Pennsylvania’s Senate Race Will Be a Battle Royale

The 2016 election was a reminder that Pennsylvania’s fractious regions produce unpredictable political results. The upcoming contest between Casey and Barletta—likely to cost more than $100 million—will showcase the complicated boundaries that create such outcomes. The campaign itself will be a competition shaped by history, demography, and culture. Casey’s father was a popular Pennsylvania governor. Barletta is the former mayor of Hazleton, a city that encapsulates Trumpism. Their battle will serve as a national testing ground for Trump’s impact on mid-term elections.

The Casey Brand

What led to this showdown? It begins when Casey’s father made his fourth attempt at governor in 1986. It was then that Carville made his famous interpretation. At the time, Carville had been recovering from a bruising Senate loss in Texas. As the Democratic operative Bob Shrum recalls in his memoir, Carville was “sitting on his couch in Louisiana watching reruns of his favorite television comedy, The Andy Griffith Show.” Then he received a game-changing call of deployment to Pennsylvania, where he worked with Shrum to manage Bob Casey, Sr.’s campaign

A former auditor general, Casey had defeated Ed Rendell, Philadelphia’s irascible district attorney, in the Democratic primary. In November, he faced Bill Scranton, the lieutenant governor under Dick Thornburgh. Scranton’s father was a former governor whose name was floated as a possible Republican candidate in the 1964 presidential election. Both father and son were products of the city named after their industrialist family. Casey, in turn, grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Scranton. What followed was asymmetrical warfare between a moderate Republican and a populist Democrat.

The Casey campaign crafted the candidate’s biography into a slogan: “Bob Casey is coming back—and so is Pennsylvania.” In the mid-1980s, industrial decline was slowly corroding cities and towns built by coal, steel, and lumber. Casey resonated with voters in these communities. They nurtured an allegiance to the New Deal’s legacy, supported organized labor, and maintained a conservative disposition. They also approved the steadfast pro-life position held by Casey, who believed life not only applied to opposing abortion, but also helping the poor and elderly. And yet Casey’s fourth attempt, despite possessing a clear message, still appeared futile. His opponent had enjoyed a sustaining lead throughout the campaign, an advantage certainly helped by Ronald Reagan’s cross-party popularity in Pennsylvania.

But on the weekend before Election Day, Carville released a nuclear television ad that wiped away the Republican’s comfortable position. Known as the legendary “guru ad,” the commercial ominously featured sitar music and images of the bearded Maharishi and a young, disheveled Scranton. The narrator referenced the candidate’s practice of transcendental meditation with a clear insinuation: Scranton is a whacked out hippie.

The ad only played in media markets outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the very regions with conservative Republicans and Democrats who would respond at the polls. Casey learned the magic of negative campaigning in Pennsylvania, known for its ticket-splitting electorate. Casey defeated Scranton by a margin of less than 2 percent.

Casey served two terms as governor without courting controversy or scandal. But he became a national figure on pro-life issues, passionately expressing his opposition to abortion just as most Democrats began rejecting such an affirmation. In 1989, Casey signed legislation placing limitations on abortion. Planned Parenthood legally challenged the bill, waging a fight that led to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992. The Court affirmed most of the law’s limitations, but at that point the legal victory was secondary to Casey’s precarious position within the party.

The Supreme Court’s ruling arrived two weeks before the Democratic convention in New York City, where Bill Clinton was selected the party’s presidential nominee. Casey hoped to speak at the convention, but party leaders ignored his requests because of his pro-life position. They banished Casey to a nosebleed seat in Madison Square Garden, where he watched a top fundraiser for his 1990 Republican opponent proclaim her support for abortion.

In his 1996 memoir, Fighting for Life, Casey recalled pro-abortion advocates selling convention buttons depicting him as the Pope. He was subsequently heckled and pilloried by members of his own party. “To me, it was simply a case of anti-Catholic bigotry,” Casey wrote. “What was going on here? What had become of the Democratic Party I once knew?”

The Clinton campaign’s snub portended the party’s future path. Casey’s treatment displayed the Democrats’ increasing intolerance for opposing points of view. While they recruited and built a diverse voting coalition, this diversity didn’t apply to wide-ranging perspectives. The Democratic party was becoming a retreat for subgroup identities, rather than a guardian for the working class. Casey’s coalition, typically middle class ethnic Catholics, felt politically orphaned. But in Pennsylvania, Casey’s reputation remained untarnished.

When Casey died in 2000, his political legacy reflected the centrist sensibilities of Pennsylvania’s voters. Bob Casey Jr., who began his career practicing law in Scranton, inherited this legacy. Name recognition, combined with an understated persona, paved an almost predestined electoral path for the son.

Casey the younger first entered politics in 1996, serving two terms as auditor general, the position once held by his father. In 2002, Casey again followed his father’s path when he challenged Rendell in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Since the 1986 election, Rendell became a popular two-term Philadelphia mayor and DNC chair. Casey attempted to replicate his father’s negative campaign tactics from that election, blasting email inboxes and fax machines with attacks against his opponent. Hinting at corruption, Rendell was called “Fast Eddie” and a “serial prevaricator.” But the attacks proved fruitless, and Rendell won a landslide victory.

But Rendell’s victory didn’t disrupt Casey’s political trajectory. In 2004, Casey was elected Pennsylvania’s treasurer, winning the largest vote total in state history. Casey’s historic win impressed Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Harry Reid. They recruited him to run against Rick Santorum, a two-term U.S. Senator who held his office thanks to Casey’s father. Santorum was first elected in 1994 when he defeated Harris Wofford, who was appointed by Casey, Sr. to fill the vacancy left by John Heinz’s tragic death in 1991.

In the 2006 Senate race, Casey was the perfect prescription for the Democrats’ illness. His moderate politics fulfilled the game plan pushed by Rahm Emanuel to find candidates tailored to specific states or districts. The Republicans, meanwhile, were in crisis mode because of Congressional scandals, an unpopular war, and a president with plummeting approval ratings. Casey won the race with a massive victory margin. His win occurred the same year that a mayor from Hazleton, forty minutes south of Scranton, became a national figure on an issue confronting Pennsylvania’s post-industrial regions.

Intuitive Populism

On the night of Casey’s Senate victory, Barletta was in his second term as Hazleton’s mayor. He led a city built by the world’s richest supply of anthracite coal. The Luzerne County community was once a bustling commercial center, shaped by industrial innovation, organized labor, and a melting pot culture. But the coal industry’s collapse in the 1950s changed Hazleton’s economic course. While manufacturers and distributors replaced the mines—stabilizing the regional economy—Hazleton dealt with the typical challenges of post-industrial urban decline.

In Hazleton, Barletta won praise for his response to rising crime and the city’s fiscal position. His tenure also paralleled the city’s transforming demographics. Secondary Latino migration from the New York metropolitan region rapidly changed the city’s cultural makeup. Between 2000 and 2010, Hazleton’s Latino population went from 4 percent to nearly the majority. The sudden change overwhelmed City Hall, the police force, the school district, and local hospitals.

Barletta embraced the Latino community, welcoming the opening of new businesses in Hazleton’s downtown. But he also understood that Hazleton’s neighborhoods were facing issues common in larger cities. Illegal immigration became an emerging problem. In Hazleton, illegal immigrants were tied to gang activity, drug deals, and violent crime. In May 2006, two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic were charged with murdering a 29-year old father. The disturbing crime compelled Barletta to respond with a municipal crackdown.

In the summer of 2006, he introduced a city ordinance that penalized landlords and employers for renting to or hiring illegal immigrants. The ordinance, never enforced, was legally challenged by the ACLU and ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2014, the Court declined to review appellate decisions that struck down the law. “It was uncharted territory for a city to try to do something about the problem of illegal immigration,” Barletta told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016. “Fast-forwarding to today, we were a bit ahead of our time.”

The city’s fight proved costly in money and perception. The court ordered Hazleton to pay more than $1 million to the attorneys who challenged the ordinance. Hazleton also developed a national reputation for being hostile toward immigrants. But this portrayal didn’t match reality. Hazleton’s Latino population only accelerated after the ordinance passed. The city remained a hub for working class ethnic Catholics who leaned Democrat.

Barletta himself was the descendant of Italian immigrants. His family lived in Hazleton’s South Pine Street neighborhood, a hamlet of mining families from Italy’s Calabria. In the 1950s, they opened Angela Park, a beloved regional amusement park for baby boomer children. When Barletta was in his late twenties, he started a pavement marking company with his wife that became the state’s largest firm of its kind when it sold in 2000.

While mayor, Barletta intuitively understood his community’s frustrations. He presided over a city managing the unforeseen consequences of unrestricted immigration. His message particularly clicked with voters in 2010, when he successfully waged his third run against Paul Kanjorski, a long-time Congressman. Barletta always enjoyed cross-party support in Hazleton, but his previous defeats in the 11^th congressional district reminded him that the region remained heavily Democratic. The Tea Party wave that year showed Barletta that the region was politically evolving. His victory signaled what was ahead for the Democrats. The region’s voters were increasingly disillusioned not only with George W. Bush, but also with the Democratic party. Northeastern Pennsylvania’s voters, from Scranton to Pottsville, believed both parties ignored their decades of socio-economic decline.

The Battle Ahead

Barletta is now in his fourth and final term in Congress. If elected senator, Barletta has pledged that he’d only serve two terms. His race will demonstrate if Trump’s popularity endures in Pennsylvania. In 2016, he was the third member of Congress to endorse Trump. This endorsement paid dividends. In the Republican primary, Luzerne County was Trump’s best performing county statewide. Throughout the campaign, Trump’s appearances in Wilkes-Barre, the county seat, drew national attention for record turnout. When the Trump campaign grew apprehensive about his electoral prospects statewide, Barletta doubled down, assuring the candidate that a win was inevitable. Barletta was right, with Carville’s “Alabama” delivering the first Republican presidential victory in Pennsylvania since 1988.

During the transition, Barletta declined Trump’s offer to join his administration. Trump then urged Barletta to run against Casey, believing his electoral momentum could translate into a senate pick up in Pennsylvania. Barletta announced his Senate campaign before Labor Day, calling his run a “responsibility.” “Bob Casey is building up a war chest bankrolled by the most extreme liberal groups in the country,” Barletta announced. At a recent campaign rally in Harrisburg, Trump proclaimed to the crowd that Barletta is “going to win big.”

Casey now faces a popular congressman who checks the boxes on the issues that galvanize Pennsylvania’s Trump base. Casey finds himself in a different place than 2006, when anger toward Republicans delivered a Democratic wave. The 2018 mid-term elections will be difficult to predict in a state undergoing a tectonic shift. On the political Richter scale, Pennsylvania scores a 9.0. Philadelphia’s western suburbs now trend Democratic. Montgomery County, once a bellwether for Republican politics, is a reliable base for Democratic candidates. In the most recent election, Democrats won Delaware County’s row offices for the first time in history. But then there’s Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, and Lackawanna County, Casey’s home base, which both barely went for Clinton last year.

The upcoming Senate race will demonstrate how Pennsylvania, once America’s colonial breadbasket and industrial heartland, is now the epicenter for our national political realignment. Casey could be a casualty of this shift. He always maintained a subdued demeanor, underwhelming voters as a politician, yet reassuring them with his moderation and familiarity. He was a Democratic Leadership Council prodigy, nursing centrist positions without courting opposition. Casey also imbued his politics with Catholicism, replicating his father’s defense of the aggrieved and disadvantaged.

But Casey’s Senate years occurred as the nation suffered socio-economic fractures. His party, meanwhile, became disengaged from what triggered these civic ailments. In many ways, the Democrats’ evolution began when they ostracized Casey’s father at the 1992 convention. The ensuing years left working class Catholics feeling politically disenfranchised. As a major voting bloc in Pennsylvania, they no longer felt at home in the Democratic party, but they also rejected the Republicans’ positions on limited government and free trade. Trump filled the void in 2016. Casey and Barletta will fight to court their favor in 2018.

Casey has worked to rekindle his relationship with this base while expanding his electoral appeal in the modern Democratic party. The reinvention began with an attempt to purge his dull persona. He angrily rails against the president on healthcare and tax reform. He’s also a vocal Trump opponent on Twitter, demanding that he take a tougher position on trade with China. But his fiery bearing risks ringing hollow with Pennsylvania’s voters. He casts himself as a member of the “resistance,” attempting to insert energy and outrage into his rhetoric. His leftward march began in 2008, when he endorsed Obama over Clinton. And now he finds himself a stalwart defender of Planned Parenthood, the very organization that his father challenged. If anything, Casey reminds voters that he is not his father. He doesn’t embody the values of his father’s Democratic party.

Barletta could very well be a Republican victor in an otherwise grueling mid-term election for his party. While Trump injects darkness into populist themes, Barletta works to conjure positivity. He became a national figurehead on immigration restriction at a time when such views risked banishment. But he consistently presents his viewpoint on such issues in a pleasant tone, one which easily resonates with Pennsylvania’s conservative to moderate Republicans and Democrats. Many of these voters flocked to Trump in 2016, but also voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Unforeseen circumstances can imperil Barletta’s prospects. Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, newly emerging Trump scandals, or Congress’ failure to pass legislation could influence the outcome. In addition, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly one million voters. And yet Roll Call still lists Casey as one of the ten most vulnerable Senators in 2018. There are enough voters in Pennsylvania, whether in Johnstown or Levittown, who will ask what Casey has done for their state. For now, Casey has the numerical advantage, but also a passion deficit. Barletta’s strength is in his appeal to an emerging political constituency that rejects party loyalty in favor of cultural values. It is the candidate who connects to the voter’s soul, rather than party affiliation, who will win Pennsylvania.

Charles F. McElwee III, a writer based in northeastern Pennsylvania, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government.