Highlights of major developments in Pennsylvania politics in the first decade of the 21st century:

2000:

_ George W. Bush is nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, but speculation that Gov. Tom Ridge might be picked as his running mate fails to materialize.

_ Former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell spends the year as general chairman of Democratic National Committee.

_ Longtime Senate Republican leader F. Joseph Loeper resigns from the General Assembly after pleading guilty to violating federal tax laws and later serves six months in prison.

2001:

_ In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ridge resigns as governor to accept Bush's appointment as the nation's first homeland security chief.

_ Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker sworn in as governor to complete the 15 months left in Ridge's second term.

2002:

_ Rendell elected governor after raising and spending more than $40 million to overcome challenges from then-Auditor General Bob Casey in the primary and then-Attorney General Mike Fisher in the general election.

_ Catherine Baker Knoll, Rendell's running mate, elected Pennsylvania's first female lieutenant governor.

2003:

_ Touting his "Plan for a New Pennsylvania," Rendell advocates legalizing slot machine gambling and increasing the state income tax to finance increased education spending, property-tax cuts and expanded economic development. All will eventually be approved in some form, but not much in the first year.

2004:

_ The Legislature votes to legalize slot-machine gambling at 14 casinos to raise an estimated $1 billion a year to reduce local property taxes.

_ Voters fill the statewide row offices with new faces _ Democrats Casey and former Sen. Jack Wagner as treasurer and auditor general respectively, and former federal prosecutor Tom Corbett, a Republican, as attorney general.

2005:

_ In a secretive July vote taken while most Pennsylvanians slept, lawmakers approve generous pay raises for themselves, judges and top executive branch officials _ igniting a powder keg of voter wrath, scathing editorials and protest rallies at the Capitol.

_ In November, voters deny state Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro a second term after government-reform activists turn a normally humdrum, up-or-down "retention" vote into a referendum on the pay raise.

_ Eight days after the Nigro ouster vote, the Legislature repeals the pay-raise law.

2006:

_ With help from national Democratic leaders, Casey defeats U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum in his bid for a third Senate term.

_ Rendell wins a second term as governor, handily beating Republican Lynn Swann.