PITTSBURGH — If it were any other year with any other candidates, there would be no nail-biting among Democrats that this race is closer than it should be. After all, a Democrat has held the congressional seat that encompasses Pittsburgh for well over 100 years. For the last 28 years, it was held by Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle, who announced his retirement last fall.
But this is a wave election year favoring Republican candidates. And, just as importantly, it is a race between Democratic state Rep. Summer Lee and Republican Plum Borough Council President Mike Doyle (no relation to the retiring congressman).
The district is so blue that Joe Biden carried it by 20 points just two years ago — for context, no House Republican represents a district that’s bluer than Biden +11. So why have the alarm bells sounded here? One reason is that Lee, an unabashed supporter of the Democratic Socialists of America, is underperforming. The other is Doyle’s doggedness in going to places Republicans don’t go looking for votes.
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And it doesn’t hurt that he shares the outgoing incumbent’s name.
Doyle the Republican has been on the Plum Borough Council for several terms. He said he’s always wanted to run for Congress — he even ran and lost two state House races — but he never wanted to run a Doyle vs. Doyle race. When the 12th District seat was redrawn over the winter, it went from an overwhelmingly Democratic seat that Biden had carried by 30 points to one that is still pretty Democratic but now includes more Republican voters in Westmoreland County and southern Allegheny County suburbs. So he decided to take a chance.
In the Democratic Socialist and social justice world, where the voters skew much further Left, Lee is a rock star. The Braddock native first ran for the state House when she was a community activist and organizer whom few took seriously. But with the backing of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, she ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. Paul Costa to represent a seat that includes parts of Pittsburgh, as well as several downscale working-class towns along the Monongahela River. She has never been embraced by the establishment of her party, who backed her centrist opponent in this spring’s primary election.
That race was brutal and took days to call. When she finally was declared the winner, one of her staunchest supporters, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said in a fundraising appeal that Lee’s victory “demonstrates the strength of the growing, organized progressive and democratic socialist movement.”
Doyle and Lee have both worked this race hard. Two weeks ago, he was walking at the Columbus Day Parade in the Little Italy neighborhood of Bloomfield in Pittsburgh. He personally knocks on hundreds of doors every week, and his volunteers are doing the same thing. Lee is employing the traditional Democratic tactic of appearing at high-profile events with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman or Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey. Her volunteers were knocking on doors as well.
Internal polling shared with the Washington Examiner showed a race within the margin of error.
Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in western Pennsylvania, said several things are at play this year. Biden’s flagging approval, the ads tying Lee to socialism, and Doyle’s name confusion advantage have all combined to create a cliffhanger in a seat that Democrats should never have to worry about.
“The district is a very heavily Democratic-leaning district where Democrats should, in typical years, be able to win, and even in bad years, be able to win by comfortable margins,” said Mikus, who is not working on the race. But he adds that the district is fairly diverse, even within its Democratic areas. “You’ve got various neighborhoods in the city that are extremely progressive; but then there are pockets in the city made up of moderate Democrats.”
Mikus said that once you get outside the city, it gets dicier for a Democrat who is further Left than voters are comfortable with. “You have a mix of blue-collar and older blue-collar voters who may be Democrats but are more culturally conservative, then you have some affluent suburbans who lean Democratic but have issues with the label socialist,” he said.
For Lee to win, she has to get about 70% of the city vote. For Doyle to win, he has to win big everywhere else — the vast majority of the vote comes from outside the city.
Large turnout is expected for this year’s midterm election — pollster Echelon Insights predicts over 125.6 million Americans will turn out for next month’s contests — 53% turnout among the voting-age population, which would top the 2018 midterm elections by about 13 million voters.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said the race is probably hard to poll because of the name quirk. “I guess the challenge for Democrats is making sure that voters understand the ballot,” he said. “It’s a Republican-leaning year to at least some extent, so I could see this being single digits because of the combination of factors. It’d be a huge upset if Doyle actually won.”
