The Republican incumbent appeared before a crowd of about 100 supporters at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, his home base, with a theme of the governor who kept his 2010 campaign promise of more jobs and less taxes.
"We kept that promise, and today we are adding one more line: Promises kept," Corbett said after Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, Corbett's wife Susan and several others warmed up the crowd with speeches. "I tell you what I'm going to do."
Later, Corbett is flying to Pittston in northeastern Pennsylvania for an afternoon rally at a construction company that specializes in pipelines.
He is scheduled to appear Thursday morning at an American Legion Post in northeast Philadelphia and at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Montgomery County that afternoon. In the following days, he is scheduled to appear at campaign events in West Chester, Allentown, Doylestown, Lancaster, York, Hershey and Erie.
Corbett will stress shrinking the size of government, instilling fiscal discipline, cutting taxes and improving the economy. To be sure, he has battled recession-wracked state government finances, public employee labor unions and spiking pension costs.
He took over in 2011 as the economy was bouncing back, if slowly, from the recession and enjoyed the benefits of a Legislature that is controlled by his fellow Republicans. After running as a corruption-busting attorney general in 2010, Corbett has run a relatively scandal-free administration while keeping a low profile and priding himself on making decisions that may not be popular, but ones he views as right.
After two-and-a-half years of governing as a conservative, Corbett is also moving to the middle on transportation and health care policy issues.
Still, Corbett is formalizing his decision to run again at a time when even some party elders are questioning whether he can turn around lackluster polling numbers and erase the memory of verbal blunders and ideological fights, such as budget-balancing cuts to spending on public schools and universities.
