The Erie paper has a front page article this morning analyzing the possible running mates for the two presumptive nominees. This comes after the hug-fest between former PA Governor Tom Ridge and Republican Senator John McCain early this week. The ETN suggests that current Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell could make a good number two to Senator Barack Obama run, admitting though that Mr. Rendell has articulated his lack of interest multiple times.

All of this talk has the premise behind it that Pennsylvania is in play for the General Election. My take is that since you have to roll back twenty years to find the most recent Republican Presidential candidate to win the Commonwealth when Bush 41 took the state over a flawed Dukakis, this state is Obama’s to lose.

On the other side of the Commonwealth continuum, you have Virginia, which used to be a safe take for the GOP. But with the population growth in Northern Virginia turning the Old Dominion to the left, we could be enduring a Beltway-sized wait on election night to color the state red or blue.

However, the inclusion of governors from each state as the vice-president pick could be enough of a catalytic event to flip these battleground states. For PA, the popular Tom Ridge brings a national presence from being the original Homeland Security secretary. His biggest and perhaps insurmountable negative is his pro-choice abortion stance. Ridge’s inclusion on the ticket could turn the state red, yet have little impact on McCain’s likeability in the Midwest and South.

Likewise, if Obama were to pick Tim Kaine, the current Governor of Virginia, it would probably generate enough momentum to bring the state to the blue tipping point.

It really depends on the math: as the campaigns run their models if they find that the electoral votes of Pennsylvania and Virginia are so critical to the success of either campaign, you just might see this scenario play out. That’s if you believe that VP choices even matter to voters anyway.