Petition day arrives with congressional boundaries in doubt

HARRISBURG » The first day for congressional candidates in Pennsylvania to circulate petitions will arrive amid legal challenges to week-old court-ordered boundaries of the state’s 18 U.S. House districts.

The map of districts continued Monday to spur more would-be candidates to reconsider whether — and where — to run, as Republican challenges to new U.S. House district boundaries awaited action in federal courts.

Perhaps the most prominent name, Pennsylvania’s auditor general, Democrat Eugene DePasquale, said he would not run for Congress, after spending several days considering a shot at a more competitive district in south-central Pennsylvania.

Tuesday is the first day under a delayed schedule to gather signatures to qualify for May 15 primary election ballots. The deadline to submit them is March 20.

More than 70 people had been considering running for Congress in Pennsylvania before a gerrymandering lawsuit prompted the state Supreme Court to redraw the congressional district boundaries last week.

Meanwhile, five incumbent members of Congress from Pennsylvania are not seeking another term this year and a sixth resigned last year, creating the state’s largest number of open seats in four decades and fueling interest in running.

DePasquale now lives in a more competitive district around his York County home that the court-ordered boundaries had created by adding heavily Democratic areas surrounding the city of Harrisburg.

The area had held a solidly Republican Yorkbased district represented by three-term Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry under boundaries drawn in 2011 by Republicans who controlled the Legislature and the governor’s office.

Longtime liberal activist and one-time congressional candidate Gene Stilp said he will seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Perry.