Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski withdrew from the Pennsylvania governor's race and endorsed fellow Democrat Rob McCord, the state treasurer.
"Rob McCord is the best candidate to take on Tom Corbett," Pawlowski said in a Feb. 3 statement.
Pawlowski, elected to a third term last November, engineered two recent deals the past two years that he said dramatically improved the Lehigh County city.
Late in 2012, Allentown sold $224.4 million in bonds to finance the construction of a downtown business district centered around an 8,500-seat arena.
In April 2013, faced with a pension liability that could have consumed up to one-third of Allentown's general fund budget by 2015, Allentown leased its water and sewer system to the quasi-public Lehigh County Authority, which sold $308 million of bonds in July to finance the transaction.
Democrats see Corbett, who seeks a second term, as vulnerable. A poll of registered voters by Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., conducted in January, showed Corbett's approval rating at 23%.
