PA-01: Fitzpatrick Race A Bellwether for Republicans in Democratic Districts
On Election Night, keep your eyes on Bucks County.
With such great emphasis looming over the presidential and senate races this year, hardly any pundits or political watchers are viewing a race for the U.S. House as a “must watch.”
Yet if there is such a race, it might very well be Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s bid for re-election here in the Delaware Valley. It’s a race that could be a bellwether for moderate Republicans across the country and might even foreshadow the future of two-party politics in a country becoming more polarized by the day.
“What I’m most eager to see from the Fitzpatrick race is if the wave of nationalizing congressional races will crash over the 1st CD and sweep out one of the last of the members of Congress that clings to a very localized approach,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College told Delaware Valley Journal. “As a political analyst I’m very interested if the ‘all politics is local adage’ has staying power at the congressional race in an area whenever everything is nationalized.”
Fitzpatrick is the lone Republican in the Delaware Valley’s congressional delegation, and he’s one of just three Republicans in the House in 2018 to have held on to a district carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
To pull off that feat, he has ceaselessly cultivated a bipartisan resume. A Washington D.C. think tank that tracks bipartisanship ranked Fitzpatrick the most bipartisan House member in the current congress, earning the highest bipartisan score the model had ever given out.
https://delawarevalleyjournal.com/fitzpatrick-race-a-bellwether-for-republicans-in-democratic-districts/
