PRIMARY COMPETITION
What fuels candidates’ bids to secure a seat in the Pennsylvania Legislature?
Laura Harding’s decision to become a political candidate for the first time in her mid-40s and to run for state House drew on personal things — among them her career, community work, and knowledge of the House district — but the trigger for it all was a job opening.
The heavily Democratic 103rd House District seat, representing pieces of Cumberland and Dauphin counties, opened up when 12-year incumbent state Rep. Patty Kim, D-Harrisburg, decided to run for the Senate. Ms. Harding, a consultant and Navy veteran who follows politics and embraces progressivism, knew that 2024 was the time for her shot.
Four other Democrats in the 103rd came to the same conclusion.
With Pennsylvania’s legislative candidate lists for the April 23 primary election nearly final, the fiveway Democratic primary in the 103rd is tied with a five-way Republican contest in a York County district for the most crowded contest in the state. Overall — and with the possibility that the numbers might still change — there are 171 Democratic candidates for the House and 163 Republicans, along with 23 Republican and 21 Democratic candidates for Senate seats.
Some close observers question if there is any significance to Democrats having more candidates for the House, or Republicans more for the Senate. Drivers of those numbers, they say, include the challenger suppressing aura around incumbents viewed as unbeatable; vacancies created by departures; competition between factions within a party; and even individual considerations of whether the person feels they can make a difference.
But Jack Treadway, professor emeritus of political science at Kutztown University, said the totals do give at least a hint of whether a party has its act together.
“It is a reflection, to some degree at least, of the viability of the organization,” Mr. Treadway said. “Traditionally, most candidates get involved because the party recruited them.”
The candidate-generating power of vacancies is obvious.
The five-way Republican primary race in York County’s 92nd House District was set off by incumbent Republican Rep. Dawn Keefer’s decision to seek a seat in the Senate. Four Republicans are vying in the 63rd House District in Armstrong and Clarion counties, where Republican Rep. Donna Oberlander is retiring. Three Democrats will vie for the nomination in Allegheny County’s 38th House District, where Democratic Rep. Nick Pisciottano has decided to seek the Senate seat being left open by retiring Sen. Jim Brewster.
Sam DeMarco, the Allegheny County Republican Committee chairperson, sees the race for Brewster’s open 45th Senate District seat as a bit of a bellwether for the General Assembly this year. Mr. Pisciottano is facing Democrat Makenzie White in the primary, while Republicans Jen Dintini and Kami Stulginskas also are seeking the seat.
Registration tilts heavily toward Democrats in the district, but Mr. DeMarco noted that Republican county executive candidate Joe Rockey and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump both carried the district, and Republican Nicole Ziccarelli made a strong showing against Mr. Brewster in 2020.
No Republicans are running in Allegheny County’s heavily Democratic 32nd, 34th and 35th House districts, where three Democrats were elected in special elections last year.
“In districts like that, it is sometimes hard to find a Republican to run if they don’t believe there is a real chance for success,” Mr. DeMarco said.
He said it was no surprise that Democrats generated more House candidates, because their party controls the House. The same is true for the Senate, where Republicans are in control, he said.
But Abhi Rahman, spokesman for the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said there was big significance in Democrats having a larger number of House candidates. In one sense, he said, it reflects a Democratic belief in “bottom of the ticket” power — as opposed to the traditional focus on presidential candidates’ having a “coattails” effect.
“The bottom of the ticket has the same amount of impact,” Mr. Rahman said. “The more candidates you have, the more people you have knocking on doors. We call it the ‘reverse coattails’ effect.”
At the same time, Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall Poll, said 2022 showed the influence that higher-on-the-ticket races can have on legislative ones. Democrats’ strong showing in legislative races, he said, was assisted by the ballot strength of gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Senate candidate John Fetterman.
Even off-year elections may be a factor.
Last year, Monroe County had its own, county-level “blue wave” when Democrats nearly swept all row offices in the municipal election, according to Tameko Patterson, Monroe Democratic Committee chairperson. The wins, she said, pumped up party enthusiasm in the county on the New Jersey border north of Easton.
Democrats locally “feel they have more of an opportunity to win” going into an even bigger election year, she said.
Another basic driver of candidate numbers is “internal strife” within parties, according to Chris Borick, a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College. For Democrats, that might mean primary election battles between progressive candidates and more moderate ones, and for Republicans it might mean contests between traditional and populist candidates, Mr. Borick said.
Lawmakers earn at least $106,000 a year and have access to a generous benefits package. But Mr. Borick said people who have seniority in other professions sometimes use a “make a difference” measuring stick when deciding whether to run.
If the chamber where they might work is controlled by the other party, Mr. Borick noted, it might be tough to do that. “There is a general belief, or at least a general sense, that you want to be in a House where you can get things done,” he said.
Mr. Yost said deciding to run for a seat in the General Assembly is “an intensely personal decision” that “may be as much a conviction that the opposing party isn’t representing your community or your district the way they should.”