Yesterday, Montgomery County commissioner Joe Hoeffel (pictured) officially announced his candidacy for PA Governor, and let there be no mystery about his politics: He was intro’d by a former National Abortion Rights Action League, and made no bones about his pro-choice politics: “Being pro-choice is not just supporting the right of a woman to make a reproductive decision,” he said, “but it is being supportive of empowering women.” Ballsy, and yeah, we like it. After growing up in a PA political climate dominated by fetus-huggers like Rick Santorum (once, in the late 1980s, he came to an assembly at my high school and cried), we like that Hoeffel is a rational human being who’s not afraid to let you know where he stands. (Learn more about Hoeffel’s career on his Wikipedia page.) Even though Tom Knox recently dropped out of the race, Hoeffel enters a pretty crowded field, where he’s sure to be fighting upstream against what already feels like a likely (if totally reactionary and Tea Party-ish) GOP takeover of the Governor’s Office. (Tom Corbett, you are already kind of creeping us out.) Nevertheless: You go, Hoeffel. The guv’s race already just got that much more interesting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:48 pm.