Attorney General (R/D)
Strangely,
for a swing state like Pennsylvania, the Republicans controlled the attorney
general’s office for thirty-two straight years, from the time it became an
elected position in 1980 to Kathleen Kane’s election in 2012. The party’s choice to take back the office is
John Rafferty, a state senator from suburban Philadelphia; challenging him is Joe
Peters, a former federal prosecutor and assistant to the federal drug czar from
Scranton. There’s a Tea
Party-versus-establishment angle to this primary. In addition to the state committee, several
elected officials have endorsed Rafferty, who has a record as one of the
General Assembly’s more moderate Republicans.
Peters, meanwhile, touts his support from pro-life and gun rights
groups.
On
the Democratic side, the three candidates are Josh Shapiro, the previously
mentioned Montgomery County commissioner; Stephen Zappala, a district attorney
from Allegheny County (Pittsburgh and its immediate suburbs); and John
Morganelli, a district attorney from Northampton County, in the Lehigh Valley,
who was the party’s nominee in 2008.
Since Montgomery is the most populous of Philadelphia’s suburban
counties, this will likely turn into a regional battle, putting Morganelli at a
distinct disadvantage. The Lehigh Valley
(Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and their surrounding rural areas and suburbs)
is in many ways a microcosm of the state, with liberal cities, conservative
rural areas, declining industrial areas, growing suburbs, and a burgeoning
Hispanic population, but it tends to have an insular, provincial mentality (to
be honest, that’s another way it resembles the state as a whole) that limits
the interaction between its politicians and the rest of the state and tends to
make it a poor springboard for statewide office.*
Zappala
has some endorsements from Philadelphia: the mayor, several state legislators,
and Lt. Gov. Mike Stack, who used to represent part of Philadelphia in the
State Senate. (He doesn’t have any major
endorsements from the suburban counties, though.) Shapiro, running as a crusading progressive,
has the endorsement of Gov. Wolf, President Obama, environmental groups, and
the state teachers’ and nurses’ unions.
The
general election is probably a tossup.
The Republicans have their long track record in the office and Kathleen
Kane’s scandals working in their favor; the Democrats have a voter registration
edge and the chaos going on in the Republican presidential race.
The
fall matchups for the other two row offices are already set: Reading businessman
Otto Voit (R) against former ambassador Joe Torsella (D) for state treasurer
and Northampton County executive John Brown (R) against incumbent Eugene
DePasquale (D) for auditor general. The
Democrats are probably slight favorites in these races.
General Assembly
All
203 of Pennsylvania’s state House districts and twenty-five of its fifty state
Senate seats are up for election this year, but I won’t bore you with the
details of all of them. There’s also a
special election in the ninth Senate district, located along the Delaware
border southwest of Philadelphia. The
vote is to replace former state Sen. Dominic PIleggi, a moderate Republican who
conservatives ousted as majority leader after the 2014 election. PIleggi ran for a county judicial post the
next year, won, and resigned his Senate seat.
(Interestingly, since Pileggi was mayor of Chester before being elected
to the state Senate, he has served in all three branches of government.) The candidates to replace him are Democrat
Marty Malloy, a former nonprofit executive, and Republican State Rep. Tom
Killion.
The area
has been trending Democratic, but still tends to elect Republicans at the local
level, making the election a tossup. Whichever party wins will claim momentum heading
into November, and the results will be taken as a gauge of Gov. Tom Wolf’s
popularity after a long budget crisis (particularly since Malloy is running as
a Wolf ally).
Two primaries
in the Philadelphia area bear watching.
One is in the fifth Senate district in northeast Philadelphia, where
state Rep. Kevin Boyle is challenging state Sen. John Sabatina, a fellow Democrat. This is the latest chapter in an ongoing feud
between U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, Kevin’s brother, and Lt. Gov. Mike Stack, who
used to hold the seat. If the primary splits
Democrats enough, it could be an opening for Republican Ross Feinberg in the general
election. Northeast Philadelphia is the only part of the
city with a viable Republican party, and as a predominantly white,
working-class, socially moderate area, it’s an place where Donald Trump could
actually do better than a typical Republican if he ends up as the nominee.
The
other is in the 164th House district, just outside Philadelphia in
Delaware County. The incumbent, Democrat
Margo Davidson, is a fairly standard liberal except for stances favoring school
choice and opposing abortion, which was influenced by her cousin dying at the hands of infamous abortion provider Kermit
Gosnell. These
stances earned her a primary challenge in 2014 and again this year, now from
Upper Darby Township councilwoman Sekela Coles.
The teachers’ union and Planned Parenthood have thrown their weight
behind Coles, and the party committee is staying neutral (in 2014, they backed
Davidson).
Republicans
hold a 30-19 majority in the state Senate and a 119-84 majority in the state
House. They will definitely hold on to the
Senate: there simply aren’t six seats that could plausibly swing from
Republican to Democratic, even if Hillary Clinton carries the state handily,
and Democrats have a few vulnerable seats in the central and western parts of
the state. House elections are harder to
predict, but Democrats would need the largest net gain for any party since 1978
to take over the chamber.
In
conclusion, I’ll leave you with this traditional Pennsylvanian blessing:
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine gently on your face,
The rain fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May none of the assistant coaches at your favorite college football
team turn out to be a pervert.
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