As the primary election date drew near, the campaign entered a white-hot phase.
John Murphy's campaign bus crisscrossed every small town in Western Pennsylvania.
His campaign strategy had undergone a fundamental shift; he decisively cut all trips to University City and the salons of Philadelphia.
As the darling of the Establishment Faction, Aston Monroe had already locked down the highly educated liberal voters.
At cocktail parties where "structural inequality" and "abstract social justice" were discussed, anything Murphy said would just make him sound like a poor imitation of Monroe.
Fighting for those fickle, idealistic votes just wasn't worth the effort.
They also strategically gave up on the student vote. It was better to be more down-to-earth than to waste time debating with them.
Because Murphy held a trump card that Monroe and Warren absolutely did not: the fait accompli Leo Wallace had created in Pittsburgh.
