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PA-13: Boyle Captures Democratic Nomination

Brendan-Boyle-2013Brendan Boyle portrayed his campaign as a battle for the 99% and frequently invoked his father who works as a SEPTA janitor. Now he stands a step away from the U.S. Congress.

According to the Associated Press, State Rep. Brendan Boyle has won the Democratic nomination in PA-13.

With ninety-nine percent of precincts reporting, Boyle had 24,476 votes or about 41%. Former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies ended up second with 16,506 and just over 27%.

Physician Val Arkoosh and State Sen. Daylin Leach and physician Val Arkoosh finished third and fourth respectively. Leach has 10,063 or about 17% votes while Arkoosh has 9,299 and 15%.

Boyle will compete against the winner of the GOP primary, Dee Adcock. Adcock won with 10,111 votes to Beverly Plosa-Bowser’s 5,248, a 66% to 34% margin.

Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district is heavily Democratic, with a D+13 rating, and Boyle should be the favorite in November. The seat was formerly held by Congresswoman and gubernatorial candidate Allyson Schwartz.

12 Responses

  1. Alternate interpretation occurred to me:

    When I heard Aren on the radio say “we spent $3 million” in the past 3 weeks, he might possibly have been using “we” to refer to all the candidates combined.

  2. As a Daylin fan, I am of course disappointed in the outcome. But congratulations to Brendan Boyle and his team. That’s all that needs to be said.

    What should not be said are vicious insults, particularly against Aren. Shame on you.

    Anne Umbrecht
    Villanova PA

  3. Vanessa DeRose and Jessica Cosme-

    Last night, on the radio, a reporter was interviewing Aren who said they spend about $3 million, mostly in the last few weeks. So, that’s my source, the horse’s mouth (or some other orifice). If you disagree with the number, take it up with Daylin’s campaign manager and his on air interview Tuesday night. Maybe he misspoke, or misunderstood the reporter’s question. I was a bit surprised by the number, because I didn’t think Daylin had raised quite that much. But, that’s where I got the $3 million number.

    As for the gains made by the Senate Dems: it was a presidential year and we picked up 3 open seats vacated by incumbent R’s, with the old district maps. In the fourth open seat, the Dems didn’t even have a candidate.

    EVERY campaign manager and staffer I spoke to last night about Daylin’s loss ALL said, Aren is a d**che-bag.

    Being a hard worker doesn’t mean you are good at your job. A lot of people who aren’t good have to work twice as hard to do the same job as those who are good. From the responses I got about Aren, it seems he burnt a lot of bridges to gain his d-bag reputation among professional campaign managers (ie his peer group). So, someone in that profession shouldn’t really make a habit of alienating people, especially those who can see through his BS.

    I’m in a different category. I’m technical. I analyze and organize data, and provide up-to-date information and first rate support to my customers. They don’t care whom I p*ss off, or rub the wrong way, or what I write on PoliticsPA because the data is good. I charge candidate very little and provide hundreds of free accounts to committee people and various political operatives to further Democratic and progressive agendas. I don’t seek out government or political staff jobs, or kiss anybody’s @ss (usually the jobs and kissing go hand in hand).

    As for my system, I think the 160 people who used it so far this month would disagree that “no one uses it”. I had a few candidates who won some write-ins which are really tough, and they were happy to have access to my system. In 2013, my users flipped three school boards around Delaware county. They didn’t get a lick of help from HDCC, SDCC, the state party or the dysfunctional leadership of the county party.

    One of my St Leg candidates told me that the HDCC and the State Dept are pointing fingers at each other for having wrongly assigned precincts to the new house districts. (I guess they didn’t spend a week entering the data by hand from the actual text of the redistricting bill, like I did). Of the 9,200 precincts think about 40 or so still have wrong districts in the State Dept data. (The people who run VAN/VoterBuilder don’t live in PA and care enough to fix it.)

  4. Dave-

    In regards to PA-13, I urge you to read, and re-read Vanessa’s response. No one knows what happened better than those of us on the ground, across all four campaigns- none of which included you. I understand that you strive for relevancy by posting ill-informed rants in the comment section, but you should probably do a little research and make a couple of calls so that someone can walk you thorough aspects of campaigns that you clearly do not understand, before you post.

    Regarding the Senate Dems, the SDCC made the their largest gains in decades in 2012, specifically under the guidance of Aren. Working for him for the past four years, I can say without a doubt that he is the hardest working person out there. Like him or not, that is indisputable. This is politics. Not everyone gets along, and that’s okay. But the fact that you seem to have trouble understanding this, and feel the need to make a personal attack in such a cowardly way just showcases your complete lack of understanding of all things political. Perhaps you should spend more time on your voter service company that no one uses, and less time trolling the comment section.

    Let me be clear: I have no interest in a comment section back and fourth with you. Should you like me to walk you through the SDCC history and/or victories, or the race for PA13, I would be more than happy to. Please feel free to act as an adult and send me an e-mail.

  5. PA-13 passed on the chance to send the #1 fighter in the PA General Assembly up to Congress. A loss to PA and the US Congress, but our gain in the PA General Assembly. Head up, Senator Leach.

  6. For once I have to answer to David Diano and his always quick to comment like he has some insider knowledge. You don’t.

    Daylin did not spend $3 million. Campaign finance reports are easily available and it was less than $1.5. Val was about $2 million and MM and BB came in about a million and change. So why not beat up on Val for spending $2 million to come in last?

    Everyone one of the candidates ran a great campaign and one candidate ran on 20 years ago which voters showed they appreciated so I have a hard time giving credit for a non campaign.

    What Boyle managed to do was leverage the laser focus the of Stack, B. Boyle and K. Boyle on the ballots in NE Philly. And leverage the amount of street money that would be floating around bringing in paid GOTV and poll workers and teaming up with other political organizations that were fighting in heavy D primaries. And he was able to pull ahead of the MontCo candidate cause there were three of them. Geography won. But I don’t say that to his discredit–I think he ran a honorable campaign and had a core message that we all can get behind–lets go represent the 99% not the 1% so we can lift the middle class — a core message all of the candidates ran on.

    I think Val Arkoosh was a great candidate and proved to be someone we can trust to stay on the scene and consider a Progressive voice.

    What all of us Democrats have to realize is the final outcome is a close to $7 million of resources were spent to win one congressional seat. And about $20 million to elect a D candidate to go head to head against Corbett–the least popular governor in the country.

    If we lose the Gov’s mansion in November that will be just tragic. And a real reason to take a long hard look at party unity or making changes at the top of our party structures to bring unity.

  7. Well, Daylin wound up with around 10,000 votes

    I think he spent something like $3 million in the last 3 or 4 weeks.
    So, that’s $300 per vote right there, plus whatever else was spent.

    I was talking to a few candidates and campaign managers last night at after-parties, and the consensus agreement was that Daylin’s campaign manager is terrible. (This is hardly been a well kept secret, but now it’s pretty visible to all.)

    Aren Platt was formerly one of the people running the PA Senate Dems campaign committee (SDCC). Let’s hope that they do not have plans to take him back, as we would like to win some Senate seats this year.

    Some people think Daylin’s loss was because the voters don’t want a liberal/progressive. I think this is wrong. I think Daylin lost because he was perceived as a carpet-bagging outsider who had little connection to the district. Boyle had the infrastructure with being more native to the district and ground game.

    The $3 million Daylin spent was mostly in expensive TV, Radio, mailing, etc. He would have been better off hiring 3 thousand workers for $1000/each for the day to bring voter to the polls. Even if he didn’t do better, the money would have gone to people who needed it more than the fat-cat media moguls and campaign media companies.

    But, those of us in the 7th would sure have liked to have Daylin taking it to Pat Meehan with that $ 3 million (plus more for general).

  8. Margolies deserved to lose big. She ran a terrible campaign and her past conduct in office earned her the disrepute she got from so many voters. Margolies seems not to understand that arrogance is not the same as courage. Representatives serve the people not the other way around. She was a disgrace in office- and the people showed her that yesterday.

  9. I have NO idea where you got your numbers, but in Montco right now:
    Brendan F. Boyle 3,828 18.03%
    Val Arkoosh 4,031 18.99%
    Marjorie Margolies 7,488 35.27%
    Daylin Leach 5,883 27.71%
    Total 21,230 100.00%

    So maybe you want to check your sources a teeny bit closer.

  10. I won’t win the contest, but I did call this one, and a month ago at that. I think this was mostly geography, but I also thought the abortion attack was a non-starter.

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