NANTICOKE, Penn. – Thousands of area credit union members and employees are expected this morning at a rally for Congressman Paul Kanjorski with former President Bill Clinton.
The rally will be held in Kanjorski’s home town at the Greater Nanticoke Area High School gymnasium.
Local credit unions are pulling out the stops for the 13-term Congressman, the strongest of credit union allies on Capitol Hill, who is in a tough race for reelection against Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta. Kanjorski beat Barletta twice before, in 2002 and in 2008, but recent polls show the Democrat trailing Barletta going into the final days of the campaign.
The Clinton-led rally comes as outside interest groups are pouring millions of dollars into both sides of the campaign, one of the spotlights of the watershed mid-term elections. The National Republican Congressional Committee reported yesterday it spent $126,000 on Kanjorski attack ads over the weekend, making a total of $902,000 the GOP congressional committee has poured into the race.
Other outside interest groups have financed attack ads against both Kanjorski and Barletta, with more than $6 million spent so far by both candidates and the outside groups, according to Federal Election Commission reports. A similar pattern of outside spending helped pull Kanjorski over the finish line in 2008, even though local polls at that time found him trailing Barletta in the final days of the campaign.
Kanjorski has long been a key credit union champion in Congress, starting with his sponsorship of HR 1151, the 1998 CU Membership Access Act, and counting his sponsorship of last year’s corporate credit union bailout bill.
