Democrats make gains but lose Pa. high court seat
While voters in New Jersey and Virginia put emphatic blues on the electoral map, Pennsylvania had no 2017 race that would point the way to how red, blue or purple the Commonwealth will be in 2018. But there were hints in Tuesday’s election results of how the Trump-era election landscapeis taking form.
Democrats did well in many races. Nothing new in Democratic Pittsburgh, where what paltry competition there was for mayor and sheriff took place in the spring primary. Sheriff Bill Mullen and Mayor Bill Peduto cruised back into office; the mayor tweeted the Obama “Hope” symbol with the words “It’s back” as results flowed in.
In Pittsburgh City Council, the candidate favored by incumbent Natalia Rudiak, who did not seek re-election, was defeated in the primary by Democrat Anthony Coghill. Mr. Coghill then easily crushed his opponent, Republican Cletus Cibrone-Abate, for the District 4 seat.
Democrats also captured most of the open seats on Superior and Commonwealth courts.
The winner of the biggest prize, however, was a Republican. Interim state Supreme Court Justice Sallie Mundy defeated Democrat Dwayne Woodruff, an Allegheny County Common Pleas Court judge.
There will be no swing of party power on the court, where, thanks to wins in 2015, Democrats will maintain a majority and seem poised to control the top court for at least another decade.
But the tactics that characterized the Supreme Court race were telling, with money and negative ads dominating. The contest pitted a popular former Steeler from Western Pennsylvania against a Republican from the other side of the state already sitting on the court on an interim basis. Justice Mundy out-fundraised Judge Woodruff handily, and in a surprising move in the normally polite judicial race, launched an attack ad late in the campaign.
But this isn’t brand new. In 2015, Democrats swept the statewide judicial seats with help from sharply negative outside advertising — bankrolled by unions and trial lawyers — targeting the GOP.
This year also was one in which Republicans sent out mailers urging people to “vote for judges who share our values and stand for the flag.”
Chris Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College, said that while judicial races have traditionally been “pretty vanilla, when you start bringing in identity and wedge issues, these start to resemble executive and legislative races as opposed to judicial races. If we keep this process for choosing our judges — and it appears we will — I wouldn’t be surprised if [those tactics] become more normal.”
Despite low interest and low turnout in off-year elections, Mr. Borick said, they can herald changes.
“People don’t know much about these races, so they fall back on things like party cues,” he said. “So if you see one party dominate in these races, it can be a signal of where the electorate’s mood is. We saw a sea change in last year’s presidential race and everyone is looking to see what kind of carryover effect that might have this year.”
In the results from Virginiaand New Jersey, where Democrats won the gubernatorial races, a push back to Mr. Trump seemed apparent. As Mr. Borick said, GOP wins would have solidified the idea that Pennsylvania is turning red, while Democratic victories will raise “lots of questions about how durable the Trump coalition will be in the future.”
Pennsylvania’s scattered elections didn’t show such a resoundingly clear pattern, though. Democrats took both open seats on Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, with David Spurgeon and Patrick Connelly the winners.
There was no sign of any Trumpian drain-the-swamp sentiment out there when it came to the judicial retention races. All the statewide judges up for retention were ratified by voters, as were all the Allegheny County Common Pleas judges running for retention.
One surprise swing to the left — even in a Democratic town — was the win of attorney Mik Pappas, running as an Independent for district judge, over Ron Costa Sr., a Morningside Democrat serving his fourth six-year term in Pittsburgh East End.
But the anti-tax mood that has dominated Republican politics was in evidence in a statewide referendum that passed. The question was whether local taxing authorities should be able to exempt residents from paying property taxes on their homes. It leaves up in the air how municipalities, counties and school districts would make up for the lost revenue if they decided to take advantage of the exemption.