Penn.cil thin margin
Crucial House race is a virtual tie
Democratic and Republican candidates were locked in a near dead heat early Wednesday in a deep-red Pennsylvania congressional district that President Trump carried by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016.
Conor Lamb, a Democratic former federal prosecutor, held a 579vote lead over GOP state Rep. Rick Saccone in a special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District outside Pittsburgh.
In the early hours Wednesday, with only absentee ballots yet to be counted, the tally stood at 113,111 votes for the Democrat and 112,532 for the Republican.
Those absentee ballots come from GOP-leaning areas of the district, where Saccone would need to win a significant share of the votes.
“We’re going to be working late into the night, into tomorrow,” Saccone told supporters at the Youghiogheny Country Club.
“Don’t give up and we’ll keep it up. We’re going to win it.”
The seat was put in play when longtime GOP Rep. Tim Murphy resigned in the wake of an embarrassing sex scandal.
The pro-life Republican had an extramarital affair with a younger woman and then asked her to have an abortion — although it turned out she wasn’t pregnant.
Just 16 months ago, Trump easily carried Murphy’s 18th Congressional District, beating Hillary Clinton by 58-39 percent.
Saccone has fully embraced Trump and the president campaigned for him.
The state lawmaker grabbed headlines Monday by telling supporters that he needed be elected to Congress because Democrats hate Trump, America — and God.
In contrast, Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine veteran, ran a locally focused campaign. He distanced himself from national Democrats, and said he wouldn’t vote for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House Dem leader, should his party retake the majority.
Saccone, 60, hoped his late pleas would be enough for Republicans to hold a seat that had been so GOP-safe, Democrats didn’t even field a candidate to face Murphy in 2014 and 2016.
Murphy beat a Democrat in 2012 by 64-36 percent.
Even if Lamb were to come up short, Democrats will likely claim that making this race so close in a Trump stronghold bodes well for them for November’s midterm elections.
The Republicans, meanwhile, tried to spin the close race, noting that Lamb is a moderate and that the third candidate, a Libertarian, garnered 1,372 votes.