HARRISBURG — As Labor Day signals the home stretch of this year's election campaigns, a feisty Dan Onorato is hoping to shatter the serenity of Pennsylvania's gubernatorial contest and erase Republican Tom Corbett's comfortable lead.

In recent weeks, the Democratic nominee has questioned Corbett's empathy for Pennsylvanians who have lost jobs in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Onorato has railed about Corbett's contradictory explanations of his no-new-taxes pledge. He has also criticized Corbett's opposition to taxing the extraction of natural gas to generate money that Onorato says is needed to beef up environmental enforcement, preserve open space and repair drilling-related damage to local roads and water systems.

So far, Corbett has sought to brush aside the attacks. When he suggested in July that some Pennsylvanians would rather collect unemployment checks than go to work, Corbett says he was simply summarizing anecdotes he had heard from employers.

Corbett's campaign acknowledged last month — under heavy pressure from Onorato — that he was incorrect when he told a TV interviewer in March that his pledge on taxes also ruled out fee increases: It does not. It covers only levies spelled T-A-X.

As for his stance against taxing the removal of gas from Pennsylvania's bedrock — a position at odds with leaders of his party's majority in the state Senate, who say they hope to pass such a tax before the election — Corbett's campaign says such a tax could snuff out what is becoming one of the state's major industries.

A Franklin & Marshall College survey released in late August showed Corbett with an 11-point lead over Onorato among voters who said they are likely to cast ballots on Nov. 2.

But Onorato sees a silver lining in what he regards as Corbett's weakness on policy and the poll finding that one-third of likely voters have not decided which of the two Pittsburgh-area candidates to support.

"I think he has a glass chin," Onorato said of his rival one recent Saturday in Philadelphia, where he is concentrating his ground game and where he hopes familiarity will translate into a huge Democratic turnout on Election Day.

Onorato boasts of shrinking a bloated bureaucracy, cutting property taxes and reviving the local economy in his seven years as Allegheny County's chief executive — echoing former mayor Ed Rendell's Philadelphia success story that became the centerpiece of his 2002 campaign for the first of his two terms as governor.

"We've got a better message and a better plan" than Corbett, Onorato said.

Yet, in addition to his lead in polls, Corbett enjoys some distinct advantages:

• He can point to credentials as a reformer. As state attorney general, Corbett directs the ongoing investigation of alleged corruption in the Legislature, a high-profile probe that so far has resulted in 25 arrests.

• He has run statewide elections, unlike Onorato. He was elected attorney general in 2004 by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, and attracted more votes than GOP presidential nominee John McCain when he was re-elected in 2008.

• The times are on his side. Not only are Democrats bearing the brunt of public disenchantment with the nation's economic chaos, but more than a half-century of Pennsylvania history argues that, after eight years of Democratic rule under Rendell, it's the Republican Party's turn to govern the state.