An open congressional seat spices things up in SEPA, Scott Wagner’s State Senate campaign takes a hit and others make the list this week. Here are the first Ups & Downs of 2014.

 SEPA Politicos: An open congressional seat doesn’t come across very often, but now Southeast PA has two in 2014: Allyson Schwartz’s 13th District and Jim Gerlach’s 6th District. The battle for the 13th has about solidified its players, but the 6th is still open season. Politicos in this region of PA have been speculating all week about who would run for the open seat and every day, more names landed on the list of potential candidates. It’s a fun time to live in PA-6, or close enough to make a go at it anyway.

 Scott Wagner: The prolific fundraising (and campaign spender) Scott Wagner’s bid for Senate District 28 hit a major bump this week when it was revealed that Senator Waugh (R-28) decided to resign instead of waiting for the end of his term to retire. This means that there will be a special election to fill the seat and Republican establishment in York County is no friend of conservative rabble-rouser Scott Wagner and won’t choose him as their special election nominee. Wagner could still run in the May primary, but he would face an incumbent instead of the open field that the race initially promised to be.

 Pennsylvania’s State Department: Not usually seen as the most hip department in Harrisburg, the State Department is set to release brand new petition forms for candidates. The new forms will print out with the candidates information and a unique barcode that the state department can quickly scan. No more trying to decode sloppy handwriting from campaign staffers. They’ll also feature QR codes that count the signatures per page.

 Jack Wagner: The Associated Press ran a story on potential governor candidate. If he enters the race now, he’s pretty late to the party and he’s running out of time to decide. The longer he waits, the further behind he will be, especially with the head start that other candidates have had in fundraising.

Senator Vincent Hughes: The Senator made waves this week as he was featured in a handful of major publications on the topic of health care. He was in the Philadelphia Daily News on Monday criticizing the public hearing process on HealthyPA, the Inquirer on Tuesday for his open letter to President Obama calling for the rejection of the plan, Philadelphia Weekly on Wednesday for the link between Massachusetts health care expansion and reducing gun violence, and even earned a shout out in Politico yesterday for the letter to Obama.

New Jersey jokes were even easier than usual this week as Governor Christie got himself into some hot water over a little infrastructural political retribution.

All kinds of T delays this morning. And now that I think of it, Bill Peduto didn’t endorse Chris Christie either…

— Chris Potter (@CPotterPgh) January 10, 2014

Sometimes there is a politician’s quote that is so great that it can’t be ignored. This week is one of those times, and we honor it with Quote of the Week status:

“It’s not about the money; it’s a personal race and it’s a grass-roots race and the FEC report doesn’t tell the whole story,” Rep. Shuster (R-Blair) primary challenger Art Halvorson said to questions about his fundraising in a Thursday morning phone interview with CQ Roll Call. “We are out door-to-door and we are touching people and voters, and we are buying love with touches and Mr. Shuster’s big money doesn’t buy love.”