Photograph by Matt Rourke/AP Photo

Rep. Allyson Schwartz in Philadelphia.

Republicans don’t have much of a chance at winning the Philadelphia-area congressional district that Democratic Rep. Allyson Schwartz plans to give up to run for governor next year.

And that’s just fine by Republicans.

That’s because Republicans who redrew district lines before the 2012 elections packed Democrats in Schwartz’s 13^th district, taking in parts of Philadelphia and inner suburban Montgomery County, as part of a strategy to draw and concede a few overwhelmingly Democratic districts as a small price to pay for helping Republicans win more districts by smaller but consistent margins.

The plan worked. Republicans won 13 of 18 Pennsylvania districts even as they lost the statewide House vote by 2.8 million to 2.7 million votes. Republicans won their districts with an average of 59 percent of the vote compared with 76 percent for the five Democrats. In the presidential balloting, the districts also broke 13 to 5 in favor of Republican Mitt Romney even as he lost Pennsylvania by more than 5 points and 309,000 votes to President Barack Obama.

In Montgomery, Republican line-drawers gave almost all of the strongly Democratic areas to Schwartz and Democrat Chaka Fattah while shifting competitive and Republican-leaning precincts to the districts of the three Republicans who represent part of the county. Obama won 63 percent of the vote in the Montgomery precincts in Schwartz’s district, compared with 57 percent countywide.

An analysis of the precinct-by-precinct vote in Montgomery underscores how Democratic voters are more heavily clustered than Republican voters who are spread out more efficiently.

Obama won at least 75 percent of the vote in 48 Montgomery County precincts, of which 38 are in Schwartz’s district and seven in Fattah’s Philadelphia-centered district. Romney didn’t win 75 percent in any Montgomery precinct that cast more than 20 votes. Of the 113 precincts that Romney did win, usually with less than 60 percent of the vote, 90 are in districts represented by Republicans.

Original post is Why Republicans OK Conceding Schwartz’s Pennsylvania District by Political Capital.

That’s how many presidential inaugurations will have been held after today’s public ceremony for President Barack Obama, starting his second term.

Obama took the oath of office yesterday, per the 20^th Amendment. Because yesterday was a Sunday, the inaugural ceremony was scheduled for today. The president will deliver his second inaugural address.

The first inauguration was held in 1789 in New York for George Washington. John Adams, inaugurated as the second president in Philadelphia in 1797, was the first president to receive the oath of office from the Chief Justice of the United States. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, was the first to be inaugurated in Washington.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 57 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Robert Alexander/Archive Photos/Getty Images

A Barack Obama supporter visits the Democratic Party's headquarters in Espanola, New Mexico.

President Barack Obama has been accused of campaigning after Election Day.

House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have chided him for the trips he’s made to places such as the toy factory in Pennsvylania and the diesel engine plant near Detroit where he has pressed his case for taxing the wealthiest Americans harder.

It doesn’t take Air Force One to launch a campaign, however.

This afternoon, the president is aiming over the heads of Republican leaders again with a round of regional interviews with anchors from regional television stations in states where he won re-election – y tambien en espanol.

The president will take a seat in the Diplomatic Room of the White House mid-afternoon for talks with WPVI in Philadelphia, WCCO in Minneapolis, KCRA in Sacramento and — notably — the Miami outlet of WSCV Univision.

Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote on Nov. 6, close to former President Bill Clinton’s record, and in South Florida Obama won a record 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote, as well as 60 percent of the U.S.-born Cuban-American community.

With both his trips outside of Washington and his media reach outside the Beltway, he is counting on momentum carried from his campaign to convince Congress that taxes for top-earners should be raised while 98 percent of Americans are held harmless from the repeal of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Back in Washington, Boehner is holding the president to significant spending cuts as part of any tax deal. The Republican House speaker from Ohio, where Obama also won re-election, is staging his own media event today: An 11:15 am EST news conference in the Capitol.

See the Bloomberg National Poll today for more on the White House’s reading of the hand the president holds.

Original post is Obama On the Air: English y Espanol by Political Capital.

The Republican presidential candidate spoke to Pawlucy’s mother — the girl wasn’t home — and told her how much he appreciated her courage, according to a campaign spokesman.

Pawlucy’s father, Richard, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that all his high school-aged children, including Samantha plan to transfer schools.

Pawlucy, 16, accused her geometry teacher at Charles Carroll High School of publicly humiliating her for wearing a Romney-Ryan t-shirt to school. The teacher, Lynette Gaymon, has not returned to the school. She is waiting for the results of a school district investigation and hearing. The school superintendent has called it “a teachable moment.”

Original post is Romney Calls High-Schooler Harrassed for Campaign T-Shirt by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Mitt Romney is introduced by his wife Ann at a fundraiser at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on Sept. 22, 2012.

Mitt and Ann Romney tell different stories about their visit to the White House when President George W. Bush lived there.

The candidate’s wife has spoken of walking in on a massage that Bush was getting.

Ann Romney remembers the embarrassment of the moment, as well as the former president’s remark when they later met at a White House function: “He looks at me, winks, and says, `I look pretty good, don’t I?”’

The candidate recalls something else: Lincoln’s bedroom.

Mitt Romney mentioned that today at a fundraiser in Philadelphia. In the Lincoln Room of the Union League Club, a large wood-paneled ballroom with high ceilings and a crystal chandelier, where Romney was holding a fundraiser with a top ticket of $50,000, Romney addressed a few hundred people.

He said he had gotten a “catch” in his throat when he saw the full sculpture of Abraham Lincoln at the club, but both he and his wife had “teared up” when they saw the Gettysburg Address at the White House.

“I had a chance at one point to be in the White House,” he said. “We were invited when I was governor and George W. Bush was president to go to the White House and go up on the second floor, where I’d never been before. I’m sure it’s something that not a lot of people have had the chance to do.”

“And Ann and I got up there and… the president took us around and showed us the queen’s room there, and then he showed us the Abraham Lincoln bedroom. And his bed is there, great big bed, big, I think it’s mahogany. It looks like mahogany.”

“And then over in the corner was a little uh, like a writing tablet about the size of this podium, with a glass over it. I went over and looked at it, and there was, in Abraham Lincoln’s own hand, the Gettysburg Address. Right there, in his and. And Ann and I both went over there and both teared up, just looking at it.”

“Extraordinary people who love America, who believe in America, have built this nation. I believe in America. I believe in the people of America.”

Original post is Romneys at White House: Lincoln Bedroom, George Bush’s Massage by Political Capital.

Photograph by Steven Senne/AP Photo

Mitt Romney at a call center at his Pennsylvania campaign headquarters in Harrisburg.

Republican Mitt Romney is campaigning today in Pennsylvania, a state that polls portray as securely ready to vote for President Barack Obama’s re-election.

He is there for money.

The Romney campaign motorcade rolled out of the Renaissance Hotel in Philadelphia today under a rainy sky bound for the first fundraiser of the day at the Union League Club downtown.

More than 350 tickets have been sold for an event charging $2,500, $10,000 and $50,000, according to the campaign.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey and Pennsylvania party chairman Rob Gleason are expected at the club, which the pool reporter on the scene describes as living up to its name, a venue decorated with “large, extravagant paintings and exquisite carpets.”

Original post is Romney’s Philly Cash Haul Today by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

For about an hour today, the Democrats appeared to be reading from Mitt Romney’s playbook.

Appearing at a panel on the nation’s fiscal plight, cosponsored by Bloomberg and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter gave a bracing summary of his philosophy, one that would not have been out of place last month at the Republican convention in Tampa.

“Government is a business,” Nutter said, adding that he helms the equivalent of a $4 billion corporation.

Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado chimed in with a swipe at Washington politicians for bringing the economy to the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff. Automatic spending cuts agreed as part of last year’s debt ceiling showdown would indiscriminately savage good programs and bad, he said.

“Any business would look at that as a reckless decision,” Hickenlooper said of the Doomsday machine approach to governance.

For her part, Gina Raimondo, Rhode Island state treasurer, championed the wisdom of bringing greater “transparency” to her road shows for investors in the financially-troubled state’s municipal bonds.

These are the socialists?

Original post is Democrats Read Romney Playbook? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Mitt Romney in a 6th grade language class at Universal Bluford Charter School on May 24, 2012 in Philadelphia.

A day after Mitt Romney unveiled his first education policies, the presumptive Republican nominee visited students at a West Philadelphia charter school to illustrate how his plans to promote such schools would improve education.

The only problem: their report card.

Universal Bluford Charter School, a majority African-American elementary school in a heavily Democratic neighborhood, was put on “warning” status after failing to meet state and federal measures in reading and math for last year.

According to data collected by the state of Pennsylvania, 27 percent of the students were considered proficient in math and 22 percent in reading.

That’s well below the goals set by the state for 2011, which aimed to have 67 percent of its students proficient in math and 72 percent in reading. This year, those goals will increase to 78 percent in math and 81 percent in reading.

Yesterday, Romney said he would go well beyond Obama’s attempts to promote charter schools and encourage giving parents a choice of which schools their children attend. He assailed the Obama administration for backing away from a federally-funded voucher program that allows school children in Washington, D.C., to attend private schools.

Romney’s proposals would create a voucher-like system to provide federal funding so low-income and disabled students can attend charter schools, private institutions and public schools outside their districts.

Original post is Struggling Charter School Touted on Romney’s Education Tour by Political Capital.