YORK, Pa. _ Tom Wolf was re-elected governor of Pennsylvania Tuesday, according to projections by news media, cruising to a second term over a Republican opponent who never managed to build a coherent case against the incumbent Democrat.
Wolf's win over Republican Scott Wagner ensures that Democrats will wield the threat of a veto of such issues as restrictions on abortion rights and the congressional maps drawn in 2021 for the next round of redistricting.
But the governor will likely still have to contend with a Republican-dominated legislature. Though Democrats were expected to make modest gains in the state House and Senate Tuesday, Republicans appeared set to maintain solid majorities in both chambers.
Wolf will have a new partner in the Capitol: John Fetterman, the liberal mayor of Braddock outside Pittsburgh who ran as a team with Wolf, was elected lieutenant governor.
The results showed the limitations of embracing President Donald Trump's pugilistic style, as lesser-known candidates like Wagner, a former state senator and owner of a waste-hauling business, tried but failed to replicate the president's no-holds-barred approach. Falling further behind than Wagner were Green party candidate Paul Glover and Libertarian candidate Kenneth Krawchuk.
Wolf stuck to a largely conservative strategy, running on his record of investing more money in public education, expanding Medicaid, and blocking Republican-led efforts to restrict abortion rights, but saying almost nothing about what his second-term agenda would be.
The Wolf campaign crushed Wagner on the airwaves, having outspent the Republican by a nearly 4 to 1 between June and late October, according to campaign finance records.
In television ads, Wolf's campaign depicted him as a "different" kind of governor who refuses gifts from lobbyists and drives his Jeep to the state Capitol. That was similar to the image Wolf cultivated in his first campaign four years ago.
He also presented himself as a steady-handed steward of the state's finances, even as he spent much of first four years locked in a stalemate with Republicans over the budget.
Strategists in both parties said Wagner, 63, did not develop a defining message against Wolf, who doesn't inspire strong negative opinions among voters, according to polling by Franklin & Marshall College.
Even when Wagner did settle on a theme _ eliminating school property taxes, for example _ he committed a number of unforced errors, most notably last month by live-streaming a video of himself on the side of a road threatening to "stomp all over" Wolf's face with golf spikes.
Wagner later said he had chosen a "poor metaphor" and that his remarks weren't meant to be taken literally. But the episode played into a criticism that Wagner was angry and unhinged.
