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You may have already gone through a dozen or more autopsies on what went wrong for Democrats last month. You may have even encountered experts offering psychoanalysis diagnose the party’s challenges. But at the state legislative level — particularly in Allegheny County — the political landscape has barely changed. Republicans still control the Senate, while Democrats maintain a one-seat majority in the 203-member House.
The results mean that Pennsylvania will the only full-time assembly with a divided legislature when the new session begins on January 7. Harrisburg lawmakers have already started mobilize support for hundreds of failed bills over the past two years. (As a further sign of political stability, almost all of these bills will disappear next time, too.)
But in an election that swept even U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and in which Republicans won all three separate statewide seats, Democrats say their failure to win losing ground in the Legislature is a victory in itself. How did this happen?
Nick Pisciottano, a southwestern House Democrat who kept a key Senate seat in Democratic hands, believes the resolution to economic woes and the fight to limit corporate power have resonated with those who supported President-elect Donald Trump.
“I know there was a group of Trump-Pisciottano voters,” said Pisciottano, who won incumbent Sen. Jim Brewster’s seat in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mon Valley. Republicans spent more than $1 million on TV ads for Democrats to sway voters in the district, but the former state House member beat first-time candidate Jen Dintini, the owner of a union security company, by nearly 5 percent.
“I think Donald Trump hits that nerve when he talks to people and says the system is rigged against you, and I think people feel that inherently,” Pisciottano said. “And I think only a few Democrats are talking about this anxiety or these questions: ‘How can we make the economy fair and work for everyone?’ »
In a campaign announcementPisciottano tells voters he has passed bills to “protect families from greedy corporations” and that his focus will remain on “making Allegheny County more affordable.”
Pisciottano said he, along with state Rep. Rob Matzie (D-Beaver) and U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, found ways to win with similar messages, focusing on “wallet issues.”
“We’ve been very clear about our defense of economic issues, working families and middle-class families, and a lot of those actions are relatively unique within the Democratic coalition,” Pisciottano said. “Traditionally, this kind of anti-Big Business, anti-corporate (messaging) monopoly has come from the left of the party, but I think it’s become a more dominant position. … Because it is obvious that the economy is not built in a way that benefits the middle class.”
Some political observers say it helped when the candidates split from the national Democratic Party, whose message was difficult to separate from that of widely unpopular President Joe Biden. platform even After Biden left the ticket.
“(Matzie’s) entire website was about how much he disagreed with his own party,” said Republican political consultant Christopher Nicholas. “He knew how to read tea leaves.”
“Rob Matzie stood up to his party leadership and said NO to across-the-board tax increases,” it reads. an announcement on the Matzie website. And a TV spot says he’s “fighting to keep politics out of our classrooms”… a common political footballbut one more often used by Republicans. Matzie beat up former building trades union member Michael Perichwhich was supported by the NRA, by 4.5 points.
Nicholas said Democrats should not be complacent. “I think when Rob Matzie decides to retire, that seat goes very quickly to the Republican side,” he added. He predicted a similar fate for the seat of Johnstown Democratic Rep. Frank Burns, whose race was the last to be decided in the state, in part because of voting system malfunctions. In the end, the conservative Democrat won by less than 3 points against Amy Bradley, thus pushing back the leader of the regional chamber of commerce, land further to the right of her on refugee resettlement and oppose gun control bills.
Nicholas admitted that “there are some (who will turn blue) on the Republican side as well.” And there were other, broader factors that helped Democrats maintain their race in other districts. Arvind Venkat, for example, won by 10 percentage points in Pittsburgh’s North Hills, where Democratic prospects have improved thanks to redistricting after the 2020 census and demographic changes that have lasted several years. (It doesn’t hurt that Venkat himself is a prodigious fundraiser and driven activist.)
Brittany Crampsie, a Democratic strategist and former state Senate press secretary, said some Pittsburgh-area Democrats may have simply convinced some conservative voters that they have their best interests in mind.
“Democrats in southwest Pennsylvania have a reputation for being slightly more right or center than Democrats in some cities like Philadelphia,” she said. “I think listening and ‘voting your district’ is also perhaps something that’s a little under-analyzed when we’re spending millions of dollars trying to flip a seat.”
Taking inspiration from economic issues is a page from a familiar playbook, and not just from the Bernie Sanders wing. Western Pennsylvania has long featured Democrats who voted left for labor and economic reasons, sometimes to the exclusion of more progressive social positions. Politicians like longtime Congressman Mike Doyle have made it a mantra: “vote your district,” prioritizing the needs and feelings of the district rather than taking an active part in partisan or ideological fights.
And in an election where the Republicans “overwhelmed the vote“For the federal and state elections in Pennsylvania, down-voting state Democrats did not feel the ground crumble beneath them.
There likely won’t be a return of the type of anti-abortion Democrat that was common in western Pennsylvania. And economic populist messages don’t always succeed: Casey lost despite trying to blame rising prices on “greed” caused by profit-hungry corporations. But there may be a reason why the Republican Party has taken up such messages: They work.
Chris Potter contributed reporting to this story.