Every Republican and Democrat who represents Pennsylvania in the U.S. House or Senate this week voted in favor of a deal to avert the so-called ‘fiscal cliff.’
The package allows Bush-era tax cuts to expire for individuals making more than $400,000 and families making more than $450,000.
The bill passed the Senate 89 votes to 8 on Monday and the House 267 to 157 late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the bill shortly after the vote.
Most of the objectors, particularly in the House, were Republicans. 151 Republicans voted against the bill and 85 voted for it – including Reps. Barletta, Dent, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Kelly, Marino, Meehan, Murphy, Pitts, Platts, Shuster and Thompson.
Two members who would have surprised few observers by opposing the deal were Sen. Pat Toomey and Rep. Mike Kelly, both vocal conservatives. They acknowledged that, given Obama’s recent re-election and continued Democratic control of the Senate, the deal was the best Republicans could get. Obama and Democrats flatly refused to consider any bill that extended the tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
Toomey is the former head of the conservative Club for Growth. He served on the ‘super committee’ that sought unsuccessfully to secure a solution to the problem in 2011. There, he put on paper what many called the only serious proposal by either party.
Toomey told reporters, “In the end what I was able to do was vote for a package that spares 99 percent of all Americans from a tax increase that would otherwise happen.”
Other members, including Rep. Tom Marino, agreed. “I am encouraged that both the House and Senate were able to come to an agreement and overcome the lack of leadership displayed by President Obama throughout this painful process,” he said in a statement.
The ‘fiscal cliff’ refers to a combination of drastic tax increases and spending cuts that were set to take effect on Jan. 1 in the absence of a congressional debt reduction deal. The situation was created by Congress during 2011’s debt ceiling showdown. Tuesday’s deal addresses the tax side of the equation and delayed the cuts for an additional two months.
Agriculture policies, including milk price supports, were extended until September.
State Reps. Robert Godshall (R-Montco) and Seth Grove (R-York) want Pennsylvania to divvy ups its electoral college votes by congressional district. It’s a plan originally pitched by Sen. Dominic Pileggiin 2011 and would have nullified President Obama’s Pa. advantage had it been in effect in 2012.
In their co-sponsorship memo, they essentially concede that Pa. is no longer a competitive presidential state.
“I believe that the Congressional District Method will increase voter turnout and encourage candidates to campaign in all states rather than just those that are competitive,” the two wrote. “Most importantly, this method of selecting presidential electors will give a stronger voice to voters in all regions of our great Commonwealth.”
Read: Republicans are tired of voting for candidates who don’t win Pa.
Once a reliable battleground state, Pennsylvania spent most of the 2012 presidential campaign on the sidelines.
The plan would give one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district plus 2 for the winner statewide.
Obama won Pa. by about 310,000 votes – 5.4 percent. But it looks like he won just 5 congressional districts, giving him 7 electoral college votes (including his 2 for winning statewide) to Mitt Romney’s 13.
That’s because Republican map-drawers packed Democratic voters into high concentration urban districts. The state’s 13 Republican members of Congress won by an average of 19.5 percent; the closest margin, CD-13, was 3.4 points. The state’s 5 Democratic members of congress won by an average of 52.5 percent; the closest margin, CD-17, was 20.6 points. That’s an average difference of 33 points.
Editor’s note: we’re keeping our eye on the DailyKos tabulations of presidential vote by congressional district which so far have just 4 of 18 districts. The 6th, 7th and 15th districts are the only ones represented by a Republican Congressman where Obama conceivably could have won. The most interesting so far: Romney narrowly won Mike Fitzpatrick’s 8th congressional district, 49.4 percent to Obama’s 49.3 percent.
Pileggi’s plan lost steam back in 2011 and he recently introduced a modified version that would allocate electoral votes proportionally with no relation to congressional districts.
Democratic critics note that no such effort is taking place in reliably Republican presidential states like Texas, where the same proposal would benefit Democratic candidates.
A plurality of Pa. Republicans (14%) named Speaker John Boehner as the GOP’s national leader
Pa. Republican voters think the GOP and President Obama should compromise to avoid the fiscal cliff, a new poll shows. They’re split as to why Romney lost and who is the GOP’s national leader.
Fiscal Cliff
Tax increases for wealthy Americans are almost a foregone conclusion for Pa. Republicans, a majority of whom say they would support such a policy if it keeps the country from going over the fiscal cliff.
That’s according to a recent poll by Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics of 430 registered Pa. Republicans. The margin of error for the survey, conducted from Dec. 5 to 13, is plus or minus 4.7 percent. 96 percent of respondents said they voted in the 2012 election.
81 percent of voters believe that going over the fiscal cliff – an automatic package of tax increases and spending cuts designed to be politically untenable – would harm the U.S. and Pa. economies.
A strong majority of GOP voters – 60 percent – say that a budget agreement should include a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, as opposed to only spending cuts (28 percent) or tax increases (4 percent).
The view in part reflects that of the GOP members of Congress from Pa., many of whom have said they would be willing to vote for a compromise package which includes tax increases for higher earners.
Most (77 percent) say President Obama should compromise even if he has to sacrifice some of his beliefs. But a majority (53 percent) say the same thing about Republicans in Congress.
Only 35 percent said Republicans have shown enough willingness to compromise since the election. 50 percent said no. 75 percent said that Obama hasn’t been willing to compromise.
Obama has said he will not yield and will refuse any package that maintains lower, Bush-era tax rates on families earning over $250,000 per year. In recent days GOP House Speaker John Boehner has hinted that he would be willing to compromise on that point.
64 percent of GOPers are pessimistic about the likelihood of both sides reaching a deal.
2012 Election and the GOP’s future
Pa. Republicans had several ideas about why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election. Here’s the rundown from Mercyhurst: voters’ misperceptions about the Republican candidate or the candidate’s personality (12 percent); a poorly run Republican campaign (11 percent); voters were enticed by Obama’s promise of entitlements (9 percent): the Republican position on issues or the candidate himself were not appealing to minority voters, including women (8 percent); or voters were misinformed/uneducated on the issues (7 percent). None said Romney lost as a result of failing to unite the GOP base.
Pa. Republicans – like their counterparts around the country – aren’t sure who is the leader of the GOP nationally. Asked for a name, 54 percent said there was no leader or couldn’t give a name. Of those who did, 14 percent said Boehner, 11 percent Romney, 6 percent said vice presidential candidate and Congressman Paul Ryan, 3 percent named Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and 3 percent name New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
Asked what type of person comes to mind when they think of the GOP, Pa. Republicans said: conservative (29.2 percent); hardworking/self-reliant individual (9 percent); a moral/Christian person (8 percent); businesspeople (7 percent); the rich (6 percent); patriots (4.1 percent); middle/upper-middle class (3 percent); and reasonable/realistic people (3 percent).
When George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000, many Democrats loudly called for the abolition of the electoral college.
Now, on the other side of two wins by Barack Obama, national Republicans are looking at ways to blunt the Democratic edge in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that go blue in presidential years but are presently governed by Republicans.
Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.
Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.
…
Obama won all three states in 2008, handing him 46 electoral votes because of the winner-take-all system. Had electoral votes been awarded by district, Republican nominee Mitt Romney would have cut into that lead. Final election results show that Romney won nine of Michigan’s 14 districts, five of eight in Wisconsin, and at least 12 of 18 in Pennsylvania. Allocate the two statewide votes in each state to Obama and that means Romney would have emerged from those three Democratic states with 26 electoral votes, compared with just 19 for Obama (and one district where votes are still being counted).
The down side for the GOP? Such changes would effectively nationalize state legislative elections – a big potential threat to Republicans in swing districts.
Pa. hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since 1988.
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) suggested such a change back in 2011. His proposal would have allocated Pa. electoral college votes according to congressional district. That met with broad criticism, given that Republicans also drew the congressional map.
Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi says frustrated Pennsylvania supporters of Mitt Romney deserve a more equitable way of counting presidential votes. He’s pushing once again to break up the state’s electoral college vote.
But instead of determining the votes by congressional district, they would be allocated according to percentage of the popular vote, plus two for the statewide winner.
“Currently, Pennsylvania uses a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. My legislation would allocate electoral votes proportionately,” Pileggi wrote in a cosponsorship memo. “This advantage of this system is clear: It much more accurately reflects the will of the voters in our state.”
Under that system, Barack Obama would have won 12 of Pa.’s electoral college votes and 8 for Romney. That’s a net advantage of 4 EC votes for Obama versus the net 20 advantage Pa. gave him on election day. It would not have affected the outcome of the race nationally.
Pileggi toldBloomberg, “Anyone who voted for Governor Romney, and many Pennsylvanians did, does not have any reflection of that vote in the electoral college vote,” Pileggi said in a telephone interview. “This is a proposal that is not party specific or partisan in any way, but just an attempt to have the popular vote reflected in the electoral college vote.”
Federal law permits states to allocate their electoral votes as they see fit and this plan would require only normal legislation – no changes to the Pa. Constitution, etc. Presently, only Maine and Nebraska use other than a winner-take-all system.
The passage of the 2012 election rendered moot any of the criticisms of Pileggi’s 2011 proposal.
Update: Pileggi spokesman Erik Arneson says don’t expect a vote on January 1. “We believe this issue warrants additional debate and conversation, but it won’t be a top priority issue,” he said.
Democrats widely criticized Pileggi’s first plan as a partisan, election year power grab (no Republican presidential candidate has carried Pa. since 1988). While it certainly remains partisan, it’s far from a presidential year and so it is not last-minute.
First, they thought a district-based system would subject swing district Republicans to inordinate presidential year pressure. This revised plan fixes that problem.
Second, some thought it was a subversion of the founders’ intent.
Finally, some – including the Chair of the PAGOP – opposed it because they thought a Republican was poised to win Pa. in 2012 and the plan would actually hurt the party. That… didn’t bear out.
And PoliticsPA gave the original plan a down arrow on the grounds that splitting the state would jeopardize Pa.’s battleground status by taking much of the state out of contention as far as campaigning. However, the large dropoff in presidential campaigning in 2012 nullifies that criticism, too.
Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro (left). Source: Widener Law School website
The election is over and the thaw on judicial appointments has (hopefully) begun. This week, President Obama nominated 3 judges to take the bench in Pa.’s eastern district.
If confirmed, their jurisdiction would include southeast Pa.: Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery, Northampton and Philadelphia counties.
Pennsylvania has an ignominious shortage of federal judges, the subject of a recent article in The Atlantic. The biggest problem: gridlock in the U.S. Senate. Senate rules make it easy for individual members to hold hostage the nomination process over unrelated issues.
Both Pa. Senators Bob Casey (D) and Pat Toomey (R) say they support the nominations.
“I’m pleased that the White House has nominated these exceptionally qualified members of the legal community to the bench. I was proud to work in a bipartisan fashion with Sen. Toomey to nominate these individuals, and I’m hopeful that the Senate will work in a constructive manner to confirm them to the bench in the near future,” Casey said.
“On a bipartisan basis, I have been working closely with Sen. Casey on judicial nominations for our state to help confirm qualified, experienced individuals with unquestioned honesty, ability and integrity. I am confident that these three nominees will live up to these standards and hope that the Senate confirms them in a timely manner,” Toomey added.
Here are the bios, courtesy of the White House. The first two are registered Democrats; the third is a Republican.
The Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition celebrated the fact that Quiñones Alejandro would be the first openly gay hispanic woman to serve on the federal bench anywhere.
Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro: Nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Judge Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro currently serves as a Judge on the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, where she has presided over both civil and criminal matters. Prior to joining the bench in 1991, Judge Quiñones worked as a Staff Attorney for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs from 1979 to 1991 and as an Attorney Advisor for the United States Department of Health and Human Services from 1977 to 1979. She began her legal career as a Staff Attorney for Community Legal Services, Inc. in Philadelphia from 1975 to 1977. Judge Quiñones received her J.D. in 1975 from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and her B.B.A. cum laude in 1972 from the University of Puerto Rico.
Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo: Nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo has served as a United States Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania since 2006, where he has presided over a variety of criminal and civil matters. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Restrepo was a named partner at the law firm of Krasner & Restrepo from 1993 to 2006. Previously, he served as an Assistant Federal Defender in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 1993 and as an Assistant Defender with the Defender Association of Philadelphia from 1987 to 1990. Judge Restrepo began his legal career as a law clerk at the National Prison Project. He received his J.D. in 1986 from Tulane Law School and his B.A. in 1981 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl: Nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl has served as President Judge of the Berks County Court of Common Pleas since 2008, having joined the court as a judge in 1998. Previously, Judge Schmehl was a partner at the law firm of Rhoda, Stoudt & Bradley from 1988 to 1997 and an associate at the same firm from 1986 to 1987. For much of that time, Judge Schmehl also served as the Berks County Solicitor. From 1981 to 1986, he was a sole practitioner in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Judge Schmehl also served as an Assistant District Attorney in Berks County from 1981 until 1986 and as an Assistant Public Defender in the same jurisdiction from 1980 until 1981. He received his J.D. in 1980 from the University of Toledo School of Law and his B.A. in 1977 from Dickinson College.
President Obama will pitch his plans to avoid the fiscal cliff during a visit to a Montgomery County manufacturer Friday.
He’ll be touring and speaking at The Rodon Group facility in Hatfield, Pa., the Associated Pressreports. He will points to the company as an example of a business whose success is closely connected to spending by the middle-class. It produces parts for K’NEX Brands.
It’s the President’s first visit to Pa. since a July rally in Pittsburgh. He skipped the state entirely during the fall campaign and won here by 5 points.
“Considering the financial challenges our nation faces, we urge President Obama to get to work with Congressional Republicans to find a solution that prevents our economy from falling over the fiscal cliff.,” said PA GOP spokeswoman Valerie Caras.
A subplot of the 2012 election cycle was the pollster battle: GOP number crunchers showed Republicans competitive, Democrats and independent poll-takes showed Dems ahead. Ultimately, Republicans were wrong.
Before the votes were tallied Tuesday, Republicans talked about a 2004 turnout model. They said that Obama’s lustre had faded, and a poor economy would depress voter turnout among Democrats, young people and minorities well below 2008 levels. They said polls that incorporated the 2008 model were off.
Big national firms like Gallup and Rasmussen, for much of the cycle, made similar assumptions.
“The biggest charge was that we were oversampling Democrats,” said Terry Madonna, Director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll. “But if you’re going to talk about oversampling, you have to talk about screening questions to get the likely voters. You have to talk about weighting adjustments, not just for party but for age and gender and whatever else you choose to weight.”
Franklin and Marshall’s final 2012 poll was 1 point off of the presidential race and dead on accurate with the margin for U.S. Senate.
“We’ve not had a history of having either party’s candidate outside the sample error of our poll,” Madonna said.
In public and in private phone calls, Republican operatives insisted over and over that independent polls were wrong; they were oversampling Democrats or undersampling men, etc.
Were they lying? Were they trying to create a false narrative in the hope that it would become a self-fulfilling prophesy? Democrats repeatedly accused SP&R of misleading.
Based on the shock Republicans showed Tuesday night, and more importantly on the trust I’ve established covering these operatives for the past two years, I think the answer is no.
“Republican pollsters were really wrong,” said one statewide GOP operative. “None of us ever believed they would turn out voters like they did. My hat’s off to them.”
Polling is science and math, but also instinct and art. So GOP pollsters sampled voters who were older and whiter than the average person who went to the polls on Tuesday, based on the belief that 2008 was a one-time outlier. They were wrong.
“They thought they were looking at a different electorate than the normal methods showed,” said Chris Borick, Director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “You don’t build a turnout model based on optimism or pessimism. I don’t even like to weight for party.”
Does he think they were deliberately misleading? Pause.
“Republicans use polls – as Democrats often do – for tactical reasons. I think the goals of their polling had an impact on the methods.”
Here are poll results from the home stretch, the final 2 weeks of the campaign and how their margins compare to the actual results. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney 52 percent to 47 percent, a 5 point edge for Obama. From Real Clear Politics:
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Bob Casey beat Tom Smith 54 percent to 45, a lead of 9 points. Here are the final poll results in that race, also from Real Clear Politics:
Susquehanna Polling and Research conducted polls for dozens of Republican candidates in Pa. this cycle, as well as the Pa. Republican Party. On Oct. 18, they released a poll showing Romney ahead of Obama by 4 points in the state. Their polls for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, included in the RCP lists above, showed both races far more competitive than they turned out to be.
Susquehanna underestimated turnout among Democratic-friendly segments of the population, said Susquehanna’s president, Jim Lee. Young voters and Philadelphia-area Democrats turned out in numbers close to those in 2008, when Obama won the state by 10 points, Lee said.
“That caught me off guard. I didn’t think that was going to happen. I didn’t think the enthusiasm was there,” Lee said.
Voters ages 18 to 29 were a key constituency in Obama’s 2008 victory, when they turned out in record numbers.
“I was suggesting it would be lower with that age group, given unemployment was considerably higher” for them, Lee said.
Here are some other polls of various Pa. races and how they stacked up against the results.
Presidential:
Pulse Opinion Research (for conservative non-profit Let Freedom Ring)
Oct. 30: Obama 49, Romney 46 Off by 2
U.S. Senate:
McLaughlin Group (Smith campaign pollster)
Nov. 2: Casey 46, Smith 46. Off by 9
Pulse Opinion Research (for conservative non-profit Let Freedom Ring)
Oct. 30: Casey 46, Smith 45 Off by 8
Citizens United (conservative group)
Oct. 24: Casey 46, Smith 45. Off by 8
PA-12. Final result: Keith Rothfus 51.5, Rep. Mark Critz 48.5. Rothfus by 3
Public Opinion Strategies (for GOP super PAC)
Oct. 8: Rothfus 42, Critz 40 Off by 1 (in Critz’s favor
Anzalone Liszt Research (for DCCC)
Sept. 26: Critz 52, Rothfus 41 Off by 14
Note: This poll was taken 6 weeks before the election, so events of the campaign could account for the difference just as easily as anything else.
SD-37. Final result: Matt Smith 52, Raja 47. Smith by 5
SD-49. Final result: Sean Wiley 60.5, Janet Anderson 39.5. Wiley by 21
39th Street Strategies (for Wiley campaign)
Oct. 24: Wiley 57, Anderson 38 Off by 2 (in Anderson’s favor)
HD-83. Final Result: Rep. Rick Mirabito 59, Harry Rogers 41
Lycoming College (independent poll)
Oct. 29: Mirabito 59, Rogers 31 Off by 10
Looks like undecideds went to the challenger in the GOP-friendly district.
Barack Obama scored a solid win in Pennsylvania on Tuesday despite losing ground in nearly every county in the state. Take a look at where the President took the biggest hit, as well as the three places where Republican Mitt Romney underperformed John McCain.
PoliticsPA compared the margin of Obama’s win in 2012 to his margin in 2008 on a county-by-county basis. For example in Philadelphia, Obama defeated Romney by more than 71 percent on Tuesday. He bested John McCain by 67 percent in 2008, a new improvement of more than 4 points.
Obama won Elk County by 4.4 percent in 2008 and Cambria by 0.7 percent. He lost Elk by 16 points this year, and Cambria by 18.
So, now that Obama’s numbers have come down to earth from their nadir in 2008, will Pa. return to the battleground conversation in 2016, or are we consigned to second-class blue state status?
“There isn’t any doubt that the Obama coalition this year was the same coalition that elected him in ‘08,” said Franklin and Marshall pollster Terry Madonna. “How did we get from 10 points to 5? The answer is simple: Obama didn’t do as well in the Philly suburbs as he did four years ago.”
However, Madonna said, the GOP didn’t do as well as it did 8 years ago.
“The Republicans in their base, in places like Lancaster and Lebanon and York, in south central Pa. where you have the largest number of their voters, went somewhere between where they were in 2004 and 2008. They didn’t have the same strong vote for Romney as the did for Bush in ‘04,” he noted.
PoliticsPA also looked at Obama’s advantage in 2012 versus Democrat John Kerry’s when he beat President George W. Bush in Pa. in 2004 (map below).
Even a diminished result for Obama shows clear improvement for Democrats in eastern Pa. – particularly south central Pa.
By the same token, he did far worse than Kerry in western Pa.
Will that dynamic – surging Dems in the east versus a stronger GOP in the west – hold true for 2016? Maybe, to some degree. His background and strong support among minorities made Obama uniquely formidable in eastern Pa., just as they – and his reputation for antipathy toward the coal industry – made him uniquely weak in western Pa.
In any case, when Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Martin O’Malley or whoever begins opening up campaign offices in Pa. in 2016, don’t be surprised to see them in Lancaster, York or Carlisle.
Likewise, when Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan or Mitch Daniels sets up shop, don’t be shocked by a major push in Johnstown or Uniontown.
PoliticsPA wanted to know whether or not the GOP ad blitz would play a role in the outcome of the Presidential election, and you guessed it, they did not.
Out of 1,276 votes, 44 percent believed that Pennsylvania would stay true blue. 41 percent believed that the ads were going to make a difference and Mitt Romney would win Pa, and 17 percent believed that the ads would make a difference, but President Obama would narrowly slip by.
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