The site -- www.wherescasey.com -- has a Wild West motif and an animated cowboy suggesting Casey spends more time working to unseat Santorum than filling his duties as state treasurer.

Although hardly the first Web site slamming a major candidate, wherescasey.com illustrates how the campaigns are ratcheting up the intensity months before the primary elections.

"Santorum's claims are as rooted in reality as his Wild West cartoon," said Doug Anderson, a spokesman for Casey.

Santorum spokeswoman Virginia Davis said the Casey campaign has "been employing these negative tactics since Casey entered the race about a year ago. This (Web site) is a way to highlight the tenets of Casey's campaign with some humor and some creativity."

Even though Santorum and Casey have opponents in the May 17 primary, their campaigns and supporters have focused on one another, with barrages of press releases, blog postings and e-mails.

"It is early," Davis said, "But at the same time because it is such an intense race ... this is what we can expect, and the campaigns aren't fully engaged. There aren't any (television) commercials yet."

Casey's campaign manager Jay Reiff, a Lancaster County native, used NASCAR lingo to describe the level of vitriol.

"The campaigns have been trading paint," he said.

Images of race cars banging into each other aside, the contest to be Pennsylvania's junior senator is perhaps the most watched campaign in the country this year.

Conservatives applaud Santorum, 47, for his pro-life advocacy and efforts to partially privatize Social Security. After serving two terms, he is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate and a strong supporter of the war in Iraq.

Casey, handpicked by some noted Democratic lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, is a 45-year-old pro-life candidate who once served as state auditor general. He's the son of a former governor and supports raising the federal minimum wage and increased funding for education.

Some analysts predict the race could cost as much as $50 million.

"Democrats are optimistic about regaining the Senate," said G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall College's Center for Politics & Public Affairs. "They need six seats right now (to become the majority party), and everybody knows how important control of the Senate is.

"It's hard to remember a race ... that's gotten this tense, this rambunctious, this early."

Madonna said Santorum and Casey are all but ignoring the other Senatorial candidates -- Philadelphia real estate broker John Featherman for the GOP; and Bucks County professor Chuck Pennacchio and Philadelphia attorney Alan Sandals for Democrats -- for a reason.

"Featherman, let's be candid, he has no money, he once ran as a third-party candidate, he's not a serious threat," Madonna said. "Casey is doing the frontrunner strategy. He's ignoring (Sandals and Pennacchio) and not giving them publicity."

Instead, Santorum and Casey fire salvos at one another almost daily through such outlets as www.wherescasey.com.

Santorum's campaign through the Web site accuses Casey of negative campaigning, avoiding candidate debates with his opponents and missing weeks of work while focused on the Senate campaign.

An animated cowboy at the Web site says, "No, Casey's not in here. I reckon he's out mudslingin'."

"It's important for people to know what kind of candidate Casey's been so far," Davis said. "These are what Casey has done -- missing work, neglecting his official duties. It's troubling. "

Santorum's campaign accuses Casey of working 12 days total in September and December, which coincides with deadlines for campaign fund raising.

Reiff on Wednesday shot back.

"It's silliness," he said. "One day they are complaining Bob Casey is not campaigning enough and the next day they are complaining he is campaigning too much."

Casey, Reiff said, fulfills his duties as treasurer, overseeing millions of transactions each year.

"It's incredibily shortsighted to do anything else," Reiff said. "If there would be a problem, trust me, it would be on the front page (of the newspaper)."

On the other side, Casey's campaign recently has focused on Santorum's ties to the K Street project, a controversial GOP effort encouraging lobbying firms to hire more Republicans.

All this negativity, Madonna said, may not keep voters from going to the polls during the general election in November.

"The polarization in the electorate is so great, I don't think negative campaigning will keep people from voting," he said.

Dave Pidgeon's e-mail address is dpidgeon@lnpnews.com. blog comments powered by Disqus