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Hartman Exits PA-10 Race

Christina Hartman is exiting the Democratic primary in the new 10th Congressional district after switching to run in the district after the Congressional map redraw.  

“Today, I’m ending my campaign for Congress. When the new districts were announced, I had to make a quick and difficult decision to continue my campaign in a new district. After further consideration, I’ve decided that this is not the right time for me, and I will support the Democratic nominee in November,” Hartman said.  

Hartman had orginally announced she was running in the old 16th Congressional district to challenge Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-Lancaster).  After the state Supreme Court redrew Pennsylvania’s Congressional map, Hartman announced she would run in the new 10th district to challenge Congressman Scott Perry (R-York).

This was Hartman’s second run for Congress, she was the Democratic nominee against Smucker in 2016.  

“I decided to run for Congress three years ago because I want to fight for all central Pennsylvanians– to make sure they were represented in Washington on the issues that matter most to them– from good jobs and workforce development to protecting Social Security and Medicaid. I’d like to thank each and every person who supported our campaign. Though I will not be a candidate for Congress in 2018, I remain deeply committed to these issues and to central Pennsylvania,” Hartman said.  

Democrats Eric Ding, George Scott, Robert Howe, Shavonnia Corbin-Johnson are still in the race.

33 Responses

  1. how can an experienced politician have so many bad signatures on a nominating petition ? we’ve seen overzealous young campaign workers (and circulators, and candidates themselves ) forging some elector signatures when the deadline looms and there aren’t enough good signatures . but that many ???? too bad it costs so much to litigate these petition challenges or there would be a LOT more of them.

    1. Hartman’s petitions were apparently so lacking that she pulled out rather than litigate. Remember, this was a well-funded candidate with the full backing of the Democratic Establishment. It makes no sense. There has to be more to this. Also keep in mind that she reportedly filed a sworn affidavit claiming residency in the 11th District which was also being challenged. You just don’t see this kind of thing where the candidate has money and the backing of the Democratic machine. I don’t pretend to know why, but I believe Hartman simply decided to bow out, but she would have been better off not even submitting signatures. I doubt she will recover from this, which is fine with me. I did not vote for her in 2014 in PA 16, and I am a Democrat.

      1. I’d be interested to hear what happened, although I doubt we ever will. Candidates with very little money or establishment routinely manage to complete this process quite easily, so something else must have happened here.

    2. Among Democrats in Pennsylvania and Washington, cracks in Hartman’s support were beginning to show. Emily’s List has reported that it was re-evaluating it’s endorsement of Hartman. African-American groups were preparing complaints against Hartman’s campaign. The DCCC was reportedly re-reviewing Hartman’s donors and their connections. And there were plenty of questions about Hartman’s actual campaign positions. Still, with such a large war chest, Hartman was expected to win her primary.

      The case of Hartman’s petitions is strange. She seemed to have enough stalwart supporters to easily get the required signatures. She also had the money to hire professionals to help her get signatures. There is no report that with one week or with days left, her campaign alerted supporters in an emergency drive for signatures. Chaos and a total lack of preparedness in her well-funded and supposedly well-organized campaign is now apparent. Yet, her poorly funded and understaffed opponents were able to get their signatures. What could be a greater sign that Hartman is not well-suited to lead? Donors and voters should remember this when Hartman prepares her next offensive in Central PA.

  2. She needs to stay far away from politics. She’s a joke and people saw right through her.

  3. This all strikes me as most curious. If Huffingtpon Post got it right she only turned in about 1300 signatures, about 900 of which were invalid (non-registered voters, not registered Demnocrats, non-residents of the district or even the State, etc.). How can a seasoned candidate with buckets of money have screwed up so badly. Was it deliberate? Was she sabotaged? Finally, what does she intend doing with her $350k war chest? As far as I can see no media person has asked her that question, and her press release did not volunteer it. The proper thing to do would be to give it to Jess King since most of that money was donated when they were both competing in the PA-16 primary, and Jess is now the officially endorsed candidate.
    Hartman really needs to be pressed on this issue.

    1. Her team had no experience with petitions. She brought in people with local experience to get it done in 2016. Her team thought she would be received as the anointed one in the district – but they couldn’t have been more wrong. inexperience, hubris, and being generally disliked ended Hartman’s career.

    2. Her team had no experience with petitions. She brought in people with local experience to get it done in 2016, but they found out who she really was and left her team in mid-2016. Her team thought she would be received as the anointed one in the district – but they couldn’t have been more wrong. inexperience, hubris, and being generally disliked ended Hartman’s career.

  4. good choice Christian is to remove your name from the ballot for a term for congress maybe I will support you in a future US Senate run or a governor run in 2022 if Pat Toomey decides to retire or when potentially tom wolf is term limited if he does wins reelection this year though I maybe will not is support you though because I will maybe support someone else maybe because.

    1. Also a good choice Cristin is to remove your name from the ballot for a term for congress maybe I will support you in a future US Senate run or a governor run in 2022 if Pat Toomey decides to retire or when potentially tom wolf is term limited if he does wins reelection this year though I maybe will not is support you though because I will maybe support someone else maybe because.

    2. Also a good choice Kristina is to remove your name from the ballot for a term for congress maybe I will support you in a future US Senate run or a governor run in 2022 if Pat Toomey decides to retire or when potentially tom wolf is term limited if he does wins reelection this year though I maybe will not is support you though because I will maybe support someone else maybe because.

  5. Candidates with way less money and infrastructure have been able to successfully complete the petition process quite easily. What was she doing this whole time? You’d think after running for 2.5 years she would have some go-to volunteers who would be reliable enough to get this done.

  6. She ended her campaign because she knew she didn’t have enough good signatures to overcome the petition challenge. She was challenged because she had a lot of money, was a real threat, and likely would have prevailed. She worried too much about spending money creating a TV ad, and not enough on gathering signatures.

    Also, she didn’t use VoterWeb, which means: she didn’t have a good up-to-date database geared toward petitions. No VoterWeb candidate has ever been kicked off in a petition challenge yet.

    1. It probably also didn’t help that she switched districts so quickly, and couldn’t rally a team in PA-10 necessary to get enough signatures.

      It’s almost as if money isn’t the only thing that matters in elections. Huh.

      1. There were candidates who jumped in late (not the full 3-week period) and with a lot less money, who got more than twice as signatures as her. Also, while it’s more convenient if the team lives in the new district, the circulator are not required to live in the district, so any prior team she had could have circulated (though with some difficulty).

        However, having an up-to-date database is crucial.

        1. If that’s the case, that means she couldn’t scrape up, what, 25 people or so to circulate for her? That’s inexcusable either way. She was the party darling unless I’m mistaken. After underperforming HRC in 2016 not sure where she goes from here.

      1. PA Brawler-

        That will be shock to my 9 state rep candidates (and two I’m likely to add if I can save them from petition challenges), my two state senate candidates, my 5 congressional candidates and my 2 Lt Gov candidates.

        How many candidates are clients of yours?

        Oh? Zero? Yeah.

  7. She was pushed out by DCCC + Emily’s List. They didn’t want her to embarrass them any further. But thats nice of you to cover for her PoliticsPA by just running her press release unquestioned in its entirety.

  8. Col. Scott is a great candidate, someone who could actually win. He call Perry out for wrapping himself around the flag at every opportunity. Hopefully DCCC wakes up and supports him like they did with Lamb.

    1. We already have a Republican in that district, Johnny. If Scott wants the seat he should Primary Perry instead.

      1. Progressives- anyone who doesn’t agree with us 100% of the time and twice on Sunday is a Republican. Got it, cool.

        1. Corbin-Johnson and Howe are great candidates. Scott and Deng are spoilers.

  9. No story or reference to the petition challenge and the additional challenge to her alleged false residency that would have been filed if she didn’t bail out???

  10. Nothing about the challenge to her terrible petitions – which is what really drive her from the race!!!

    How about the full story PoliticsPA!

  11. That CD should still stay with the GOP. Hard to see a Dem winning there. If that happens, then anything is possible. Then again, CD 18 happened. Still, that area is strongly red.

    1. Hard to see a Dem winning an R+1 district that includes Harrisburg and York? Dems have a better chance in the new 10th than they did in the old 18th.

      1. Maybe you are right. We will see in 7 months. I am dying to vote. I have already volunteered to be a driver for those who can’t make it.

      2. Did some digging. The Cook figures are not correct. They actually had PA 6 as D+41. They are going to clean it up over the next several days. That PA 10 CD is not D+1. Not even close.

      3. It is actually R+6. They have incorrect numbers listed at that part of the site. I tried to give you a link to the other part with the correct #’s.

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