Don't bury Gov. Tom Corbett just yet.
A lot of people - even some in his own party - have declared the good shop Corbett dead in the water. There have been whispers inside the Republican Party that maybe the governor should step aside and let someone else carry the banner in next year's gubernatorial race.
Don't count me among them.
Let me be the first to predict, right here in the Heron's Nest, that Tom Corbett will be re-elected to a second term.
Corbett badly needed something to stop the bleeding from his foundering first term and reverse some of those poll numbers. He got it last week with passage of that $2.4 billion transportation funding package.
It will be used to fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges, and will go a long way to prop up mass transit, including SEPTA here in the Philadelphia region.
Transit officials had been making noises that without a huge boost in funding, they might be forced to shut down one of the main arteries of the region's business - the regional rail lines. Now nobody really expected them to ever put their "Doomsday Plan" into effect, but it made good theater.
And it did not hurt Corbett one bit to be riding to the rescue.
The governor put all his eggs into one basket - transportation funding. His push to privatize the sale of liquor and spirits in the Commonwealth stalled, and his demand that the Legislature take up the "ticking time bomb" that is the state's two woefully underfunded public employee pension plans was going nowhere.
Yesterday Corbett criss-crossed the state to showcase the legislative victory he needed so badly. In a stop near Norristown, he heralded the help he got on his project from state Rep. Nick Micozzie, R-163, of Upper Darby, head of the Transportation Committee; and Rep. Bill Adolph, R-165, of Springfield, the House Appropriations Chairman; along with state Sen. Dominic Pileggi, R-9, of Chester.
Expect to see a lot of Corbett over the next year. The Philadelphia suburbs likely will hold the key to the governor's mansion in next year's election.
The good news for Corbett is he got his victory in the transportation funding war.
The bad news is that he now has to run on it.
Not everyone - including a lot of Republicans - are happy about it. They believe it amounted to a $2 billion tax hike from a governor who had pledged not to raise taxes.
Motorists likely are not going to be thrilled at the prospect of forking over more dough to fill up their tanks.
But Corbett also will now be able to trumpet that he made the tough call to get the increased funding for transportation, as well as improving jobs numbers, in particular in Delco and the southeast region.
He also can say he's been good to his word when it comes to the state budget, delivering it on time and without any major tax hikes for three consecutive years.
Democrats, as they've already done at a weekend debate in Philadelphia, are itching to portray him as the guy who slashed education funding and other programs for those in need, as well as tarring him for his resistance to set up health care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.
Much of this likely will hinge on how Corbett comes off on the campaign trail. It's not something that comes naturally to him.
But he wouldn't have had any chance if the Legislature had rebuffed him on transportation funding.
He's already hit bottom. Now he's on the comeback trail.
I think it will lead him right back to the governor's mansion.
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