YORK, Pa. — Congressman Scott Perry finds himself in a place he’s never been before. He’s now in a district where he’s never represented 45 percent of the voters, he is facing his first tough general election, and he is holding onto a slim lead.
“It’s a very tight race,” Perry admitted. Thanks to redistricting, he’s gone from a district President Trump won by 21 percentage points to one Trump carried by 9. A more rural population has been replaced with a district with three cities filled with state workers and upper-middle-class suburbs — constituents who aren’t wild about the president.
“In many ways it is like running in an open seat, where voters don’t know who you really are, and that is sometimes tough when ads are out there trying to define you as something you are not,” the Pennsylvania lawmaker said.
Perry is an Iraq War veteran and small business owner. A brigadier general in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, he said he is spending his time both helping his constituents in his old seat, the 4th Congressional District, half of whom will not be voting for him Tuesday, to earning the trust of his new voters in the 10th Congressional District.
“So every waking second that I have, that I’m not doing official business or some kind of scheduled campaign event, I’m still a guy who really enjoys and thinks that getting in front of people on their doorsteps is important,” he said. “ So almost every single day, if there’s a spare hour, you will find me out knocking on doors, ringing doorbells, and I have an old newspaper bag that we used to deliver papers when we were kids and I fill that with my campaign stuff and I walk up and down the street ringing doorbells and knocking on doors and seeing people while they’re out walking their dog and have a conversation with them.”
His opponent George Scott is a pastor and also a veteran. Scott has no record to defend and has cast himself as a centrist. He has benefited from tons of cash, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has invested in his race.
Scott left his role as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in East Berlin in the summer of 2017 when he announced his candidacy, saying at the time he was influenced by Barack Obama when the former president urged people to run for local offices in reaction to the 2016 elections.
“If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself,” Obama said in an emotional farewell address.
When Scott jumped in, he had little chance of winning the seat. But then, the Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania state supreme court redrew the state’s congressional lines to favor Democrats last February. Now, he is within a hair of making that “call to service” a reality.
The latest live polling done by the New York Times Upshot and Siena College Oct. 23 to Oct. 26 showed a very tight contest with Perry holding 45 percent of the support, Scott holding 43 percent, and 12 percent are undecided.
“This seat may have been one of the biggest philosophical shifts of any of the seats the state supreme court made when they redid the entire congressional districts,” said Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg media consultant, Republican, and Perry constituent.
“I think one of the things you’ll want to watch is whether or not the vote turns out in the three cities. That’s where Perry is particularly vulnerable, in my judgment, in Harrisburg and York and in Carlisle, which are kind of the three legs of the stool. And then, I think you gotta see what the base turnout is between the two parties,” he said.
Gerow said the outside help Scott has received for his ground game has been very impressive, but he also believes the polling has missed the enthusiasm and intensity of GOP voters.
“There are Scott signs everywhere in the cities,” he said. “In this district and throughout the state, wherever I’ve gone, the Republican intensity is very high, very strong, and I don’t think pollsters are capturing it, for a whole lot of reasons.”
Gerow says if Perry loses, it is going to be a very bad night for Republicans. “It is a true blue wave not when you see not swing seats that voted for both Obama and Clinton in the past two elections, but when you Republican seats that voted overwhelmingly for Trump going to Democrats,” he said.
“Now, that would be a true wave,” he said.
Amy Walter, the national editor of The Cook Political Report, agrees. She wrote in her analysis Thursday that “it’s hard to call winning only in districts that a Democratic presidential nominee has already captured at least once a ‘wave.’”
“To me, a wave means that one party expands its reach into new territory — territory that hasn’t been won before. For example, if Democrats win a disproportionate share of those ‘already won’ districts AND pick up seats in districts where they’ve never won — like Georgia’s 7th held by GOP Rep. Rob Woodall or Washington’s 3rd CD held by Republican Rep. Jamie Herrera Butler — that constitutes a wave in my book,” she wrote.
