Most of us know the story of Tony Payton, right? Young, progressive guy who took on the machine, and won, in 2006? In Tony’s first term in office, he brought home money into his district, and right away started working on big picture, transformational bills such as the REACH scholarship program that would effectively send scores and scores of Pennsylvania children to college for free.

But, after defeating the party in 2006, Tony is again under fire for not kissing the ring of ward leaders Marge Tartaglione and Danny Savage. So, they have decided to go after Tony with repulsive tactic, after repulsive tactic. It doesn’t matter whether Tony is good, or terrible- he has not kissed their ass, and he won't kiss their ass, and so their petulant response is to aim their fire at him, with an unknown, but party backed candidate Guy Lewis.

On the national level, bloggers have used the slogan more and better Democrats. In other words, we want to take seats from the GOP where we can, but we also want to improve on the Democratic seats we have. However, in this case, we clearly have to play defense. We have a young guy who is already thinking about big picture, transformative legislation. We need to keep him in Harrisburg.

Here is the bottom line: Tony can still win this thing. He has the backing of Rendell, Nutter, et al. But, he needs our help to do it. As Philly for Change chair David Sternberg said to me on email, it is scary that this race is both winnable, and up to us.

I am spending my free time on election day working for Tony at the polls, joining at least a couple other YPP readers. Will you? If you can help Tony out, call Dave at 215-906-7288 or email him at davidsternbe@gmail.com.