Pennsylvania voters again reject political elites
Voters made it clear in this month’s primary election that they like political outsiders, maybe more now than ever.
But party leaders have struggled to accept that. They tend to prefer real politicians who know how the game is supposed to be played.
One of my favorite examples was Pennsylvania’s Democratic senatorial primary in 2016. The bosses went all in on party loyalist Katie McGinty, with money and endorsements, even though her Democratic primary opponent, former Navy Adm. Joe Sestak, had nearly beaten Republican Pat Toomey in 2010, a terrible election year for Democrats.
I felt then and still feel that the Democrats threw that 2016 election away by not supporting Sestak, who I believe would have been much more likely to defeat Toomey in the fall. But the prickly Sestak wouldn’t play ball with them.
They opted for comfort level over electability. It cost them.
This year, many party leaders seemed to prefer Rep. Conor Lamb, a polished moderate Democrat who has been successful winning elections in Trump country. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, way rougher around the edges than even Sestak, won easily, establishing himself as an unlikely political rock star in the process.
The hulking Fetterman, hoodie and shorts-wearing former mayor of a gritty little steel town, is the perfect candidate for the growing population of people of both and no parties who are sick of political elites. Policywise, he’s been most associated with the drive to legalize marijuana, far from a mainstream position when he first started talking about it.
Growing disdain for politicians-as-usual has been just as pronounced on the Republican side.
The most shocking manifestation locally was the apparent
Republican primary defeat — or, if further counting changes the result, major scare — of one of Pennsylvania’s most effective state senators, Pat Browne, at the hands of fringy political novice Jarrett Coleman. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.
Republican leadership was aghast at the way state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a right-fringe insurrectionist who marched with traitors on Jan. 6 and has continued to parrot Donald Trump’s lies at every opportunity, seized control of their gubernatorial primary.
Despite their last-minute efforts to thwart him as someone who will be unelectable in the fall, he won easily.
Another Jan. 6 participant and ultra-MAGA, Kathy Barnette, made a strong late run at the state senatorial nomination, finishing third and exerting a big influence on the results.
The candidate who seems to
have prevailed pending further counting, Dr. Oz, was still another nontraditional candidate, a New Jersey celebrity doctor whose political views shifted drastically to fit the occasion and his endorsement by Trump.
In both the most important statewide elections, I suspect Democratic leaders are delighted at the Republican nominees, easier targets than more mainstream Republican candidates such as apparent senatorial runner up Dave McCormick or gubernatorial also-rans Lou Barletta and Bill McSwain.
But if Pennsylvania Democrats are feeling smug about their prospects this fall, consider this: The ultimate shocking victory by a political outsider was Donald Trump in 2016.
It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely populist than a silver spoon city slicker like Trump. He somehow convinced a lot of
Republicans and Independents that he was a man of the people who could transcend politics and shake up Washington, instead ushering in four years of epic corruption and dysfunction.
I still was a registered Republican in 2016, but by then, I was mostly voting for Democrats outside of Charlie Dent, Pat Browne and other local Republicans I admired.
I held my nose and voted for Trump in that primary, specifically because their ranks of presidential contenders, with a couple of exceptions, were so terrible that I figured it was safest to help them nominate someone who was absolutely unelectable in a Pennsylvania general election. Whoops.
The stakes for Pennsylvanians this fall couldn’t be higher, particularly in the gubernatorial election.
Given the likelihood of continued
GOP control of our Legislature and the U.S. Supreme Court’s lurch to the right, we can expect big threats to abortion rights, contraception, LGBTQ protections and even allegiance to election results if Mastriano gets to the governor’s mansion.
Remember, this was a guy who wanted our 2020 presidential preference ignored so Donald Trump could get our state’s electoral votes. He would single-handedly shift us from swing-state purple to deep red, in every way imaginable.
Unelectable? I would have thought so before 2016.
Now I’m not so sure.
So my advice to Democrats, moderate Republicans and Independents is simple:
Don’t be smug. Be desperate.