GOP targets Lamb’s House seat for 2020

National party views him as being vulnerable

If it’s up to Republicans, Conor Lamb’s 2020 won’t be any easier than his 2018.

After narrowly winning a special election for Congress and — after court-ordered redistricting — a subsequent battle against a fellow incumbent to retain a seat all in the same year, Mr. Lamb now is on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s early list of U.S. House seats the GOP wants to flip next election cycle.

Of 55 targeted districts on an initial list released Friday, 31 were won by President Donald Trump in 2016. That includes voters in Mr. Lamb’s newly redrawn 17th District in Pennsylvania going for Mr. Trump by a narrow margin.

Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the NRCC, said Mr. Lamb’s seat is a pickup opportunity for Republicans because the president will be on the ballot again in 2020.

The NRCC is framing its battle to take back the U.S. House as a choice between freedom and socialism, urging voters to fight back against what it says is the Democratic Party’s shift to the left.

Democrats like Mr. Lamb will have to run on a record of what they did in two years of having House control, said Mr. McAdams.

“Conor Lamb is going to have to answer for every one of the radical ideas the left is pushing through in his caucus,” Mr. McAdams said.

But to Mr. Lamb’s campaign manager, the congressman took on “wealthy outside groups” twice in 2018 and is ready to do it again in 2020.

“This is a competitive district and we expect another tough, expensive race,” said Abby Nassif Murphy, his campaign manager. “We’re going to keep running a grassroots campaign funded by real people, not corporate PACs and special interests.”

Ms. Murphy added that Mr. Lamb will keep holding town halls, representing his constituents and “working across the aisle to get things done.”

Mr. Lamb beat Republican Keith Rothfus, also an incumbent congressman, in November by more than 10 points in the district that spans the northern half of Allegheny County, most of Beaver

County and a small section of Butler.

Besides the 17th, the campaign arm of House Republicans is also going after Susan Wild in Pennsylvania’s 7th District and Matt Cartwright in the 8th on the eastern side of the state.

Democrats started to shape their battleground in January, when their congressional campaign committee identified 33 seats it’s targeting — a list including U.S. Reps Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania’s 16th, Scott Perry in the 10th and Brian Fitzpatrick in the 1st.