Pennsylvania is already a top 2022 campaign battleground, with high-stakes open-seat races for governor and senator. Throw in a batch of competitive House races, and the Keystone State election results are likely to be a strong gauge of whether Republicans have regained their momentum or if Democrats can field an effective defense in difficult electoral circumstances.
Six or seven of Pennsylvania’s 17 House seats are likely to be somewhat or highly competitive. But three stand out as House Republicans try to net the five seats they need to win a House majority for the first time since losing it in the 2018 election cycle.
In the Lehigh Valley 7th Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Susan Wild is trying to stave off a challenge from businesswoman Lisa Scheller. Next door, in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and northeastern Pennsylvania 8th District, Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright faces a repeat challenge from 2020 GOP nominee Jim Bognet, a political consultant and attorney. And in Pennsylvania’s open 17th District, in the western and northern Pittsburgh suburbs, Chris Deluzio (D), an Iraq War veteran and attorney, is running against former Ross Township Commissioner Jeremy Shaffer (R).
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Pennsylvania, like 43 other states, is using a new House map starting in November 2022 due to redistricting. Pennsylvania is, in a sense, a microcosm of the already pitched battle for House control. Republicans are emphasizing President Joe Biden’s political and policy woes, including still-high gas prices and the worst inflation in decades. Democrats are talking up the Biden administration’s domestic achievements, like the new Inflation Reduction Act, while going on offense on the abortion issue. Democrats also aren’t exactly dismayed at the reemergence of former President Donald Trump in daily headlines due to his mounting legal troubles and his influence in Republican primaries.
House races in Pennsylvania have been overshadowed partly by a barnburner of a governor’s race between state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) and state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. Pennsylvania’s November Senate race is also a top national priority for both parties. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) is running against former television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz (R) in a contest that could decide control of what is now a 50-50 Senate.
Those statewide Pennsylvania candidates will appear on 7th District ballots along with contenders for the local House seat — pitting Wild in a rematch against Scheller, her 2020 Republican foe. Wild first won a similarly drawn district in the 2018 Democratic wave. In 2020, Wild staved off a challenge from Scheller, a former Lehigh County commissioner, by a relatively narrow 51.9% to 48.1% margin.
The outcome was similar nearly two years ago in the 8th District. There, Cartwright, first elected to the House in 2012, beat Republican rival Bognet 51.8% to 48.2% — that as Trump was beating Biden in the district despite eventually losing Pennsylvania and, of course, the national election. If Cartwright wins he will, in fact, be with the retirement of Rep. Ron Kind (WI), the only House Democrat to have prevailed in a Trump-won district in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022.
There’s no rematch in the 17th District, where the newly drawn Pittsburgh-area seat could truly tip either way. Deluzio fits the mold of the outgoing Democratic congressman in a similarly drawn district that’s about to disappear, Rep. Conor Lamb. Deluzio is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Iraq War veteran who went on to Georgetown University Law Center. Lamb, who lost to Fetterman for the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nomination, is an alum of the University of Pennsylvania, its law school, and a onetime JAG Corps attorney and federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh.
Shaffer, the 17th District Republican nominee, meanwhile, earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Shaffer then “started a company dedicated to improving our crumbling roads and bridges,” per his campaign website.
Republicans are bullish on all three House races in Pennsylvania, in addition to other congressional contests across the state.
“Public and private polls show voters want nothing to do with Democrats’ toxic progressive agenda,” Samantha Bullock, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “Pennsylvania’s vulnerable Democrat incumbents have proven to be rubber stamps for the failed policies that have led to rising prices at the grocery store and gas pump, and the socialist candidates Democrats have recruited elsewhere promise to be more of the same, putting Republicans in optimal position to flip multiple seats.”
House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is just as confident.
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“Democrats are in an excellent position to win this November in Pennsylvania because our strong candidates are focused on lowering costs and protecting abortion rights as Republicans run extreme, out-of-touch candidates who want to impose on Pennsylvania their dangerous agenda to ban abortion and attack Social Security,” DCCC spokesman James Singer told the Washington Examiner.
David Mark is managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
