Gerrymandering case sows doubt in big year for House races

HARRISBURG » Lots of people want to run for Congress in Pennsylvania this year, but they may not yet know which district they live in.

The prospect that the state Supreme Court could decide a high-profile gerrymandering case by ordering new boundaries for Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts, including one that has been described as looking like “Goofy kicking Donald Duck,” is sowing uncertainty barely a month before candidates begin circulating petitions.

Primary fields could be jam-packed, driven by Democrats’ anti-Trump fervor and a rush to fill the most open seats in Pennsylvania in decades.

More than 60 people, including 14 sitting U.S. House members, are either committed to running or are kicking the tires on a run, even as district boundaries could get a major overhaul.

“It’s on everybody’s mind, because it leaves big questions of how’s this going to work out,” said Elizabeth Moro, a Democrat and firsttime candidate from southeastern Pennsylvania who wants to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan.

For comparison, there were 41 U.S. House candidates, including 16 incumbents, on Pennsylvania’s primary ballots in 2016.

On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court — which has a 5-2 Democratic majority — will hear arguments in the 7-month-old case urging the court to throw out Pennsylvania’s congressional districts as an unconstitutional gerrymander that unfairly favors Republicans.

To be sure, Republicans who controlled the Legislature and governor’s office following the 2010 census broke decades of geographical precedent when redrawing the map.

They shifted whole counties and cities into different districts and produced contorted boundaries in an effort to protect a Republican advantage in the congressional delegation. They succeeded, securing 13 of 18 seats in a state where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 5 to 4.

In Republican U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta’s 11th District in northeastern Pennsylvania, Republicans cut out Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and sent the district plunging more than 75 miles into south-central Pennsylvania.