They should be:
In the 2017 baseball offseason, the Pittsburgh Pirates traded away two star players in Andrew McCutchen and Gerrt Cole. The fans were upset with Pirates management and many Pittsburghers were gearing up for a disappointing season for the Buccos.
Then, for some, there was another reason this week to be upset with the Pirates. According to a tweet from Washington Post reporter James Hohmann, on March 8, Pirates president Frank Coonelly spoke in support of Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone (R-Elizabeth), who is running for U.S. Congress in a special election on March 13 against Conor Lamb (D-Mount Lebanon). According to Hohmann's tweet, Coonelly spoke at the Republican Party of Allegheny County's "Spirit of Lincoln" dinner in Green Tree on March 8 and he also brought the Pirate Parrot with him. The dinner served as a fundraising event for Saccone and featured President Donald Trump’s counsel Kellyanne Conway.
Regis McDevitt, a Pittsburgh resident and Pirate fan, wrote on Twitter on March 8 “@Pirates this is shameful,” in response to Hohmann’s tweet. McDevitt also tweeted that the Pirates should address Coonelly’s involvement with Saccone and wrote that “inserting the organization into a political argument is true cause for a boycott.”
Western Pennsylvania’s largest LGBTQ organization, the Delta Foundation, was also disappointed in the Pirates' apparent support for Saccone. The Pirates have hosted LGBTQ Pride events in the past. But, in a March 9 Facebook post, theDelta Foundation wrote that while Coonelly is entitled to his political opinions, the inclusion of the Pirate Parrot at the event gave the impression that the Pirates organization supports Saccone, who has an anti-LGBTQ record as a state legislator.
“We are truly disappointed that Mr. Coonelly and Pirate Parrot attended this fundraiser last night and we look to resolve this situation,” wrote the Delta Foundation on Facebook.
In the past, Saccone has co-sponsored bills in the Pennsylvania legislature that would make it illegal for same-sex couples to get married. In his campaign for U.S. Congress, Saccone has been endorsed by CatholicVote.org, an anti-LGBTQ political organization, and is getting support from the Family Research Council, a political nonprofit that “does not consider homosexuality, bi-sexuality, and transgenderism as acceptable alternative lifestyles,” according the FRC website.
Dan Hart, the Pittsburgh Pirates head of communication, issued a statement to City Paper that said Coonelly's and the Pirate Parrot's appearance at the Republican Party dinner wasn't political. Hart wrote that Coonelly didn't speak in support of Saccone.
Yeah, not cool Buccos. Here’s the image of the Pittsburgh Pirate at the event:
And yes, Saccone does consider himself to be Trump’s “wingman”:
So there’s this special election, which features Democrat Conor Lamb, a handsome young former federal prosecutor, versus Rick Saccone, a Republican state representative who is hanging onto Donald Trump like — um, we will not say Stormy Daniels. That would be totally tacky, and this is a serious political moment. We’ll just say that Saccone says he wants to go to Washington and be the president’s “wingman.”
The current district is going to vanish in November when new, less-outrageous boundary lines go into effect. So the only thing that’s really at stake here is whether the voters are going to send an epic, albeit mainly symbolic, rejection letter to Trump. The president is obsessed. He’s scheduled to appear at a rally there this weekend, and he’s sending every possible White House warrior — from Kellyanne Conway to Donald Jr. — to the front lines.
People, do you think Pennsylvanians are going to get out and vote in the middle of March because Donald Jr. asked them to? Just wondering.
The 18th C.D. is very connected to steel making. (Democrat Lamb, when asked about trade issues, tends to say that he thinks whatever the president of the steelworkers’ union thinks.) Last week, as the race got tighter and tighter, Trump suddenly announced he was imposing a ginormous tariff on imported steel and aluminum, triggering the resignation of his chief economic adviser and something as close to a rebellion as you could imagine among the little weenies who make up the Republican members of Congress.
Do you think it could possibly have all been for western Pennsylvania? Duh.
The Republicans have been complaining that Saccone is a terrible candidate, which is a good way of getting off the hook themselves if he loses. It’s also sort of true. His ads are boring, and his previous social media was worse.
“We’re here at The Hangar bar,” Saccone yells in a Facebook video from Moon Township itself. “Look at all the happy people here!” Actually, there seemed to be a goodly number of empty seats, even though Saccone was giving away free food (“ … we got pizzas, we got wings …”).
In the state legislature, Saccone was a conservative who did not always behave like a guy who expected a congressional seat to open up in his backyard. He once voted against a bill strengthening Pennsylvania’s animal cruelty laws, which passed the House 167 to 20. It was called Libre’s Law in honor of a young Boston terrier abuse victim. Saccone never mentions Libre, although Lamb seems to bring that puppy up quite a bit.
But being Trump’s “wingman” may not be enough to help him win next week:
Come November, thanks to a recent re-drawing of Pennsylvania’s electoral map, the state’s 18th District is likely to disappear. Yet for the G.O.P., the stakes in Tuesday’s special election there couldn’t be higher. In a district where a Republican has run relatively uncontested since 2002, and where Donald Trump won by 20 points, Democratic candidate Conor Lamb is locked in a dead heat with Republican Rick Saccone, despite massive cash infusions from national party operatives—over $9 million between the N.R.C.C., the Congressional Leadership Fund, the R.N.C., and America First Action. Lamb’s ascendance, coupled with Saccone’s failure to launch, has terrified Republicans who see the race as a gauge for what’s to come. “If the Democrats were to prevail in western Pennsylvania, that would be quite an earthquake,” Representative Charlie Dent, a fellow Pennsylvania congressman retiring this year, told The New York Times. “If a strong pro-Trump district like this goes the other way, it would send a bad signal around the country in districts far more competitive than this one.”
Yet Saccone entered the race with some notable advantages. Along with the 18th’s voting history and the outsize amounts of money being spent there on his behalf, Republicans stood ready to deploy their heaviest hitters. Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump have both made appearances, and Donald Trump Jr., and Kellyanne Conway are scheduled to visit the district in the coming days. Trump himself will campaign there for the second time, despite the protestations of his advisers. Unlike candidates like Roy Moore and Ed Gillespie, Saccone had largely steered clear of the kind of vitriolic rhetoric that marked him as too closely aligned with the president. In fact, as New York’s Ed Kilgore notes, Saccone amounted to “a reasonably orthodox and scandal-free candidate with a decent résumé, running against a first-time” former prosecutor. There were, in other words, relatively few roadblocks in his path to the seat.
Despite the efforts of the national party, however, Saccone has proven startlingly resistant to outside help. According to Politico, he’s a poor fundraiser who frequently bucks the advice of Republican advisers and refuses to put effort into running a strong campaign. Recent internal-polling data shows that just 47 percent of voters in the district view Saccone favorably—3 percentage points lower than Trump. Nor have Republicans been shy about voicing their dissatisfaction. “In a tough political environment, candidate quality matters more than ever,” Ken Spain, a former N.R.C.C. senior aide, told Politico, an echo of the Establishment’s argument against alleged pedophile Moore. “In an anti-GOP year—which this is shaping up to be—the Republican candidates will need to run much stronger campaigns or be prepared for the national party to cut them loose.”
But a high-profile, Alabama-style loss, particularly in a pro-Trump region, will only contribute to the growing sense that the president is toxic to the Republican party. The fact that Lamb has proven unexpectedly adept at fundraising, out-raising Saccone nearly five to one, only underscores that perception, fueling the so-called “blue wave” that Republicans fear will decimate their majorities in Congress. “If he wins, you’re going to see probably another half a dozen Republicans say they’re not running again,” former V.P. Joe Biden told The New York Times while visiting the district.
Let’s seal the deal and win this damn race next week! Click here to donate and get involved with Lamb’s campaign.