Debbie Turici is running a real Cinderella campaign for PA House District 44 and has a great shot at winning, but her chances will be even better with help from some Daily Kos fairy godmothers. Here’s her story.
Pennsylvania’s Primary was set for May 17, 2022, and no Democrat had stepped up to run in the district.
The incumbent, a rubberstamp Republican named Val Gaydos, would apparently waltz unopposed back to Harrisburg for another two-year stint of obstructionism.
But on May 2, the leaked opinion from SCOTUS hit the news. The entire nation reeled from the shock.
And Debbie Turici decided that enough was enough. Basta. With barely two weeks to go before the primary she mounted a write in campaign to secure a spot on the General Election ballot.
Debbie has been a longtime leader in the PSEA, the Pennsylvania State Education Association. She called on all the organizational skills that had been honed over decades of union work, and she called on her vast network of friends and colleagues. She mustered dozens of people to man as many polling places as possible on Primary Election Day to ask Democratic voters to write her in. She needed a minimum of 300 votes; she managed a surprising 729!
A bit about the district itself:
The 44th encompasses the western part of Allegheny County, whose county seat is the City of Pittsburgh. It’s a largely suburban area known generically as “The Airport Area”.
A once reliably deep blue district back in the steel-mills-and-strong-unions days, it is now purple, with a depressing tendency to go for Dems at the top of the ticket and R’s at the bottom, resulting in lopsided election stats, an unrepresentative state legislature, and a seesaw of candidates for local offices like school boards and township boards.
PA District 44 has a lot of overlap with Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District, which many of you might be familiar with if you’ve followed the career and successful election campaigns of Representative Conor Lamb. Lamb has proved to have an uncanny ability to win in this difficult turf. Lamb has endorsed Debbie and has even appeared at events for her.
The good news for Democrats (and lovers of democracy in general) is that we stand to benefit statewide from the state legislative redistricting process that concluded in March of this year. District 44 lost some of the northern, redder parts of the old district, while keeping the bulk of the bluer western townships.
In 2020, the district in its current configuration would have gone for Biden by 52.3% (up nearly 2 points from the actual 50.7% in that previous incarnation).
Debbie Turici has what it takes to flip this seat BLUE.
She was a beloved art teacher for over 30 years in one of the larger school districts in the 44th, and her name recognition alone in those townships is a huge asset. She can count on plenty of support from her former students and their parents, many of whom still live in the district.
She’s also supported by teachers and administrators who know her as a fierce but fair negotiator for her union members.
And she’s a well-known and well-respected resident of one of the largest communities in the District, Moon Township. Her garden is featured annually in the Moon Garden Club Tour, and she has the strong support of the local Dem Committees.
Debbie is Pro-Choice, Pro-Union, and Pro-Public Education.
She has been knocking on doors relentlessly since her primary election was confirmed in June and she has a small but fiercely dedicated campaign staff helping her reach voters across the district.
We think she can win. In fact, we KNOW she can win.
And flipping this seat puts us one step closer to regaining sanity in the PA House of Representatives and making THIS LADY RIGHT HERE the Speaker of the House!
If you live in western PA, contact the campaign to offer help.
If you know someone who lives in the district, introduce them to Debbie and do what you can to get them to vote for her on November 8.
And even if you only have a few bucks to spare, she will use every single penny wisely to get one step closer to serving in Harrisburg.
As we’ve found from previous hard experience, we can’t count on riding the coattails of strong upballot candidates. It’s going to take all of us working nonstop, and it’s going to take every penny we can gather, to send Debbie to Harrisburg to serve the people of Pennsylvania.
It’s #Time4Turici!