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2014 PA Congressional Picture

pa-congressional-map-finalDemocrat Tom Wolf may be amassing double-digit leads in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, but the magic isn’t extending to Democrats in this year’s congressional races. Voters, apparently, are quite content to split their tickets this year.

With just six weeks left until Election Day, PoliticsPA finds only two congressional districts in the state are even remotely competitive – and even those two contests are hanging on to the “competitive” label by just a thread. Barring something unexpected, Pennsylvania Republicans are poised to protect all of their incumbents in the delegation, while also holding the seat of retiring GOP Rep. James Gerlach.

This means that, despite the state’s purple-to-blue leanings in presidential politics, the GOP’s 13-5 lead in the House delegation looks secure.

Wolf’s strength in the gubernatorial race “is more about dissatisfaction with Corbett than a desire to see a Democrat in office, so I don’t see significant coattails for Democrats in congressional races,” said Muhlenberg College political scientist Christopher Borick. President Barack Obama’s low approval ratings “are also acting as a drag on Democrat challengers, reducing any advantages they may be picking up from Corbett’s struggles,” he said.

In PoliticsPA’s first congressional vulnerability ranking since the spring, based on interviews with a range of state and national political observers, we now project that only Gerlach’s open 6th district seat and the 8th district seat held by GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick are even slightly competitive this year. That’s a big decline in incumbent-party vulnerability from the 2010 cycle, when five of the state’s House seats were considered highly competitive, and even the 2012 cycle, when one seat – the 12th district held by Democratic Rep. Mark Critz – was in serious jeopardy.

The problem this year for Democrats is not just that they have few targets of opportunity, but that the limited number of targets they did have fizzled.

The 6th district is in relatively swingy territory in southeastern Pennsylvania that comprises portions of Montgomery, Chester, Berks, and Lebanon counties. However, Democratic candidate Manan Trivedi, a physician who served in Iraq, has already run and lost in the district twice, and Chester County Commissioner Ryan Costello is considered to be a good fit for the ideologically moderate district.

The most recent figures show that Costello has raised more than $1 million this cycle, more than twice as much as Trivedi, who’s raised $475,000.

Meanwhile, in the Bucks County-based 8th district, former Army Ranger Kevin Strouse began his campaign with strong backing from key Democrats but had a tougher-than-expected Democratic primary against Shaugnessy Naughton. In the end, he defeated Naughton by only a 51 percent-49 percent margin, and Strouse limped into the general election having raised just over $1 million, less than half of Fitzpatrick’s nearly $2.5 million raised.

Strouse even managed to lose out to Fitzpatrick when Americans for Responsible Solutions — the anti-gun-violence group founded by ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz. – made an endorsement in the race. In an unusual development for a Republican candidate, Giffords’ group began airing an ad touting Fitzpatrick’s “leadership on reducing gun violence.”

Democrats caution that neither of the party’s candidates in the 6th and the 8th hit the airwaves until recently, and that the party long ago reserved ad time in the Philadelphia market in the run-up to Election Day. But some observers speculate that the air time could instead be spent on a more competitive contest just across the border in New Jersey that’s within the media market – the seat being vacated by GOP Rep. Jon Runyan.

There’s little doubt that the Democratic field of challengers has been extraordinarily weak this year. Beyond Strouse and Trivedi, only one Democratic challenger has raised more than 14 percent of what their opponent has raised — Dan LaVallee in the 3rd district, who has raised 20 percent of what GOP Rep. Mike Kelly has raised, according to Center for Responsive Politics data. The one bright spot for the Democrats on the congressional map is that Brendan Boyle should easily keep the strongly Democratic Philadelphia/Montgomery County seat that Allyson Schwartz vacated to run for governor.

A key question is whether the weak Democratic congressional offensive this year is just a blip or the harbinger of a longer-term trend.

While the post-2010 Census map drawn by the Republican legislature favors the GOP, it’s not bulletproof. Three other Republican-held districts in addition to the 6th and the 8th can, by the numbers, be considered “reach” districts for the Democrats — seats where a good candidate, a favorable environment and/or an incumbent’s retirement could make the seat vulnerable to a party switch. These “reach” seats include the districts currently held by GOP Reps. Pat Meehan, Charlie Dent and Joe Pitts.

In addition, 2016, a presidential election year, should be a better cycle for Democratic turnout than the 2014 midterm cycle. Still, making such seats competitive for Democratic challengers will require a precise alignment of the stars, and analysts say there’s a decent chance the GOP could hold its 13-5 advantage all the way until the next round of redistricting, after the 2020 Census.

The GOP edge in the congressional delegation looks “fairly stable, certainly through the next several election cycles, especially given the popularity of the incumbents in those districts,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College.

Borick of Muhlenberg College agreed.

“I don’t see many congressional districts is play for the remainder of the decade unless there is a wave election that could sweep a few Democrats into Republican-leaning districts like the 6th and 8th,” Borick said.

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