More good news today out of Pennsylvania curtesy of Sabato’s Crystal Ball:
Amazingly enough, the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District now looks like a Toss-up. That’s one of 26 House ratings changes we’re making this week, all in favor of Democrats.
Republicans are very much in danger of losing a district that supported President Trump by 20 points less than a year and a half ago. The reasons are:
— Democrats have been consistently overperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential performance in special elections held since Donald Trump’s election. My colleague Geoffrey Skelley has been tracking these elections, which are mostly for state legislative seats but also include a handful of congressional specials, and he calculates that Democrats have been running on average 13 points ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin in the nearly 90 races held so far featuring a Democrat and a Republican.
— That speaks to the overall political environment, which clearly favors Democrats right now.
— Looking specifically at PA-18, former federal prosecutor Conor Lamb (D) has run a stronger campaign than state Rep. Rick Saccone (R). One way to measure that is fundraising: Lamb has raised $3.9 million while Saccone’s tally is only about $920,000. As a result, Republican outside groups have had to dump more than $10 million into the race to try to rescue Saccone, including $3.5 million from the National Republican Congressional Committee (the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, by comparison, has only kicked in less than a tenth of that). But because candidates get better rates for television ads than outside groups do, their money doesn’t go as far as Lamb’s does: While Republican entities (Saccone plus outside groups) have outspent Democratic entities (Lamb plus outside groups) by more than two-to-one overall, that has only translated into a less than three-to-two advantage in terms of actual television ads run, according to a tally by NBC News.
— Additionally, as National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar shrewdly observed in his PA-18 preview, Republicans have scaled back their advertising touting their tax cuts in this district, perhaps a sign that GOP plans to run on taxes this cycle are not as promising as the party hopes.
— PA-18 isn’t as Republican as the presidential topline suggests. Democrats still hold a party registration advantage in the district, and while plenty of those “Democrats” voted for Trump and for their former Republican incumbent, Tim Murphy, they may be open to backing their old party from time to time. Lamb’s stronger campaign has perhaps allowed him to activate these lapsed Democrats. A recent Lamb ad is a moving but largely content-free paean to public service, and he has tried to create distance between himself and the national Democratic Party by saying he does not support Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic House leader and that he did not support an assault weapons ban in the aftermath of a horrific Florida school shooting. Saccone, meanwhile, is probably to the right of the previous incumbent, Murphy, who enjoyed labor support. Saccone’s declaration that he was “Trump before Trump was Trump” probably doesn’t play all that well in the Trump-skeptical Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) portions of the district. While this is a district in Appalachia, it does not have stereotypically Appalachian demographics: It is in the top third nationally in median income and has above-average four-year college attainment.
Put it all together, and you’ve got a tight race in a district that not only voted for Trump, but was in the top third of all districts in terms of GOP lean in 2016.
In a sense, we don’t think it really matters all that much who wins, in large part because the district is going to be defunct effectively as soon as the election is over anyway. Assuming the U.S. Supreme Court does not throw it out — a safe assumption, we think — a new map created by the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is set to replace the state’s Republican-drawn map this fall. We analyzed the map in full a couple of weeks ago, and Democrats are set to benefit to at least some degree.
But wait, there’s more:
The redraw of the state’s Congressional districts means that Lamb would live in the newly drawn 17th district, which Rothfus now lives in.
While Lamb would not be required to run in the 17th, you don’t have to live within the district you run in, his possible candidacy raises some interesting prospects for Democrats.
“Lamb appears likely to run in the new PA-17 against Rep. Keith Rothfus (R) whether he wins or loses on Tuesday. In anticipation of that possibility, we’re moving PA-17 from Leans Republican to Toss-up — Trump won the new district by less than three points, and Lamb represents a formidable challenger to Rothfus whether he is a sitting incumbent or not,” Sabato writes.
That might explain why the GOP is already writing Rick Saccone’s (R. PA-18) political obituary:
Tuesday’s special election, which is being held in a district President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points, has emerged as the latest testing ground of whether Republicans are headed for a midterm bloodbath. A loss would be wholly embarrassing, many Republicans privately acknowledge, given that it would take place in a state that Trump made a cornerstone of his 2016 victory. And the themes that the GOP has highlighted in the special election — namely tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are the centerpieces of the party’s 2018 campaign plan.
But as election day grows closer, the national GOP is increasingly pinning the blame on Saccone. In interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, senior House Republicans and top party strategists, Saccone was nearly universally panned as a deeply underwhelming candidate who leaned excessively on the national party to execute a massive, multimillion-dollar rescue effort. It was complete with visits from the president, vice president and several Cabinet members.
They describe a candidate who largely ignored pleas to raise the money he needed, who blindsided the White House and the national party with his choice of a political strategist, and whose amateur-style social media feed included low-quality videos of him at a local bar and yukking it up with Santa. To make matters worse, Saccone is up against a Democratic rival the party could hardly have engineered had it tried: Conor Lamb, an Ivy League-educated 33-year-old Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor.
Lamb has used a nearly $4 million war chest to cast himself as independent of his party, airing slickly produced TV ads underscoring his aversion to Pelosi and his fondness for shooting machine guns. He has a campaign staff of 16 full-time employees, compared with just four for Saccone.
“Candidate quality matters, and when one candidate outraises the other 5-to-1, that creates real challenges for outside groups trying to win a race,” said Corry Bliss, who oversees the principal House GOP-aligned super PAC, which has conducted an expansive TV and field deployment effort aimed at pushing Saccone over the top.
Let’s seal the deal and win this damn race! Click here to donate and get involved with Lamb’s campaign.