LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Come Tuesday evening, this northeastern Pennsylvania county, along with parts of neighboring Luzerne and Monroe, will provide a glimpse for the country of which party’s voters in Pennsylvania are the most energized to show up in one of the swingiest patches of geography in the state.
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Up for grabs is the state’s 22nd Senate District. It has been held by Democrats ever since Richard Nixon was in his first term.
And for The Office fans, yes, this is the same seat Oscar Martinez is seen running for in the finale of the Scranton-based show.
John Blake, the man who in real life has comfortably held it for the past 10 years, abruptly resigned in February after Democrats purged him from Senate leadership. The centrist was cast aside in favor of progressive freshman women with far less experience. Blake opted to take a job working for the local Democratic congressman instead.
In short, Harrisburg Democrats decided their substantial losses down the ballot in 2020 had occurred because their party was not progressive enough.
Blake’s decision also comes a year after his Senate colleague, John Yudichak, left the Democratic Party after serving two decades in the state legislature to become a registered independent who now caucuses with Senate Republicans.
Yudichak’s senate district neighbors Blake’s in Luzerne County — the same county that helped flip the state for former President Donald Trump in 2016, when county voters supported a Republican for president for the first time since 1988.
At the time, Blake called it “a selfish political bait-and-switch.”
With that in mind, Blake’s decision to quit left both Harrisburg and locals scratching their heads because it made his party vulnerable.
Five years ago, no one would have thought a state Senate seat in Scranton could be vulnerable. But today, Democrats here are saying privately that this race will be close, even if they do not believe it should be.
On Tuesday, voters will decide between Marty Flynn, a Democratic state representative from Scranton, and Chris Chermak, a Republican Lackawanna County commissioner, in a special election to fill the last 18 months of Blake’s term.
Green Party candidate Marlene Sebastianelli and Libertarian Nathan Covington are also on the ballot.
Democrats and Republicans involved behind the scenes agree on one thing: Democratic voters are far less enthused about showing up to vote six months after their candidate won the big one last fall, a sharp contrast with their Republican and independent neighbors. This post-election malaise frustrates Democratic strategists, who are still reeling from an election cycle in which they were expected to make gains in the state legislature. Instead, they lost ground there and also lost two of the state’s constitutional offices.
The first two decades of this century revealed a clear political trend of Pennsylvania’s wealthy suburban counties, especially around Philadelphia, moving toward Democrats. But Lackawanna, Monroe, and Luzerne counties tell the other side of that story, which has been unfolding in many of the state’s working-class, historically Democratic regions. These areas, dotted with smaller cities and families with lower incomes, began to abandon their ancestral party and instead warmed to the Republican Party of the Trump era.
Both Lackawanna and Monroe counties, unlike neighboring Luzerne, remained blue in the last two presidential cycles. But the gap has closed significantly in Republicans’ favor since the beginning of the 21st century. Former President Barack Obama won Lackawanna in 2008 with 63%. In 2020, native son Joe Biden, born here in Scranton, won with just 54%. In Monroe, presidential Democrats slipped by 5 percentage points between Obama and Biden.
The trend is unmistakable, and this Tuesday is the day Republicans hope to make history with a small breakthrough, signaling a broader regional realignment.
Of course, as with every race, this one won’t just be about the voters’ reactions to the national parties. Flynn, for example, may be his own worst enemy. He became notorious locally for a Facebook post he made last year that read, “Keep talking about how bad WE Democrats are, and we will STOP supporting YOUR businesses! You want to make it PERSONAL, and WE will!” He later apologized for the threat. Last week, he had western Pennsylvania state Rep. Conor Lamb here, knocking on doors for him for the race, to boost his street cred with centrist Democrats.
Still, this little race for one of Pennsylvania’s 50 state Senate seats may offer a window into this region and what matters most to voters here at the moment — in a place and at a time when Pennsylvania reflects so many of the nation’s political trends.
