A Long Shot Pennsylvania Candidate Worth Betting On

When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court redrew the gerrymandered congressional boundaries, it was of great help to Democrats in most-- but not all-- districts. PA-16 was the south central Pennsylvania district that included most of Lancaster County. Joe Pitts was the longtime anti-Choice fanatic who represented the area. When Pitts retired, Republican Lloyd Smucker beat garden variety Democrat Christina Hartman 168,669 (53.8%) to 134,586 (42.9%). Hartman was a thoroughly unimpressive candidate, with nothing particularly to offer voters other than it was time to have a woman and time to have an unoffensive generic Democrat. The voters thought otherwise. That was in 2016 when the district's PVI was R+4. Trump won the district. As candidates starting sorting things out for 2018, a very non-generic Democratic woman decided to run a fully grassroots campaign, Jess King, a Berniecrat who has lots to offer to south central Pennsylvania voters. From Democratic corporate world, Hartman jumped in again too. And then... along comes the Supreme Court. The strongest Democratic parts of the district (primarily Reading) were excised and given to other districts and the PVI went from R+4 to a far more daunting R+14. The DCCC immediately wrote it off as an unwinnable seat and Hartman quickly withdrew and was never seen again. Jess King and her grassroots team dug in even harder.



To be fair to the DCCC-- and you know how fair I always am to the DCCC-- the seat is unwinnable for the kind of GOP-lite inauthentic corporate candidates they recruit and support. So, of course, they're completely ignoring Jess' campaign. She lucky to not have them (and their appendages like EMILY's List) threatening to pull funding from her if she doesn't hire their corrupt and incompetent consultants. And with them not butting in and not funding her or helping her in any way, she's actually managed to come close to closing the gap with Smucker.

A new poll released this week by PPP shows PA-11 a single digit race now. Though Trump won the district by 26 points, Smucker is only leading Jess 44-35% with 21% undecided. And when voters are informed about where the two candidates stand on issues, the polling results started changing so pretty drastically that they predict a dead heat within the statistical margin of error!

Smucker’s lead over King nearly vanished when voters were given more information about each candidate. After voters heard that Rep. Smucker refuses to hold town halls and collects corporate PAC money, and heard that King declines all corporate PAC donations, the gap between the two candidates shrunk to a single point – with 19% of voters still undecided.

“Voters have a real hunger for a representative who will stand up to the establishment in both parties,” said Jess King. “Democrats, Republicans, and independents all are looking for someone who will work for the people of Pennsylvania-- not the wealthy special interests who fund my opponent’s campaign.”

“It’s remarkable Jess King has made this race a single-digit contest less than two years after Trump won it by 26 points,” said Jim Williams, a PPP polling analyst. “And Rep. Smucker should be very concerned that-- in such a historically Republican area-- he is close to being underwater on favorability and as many voters want someone new as say he should be re-elected.”

“This race wasn’t seen as competitive six months ago,” said Becca Rast, the campaign manager with Jess King for Congress. “But as more and more voters hear Jess’ story and her vision for an America for all of us, we can see our grassroots campaign gaining a lot of ground very quickly.” Since Jess King began her run last summer, her campaign has hosted 51 public town halls and made over 400,000 phone calls to voters through volunteer-led phone banks. The campaign currently has over 25 volunteer-led teams running grassroots voter outreach operations across Lancaster and Southern York counties.

Besides how attractive Jess' platform is and besides how hard-- and how smart-- she and her campaign staffers are working, there's something else to consider, something Ron Brownstein reported about this week for CNN: There's a suburban tsunami driving 2018. And driving it away from the GOP. (Luckily for the nearly-as-horrible Democrats, there's virtually nowhere else for voters to go other than to the proudly lesser of two evils Democratic Party.) "Converging crises," wrote Brownstein, "are compounding the risk that Republicans could suffer historic 2018 losses in suburban communities that could harden a starkly polarized alignment in American politics. Precisely as sexual abuse allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh threaten to deepen the GOP's already cavernous deficit with well-educated white women, the chaos that erupted with Monday's uncertainty about the fate of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appears likely to compound the concerns of independent voters who want Congress to provide more of a check on President Donald Trump. Even before these developments, Republicans faced a perilous environment in white-collar suburbs rooted in discontent among college-educated white voters, especially women, over Trump's tempestuous style, belligerent language and portions of his agenda. Both the Kavanaugh controversy and the Rosenstein speculation could reinforce two of the central sources of that suburban anxiety: concerns that Trump does not respect either women or the rule of law."