Entering a pivotal year for his administration, with a state budget due soon and Pennsylvania swinging into campaign mode, Gov. Tom Corbett is tightening his grip on the state's Republican Party and trying to wrestle it into the direction he wants it to go.

Mr. Corbett's fingerprints are all over the state's elections this year. His budget due Feb. 7 will impact state legislators running for re-election. He pushed his own candidates in contested GOP primaries, all of whom were endorsed by the state's Republican committee Saturday. He tried to lure state House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, into entering a congressional race north of Pittsburgh even though there was another GOP candidate in the race.

The moves stand in contrast to the other major Republican elected statewide in 2010, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, who stayed out of the endorsement squabbles at this weekend's winter GOP meetings and had refused to choose sides between Mr. Turzai and fellow Republican Keith Rothfus when the majority leader was looking at the race.

There is reason for that. Mr. Corbett will have to work alongside candidates for state attorney general, auditor general and treasurer. And Mr. Toomey, the Arlen Specter slayer, has always enjoyed the embrace of the right wing of the party, and to their eyes the governor's political moves helped more moderate candidates. Exhibit 1 by the former prosecutor is his pick for the party's U.S. Senate nod, Chester County businessman Steve Welch, a onetime Democrat who supported the candidacies of Barack Obama and former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak.

Mr. Welch would presumably perform well in a race against U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in the vote-rich Philadelphia region, and his business acumen may be an advantage in a year when voters are consistently saying economic worries are their biggest concern. The governor's pick also helps to freeze out fellow Senate candidate Sam Rohrer, who was Mr. Corbett's rival for the GOP gubernatorial nod in 2010 and boxed him into a conservative corner on a no-tax pledge that spring.

"It's proper for the governor to be in charge of the party. He leads the state to the convention and has to be a force with the primary coming up," said political analyst William Green. "It's his proper role to get troops organized and to be a unifying force."

Unifying the GOP forces could be difficult, in the short term at least, after the bitter intraparty feuding among its seven U.S. Senate candidates. The governor's endorsements in that and three other statewide races ran roughshod over other Republican leaders and were a major source of angst going into the party's meetings.