Tuesday is primary day in the state of Pennsylvania. My cousin Manan Trivedi is vying for the Democratic party’s nomination against Doug Pike. The winner will face the Republican incumbent in a district that has a real chance of switching hands in November and will therefore be the focus of national attention. For obvious reasons I have been following this battle pretty closely and here are three observations:

1) Money rules, and being independently wealthy rules more. It doesn’t matter if you rack up double or triple the endorsements of your opponent. It might not even matter if you out-fundraise them. If he/she can afford to put their face up on TV more often than you then its an uphill battle until the end.

And the fundraising is going well for Trivedi. Because of the impending primary, the candidates had to filed with the FEC yesterday for their sums raised from April 1 through April 28. Here’s your totals:

Trivedi: $41,478.50
Pike: $9,381.00

In the month before the election, less than $10,000 raised? That’s Martha Coakley-level complacency not only compared to Trivedi but to other regional Dems who face no primary challenges — Bryan Lentz, in neighboring PA-07, also raised over $40,000 in April, for instance. [Kos]

2) You can enter a race “late,” “come from out of nowhere,” and have a South Asian name and still compete if you have good ideas and know how to communicate them. I believe this is the single most important thing I have learned from this race. I am not sure who will win tomorrow but it was amazing to see that sound policy knowledge resulted in such a lopsided endorsement tally and such a toss-up on election day.

Going into the final full week of campaigning during the primary election season, Manan Trivedi has received the endorsement from two very influential women and an organization devoted to advocating for women’s equality.

The National Organization for Women (NOW/PAC) chair, Terry O’Neill stated that “Manan Trivedi has demonstrated to us that he will stand up for the full equality of girls and women. We are looking forward to joining forces with him in that pursuit.” [Link]

3) Anything can happen in a primary (see Bob Bennett). Primaries are ruled by the most hard-core activists in the party. The people that vote are the ones that probably vote in every election or the ones that feel passionately about a particular candidate or their policies. There aren’t any real polls that have attempted to predict the outcome of this race but we know with absolute certainty that it will come down to anywhere from a couple thousand to a couple hundred votes (more likely the latter). If you live in PA-6th and were debating whether or not to vote then I’d tell you that a primary vote is where your voice will be heard the loudest.

If you live in the PA-6th and vote, please tell us about your voting experience in the comments below.