HARRISBURG, PA – Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls are rallying behind a minimum wage increase proposal as a rallying cry to defeat incumbents, the Associated Press reports.

The move is polling popular, reviving a theme of economic inequality that Obama offered last year.

Several Democratic challengers trying to unseat Gov. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania are adopting the cause, with Katie McGinty, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection under former Gov. Ed Rendell, maintaining that she was the first Democrat in the field to make it an issue.

“This is core for me,” McGinty said. “I think it is fundamentally true across the centuries that one of the things that can really bring a nation down is the increasing chasm in terms of income.”

Besides Corbett, Republican governors being targeted by Democrats with the wage increase issue are Maine’s Paul LePage, Michigan’s Rick Snyder and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.

Republicans have so far refused to adopt the issue and are instead focused on easing tax and regulatory burdens, said Jon Thompson, a spokesman for the Republican Governors Association. But he acknowledged there might be some political necessity for Republicans to get behind the wage increase.

“It's complicated because there are some states that a minimum wage increase could be more helpful and useful than other states,” Thompson wrote in an email.