Days after Conor Lamb’s upset victory in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, Republicans are looking for someone to blame. While some are using the opportunity to slam President Trump, others are targeting Rick Saccone, the lackluster candidate who made Roy Moore look good.
While the mood of the country is anti-Republican, Trump’s approval in PA-18 hovered around 50 percent, according to the last Gravis poll taken before the election, hardly enough to cause a landslide for Democrats. As Samuel DeMarco, a Republican who sits on the Allegheny County Council told The New York Times, “I don’t think the Saccone campaign ever gave the public a compelling reason to vote for him. This is a Saccone thing when it comes to Republicans. It’s a Trump thing when it comes to Democrats.”
By all accounts, Saccone’s ground game was horrendous. He failed to raise even a million dollars, missed public events, and his physical appearance, including his mustache, left much to be desired.
So, how did Republicans get stuck with such a lackluster candidate? According to several sources familiar with the situation, the GOP has State Sen. Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, to blame for Saccone’s nomination.
Ward was one of the candidates running for the GOP nomination along with Saccone (who recently dropped out of his bid for the U.S. Senate where he was considered a non-entity) and State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Allegheny.
Reschenthaler was a rising star in the Pennsylvania GOP. In 2016, he won re-election in his district in the suburbs of Pittsburgh by 20 points and raised more than $1.7 million. A Navy veteran and just 33 years old, he was the Republican answer to Conor Lamb and was mentored by outgoing Rep. Tim Murphy. By all accounts, Ward had a personal dislike for Reschenthaler, to say the least.
At the Republican conferee meeting held in November, Ward was defeated on the first ballot earning just more than 30 percent to Saccone’s 34 percent and Reschenthaler’s 35 percent.
According to a conferee attendee, Ward asked her voters to support Saccone in the second ballot despite his evident and well-known weaknesses. When asked how he would he raise the millions of dollars needed to compete in the district, Saccone told attendees, “I don’t know, but God will provide.”
Reschenthaler had the potential to raise millions and tap into swing voters and millennials. However, 50 out of Ward’s 66 delegates voted for Saccone, and he defeated the 33-year old state senator 58 to 42 percent.
Of course, Lamb went on to defeat Saccone and flipped 172 election precincts that voted for Trump in 2016, 142 of which were in Reschenthaler’s state Senate district.
On Thursday, Reschenthaler announced he was circulating petitions for Pennsylvania’s new 14th district and his primary opponent is going to be … Rick Saccone, reported The Times Online.
Ward may be just a small player in the larger story of why the GOP lost on Tuesday, but her decision to back the weaker candidate created the sequence of events that elected Conor Lamb. It’s similar to Mitch McConnell’s decision to spend millions of dollars attacking Rep. Mo Brooks in Alabama that led to the election of Doug Jones for U.S. Senate.
If Republicans are going to survive the Democratic wave amassing in 2018, they need to stop taking voters for granted and assuming they’ll just vote Republican.
Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer based in New York.
