How Dems went big to save their slim Pennsylvania majority
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats in Pennsylvania dodged a bullet last week, thanks to voters’ anger over abortion rights being threatened — and an assist from Gov. Josh Shapiro.
On Tuesday, the party held onto its razor-thin majority in the state House, winning a special election for a seat in the Philadelphia suburbs. Democrats had gone all in on the race, spending nearly $1 million and even securing a last-minute endorsement from President Joe Biden to back Heather Boyd, a former congressional aide running for the seat.
Ahead of the election, their all-out efforts were a bit of a head-scratcher. After all, the party had won the seat by 32 percentage points just last year.
But there was good reason for that freakout, with Shapiro’s team working behind the scenes to defend the slim majority in the chamber, according to details shared exclusively with Score.
Democrats’ anxiety began mounting a few weeks before the election, when rumors began swirling that the race was close. That was a big problem: Democrats only controlled the House by a single seat, 101-100. If Republicans flipped the seat they would have flipped the House. That would have meant a Republican majority in each chamber, giving the state legislature the ability to put an anti-abortion constitutional amendment on the ballot in the future, circumventing Shapiro entirely, Democrats feared.
Shapiro’s team privately commissioned a poll in mid-April to assess the situation — and it showed their fears were well-founded. Republican Katie Ford and Boyd were statistically tied in the Delaware County district. In a hypothetical low-turnout scenario, Ford was ahead 42-39, while in a higher-turnout situation, Boyd led 42-39.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-score/2023/05/22/how-dems-went-big-to-save-their-slim-pennsylvania-majority-00098109
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NO- They are NOT going to turn PA into the ‘next FL’!
And, Mastriano will not get anywhere with his next foray…
