Despite the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and
the general anti-establishment mood of the voters, no incumbent member of
Congress has lost his or her primary so far this year. That may change once Pennsylvania’s votes are
counted; two incumbent Congressmen are facing serious challenges, in addition
to two open seats with competitive primaries.
2nd Congressional District
(D)
Philadelphia can often seem like Chicago: the
weather’s lousy but the Italian food is great, it might be 100 years before the
Phillies win another World Series, and it seems like Democratic politicians can
get away with anything. However, Rep.
Chaka Fattah (tied with Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Allegheny County, as the most senior
Pennsylvanian in Congress) is in serious trouble after being indicted in a
money laundering scandal related to his unsuccessful run for mayor of
Philadelphia in 2007. Fattah has landed
three challengers: State Rep. Dwight Evans, Lower Merion Township commissioner
Brian Gordon, and attorney Dan Muroff.
Evans leads the only public poll conducted of the race and has the endorsement of Gov. Wolf, Philadelphia
Mayor Jim Kenney, and former Gov. Ed Rendell; he has to be considered the
frontrunner. Fattah still has the
support of Rep. Bob Brady of the neighboring First District (Brady also chairs
the Philadelphia Democratic Party) and most unions that have endorsed. Muroff has shown some life, getting the
endorsement of Daylin Leach, an influential liberal state senator, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The district is diverse, in the sense that it contains
many different types of Democrat. It
takes in predominantly black areas of North and West Philadelphia (about 60% of
the district’s residents, as well as Evans and Fattah, are black), many of the
city’s universities (including Temple and the University of Pennsylvania), and
Lower Merion Township, an affluent liberal suburb. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost
certain to win the general election.
8th Congressional District
(R/D)
U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick is one of the rarest breed
among American politicians: the kind who take a term limit pledge and actually
mean it. He was first elected in 2004,
lost his seat in the Democratic wave of 2006, and regained it in the Republican
wave of 2010, pledging to serve only three terms. Those three terms are up, leading to a
scramble in both parties to replace him.
On the Republican side, state Rep. Scott Petri seemed to be the
frontrunner until Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent and the current
Congressman’s brother, threw his hat into the ring. Petri dropped out, leaving Fitzpatrick 2.0 to
face Andy Warren, a former Republican Bucks County commissioner who ran for the
seat in 2006 as a Democrat and switched back to the GOP, and Marc Duome, a
businessman and psychiatrist.
The two Democratic candidates are Shaughnessy Naughton, a
businesswoman who unsuccessfully ran for the nomination in 2014, and state Rep.
Steve Santarsiero. The primary has become heated, with Naughton accusing Santarsiero of exaggerating
his record in the General Assembly and Santarsiero accusing Naughton of
illegally coordinating with a super PAC.
This district covers all of Bucks County and a slice of
neighboring Montgomery County, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Mitt Romney carried it by a 49.4-49.3% margin in 2012, making it the most
evenly split district in an otherwise heavily gerrymandered state (Pennsylvania
has Congressional districts resembling a dog with its head tilted backward barking at an
angel, a bodybuilder’s arm reaching down to pinch the city
of Harrisburg, an anorexic hammerhead shark, and a decapitated French maid.) The
Republicans have a slight advantage here, unless their Presidential candidate
becomes too much of a drag on the rest of the ticket.
9th Congressional District
(R)
Rep. Bill Shuster is following in the footsteps of his
father Bud, both as congressman from this area and as chairman of the House
Transportation Committee. Bud’s pork
barreling ways were legendary; to pick one example, he not only had an
expressway built linking his hometown of Altoona to the Pennsylvania Turnpike,
State College, and Interstate 80, but he also designated it a major interstate highway. Despite (because of?) this legacy, the
younger Shuster has never been terribly popular here. He barely beat Democrat Scott Conklin in the
2001 special election to replace his father (in a heavily Republican district),
he almost lost the primary in 2004, and he received barely more than half the
vote in the 2014 primary against two candidates. One of them, former Coast Guard officer Art
Halvorson, is running again this year.
Shuster has survived difficult primaries before, but this
time he’s under the cloud of a romantic relationship with Shelly Rubino, the vice president of government
affairs for the airline industry’s lobbying organization, a relationship
Halvorson has brought up in the only debate of the primary campaign. The
district, which runs from the Monongahela Valley south of Pittsburgh to
Franklin County in the south central part of the state and heads north to
include Altoona and Indiana (home of Jimmy Stewart and the confusingly named
Indiana University of Pennsylvania), is the most Republican in the state. Despite the rancorous primary, whoever wins
this month will almost certainly prevail in November.
16th Congressional District (R)
In
1976, Bob Walker was elected from this Lancaster-area seat and rose to become
one of Newt Gingrich’s key allies before retiring in 1996. Joe Pitts, who is retiring this year,
replaced him. In other words, this
district’s Republicans should choose well, because they may be stuck with their
nominee for the next twenty years. The
two Republicans running to replace Pitts are Lloyd Smucker, who represents the
southern half of Lancaster County, including the city of Lancaster, in the
state Senate, and Chet Beiler, a businessman seeking to claim the mantle of the
Tea Party. The race has already gotten
negative, with Beiler criticizing Smucker’s support of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants (a sop to Lancaster City’s
large Hispanic population) and Smucker pointing out Beiler’s past conviction for illegally paying bonuses to election
workers. The distinction
between career politician and businessman may not be as clear as the Beiler
campaign portrays it; Smucker owned a construction company before being elected
to the state Senate in 2008 and Beiler unsuccessfully ran for state Senate,
auditor general, and lieutenant governor before this year.
Whoever
wins the primary will face Democrat Christina Hartman, a consultant, in the
fall. The district contains most of
heavily Republican Lancaster County, the city of Reading, and a swath of
southern Chester County, in a shape that resembles Mary Poppins and a bird fleeing a nuclear explosion. Although Democrats have a
base in the cities of Lancaster and Reading and are doing better in the
suburban areas of Lancaster County, this seat probably will not be in play in
the general election unless there’s a complete Republican meltdown.
No comments:
Post a Comment