle. Clinton and Gore praised the congressman in speeches. James Carville, at a Harrisburg fund-raiser in September, fired up the crowd by labeling any Democrat who did not support Klink a "traitor." And, when self-financed candidates won Democratic Senate primaries in Washington and Minnesota, the DSCC began to shovel cash back into the Pennsylvania race. Last week, buoyed by polls that showed Klink gaining ground, the national Democratic party shelled out nearly $1 million to fund his first TV ads, touting his record on Medicare and prescription drugs.

According to Millersville's Madonna, Klink probably now trails Santorum by around ten points. And, with his modest rise, the congressman's partisans have once again begun calling him Santorum's ideal foe. They point to polls showing that in the west, the only area where both candidates are well-known, Klink is in the lead. But that's exactly the problem. Few doubt that Klink is ideally positioned to defeat Santorum on the issues. But those same stands make him poorly suited to raise the money he needs to get out his message. He may be the perfect candidate, but that doesn't mean he can win.