A Democratic Woman Won A Trump Seat In Western Pennsylvania Last Night

When Pennsylvania state Senator Guy Reschenthaler (R) resigned this year to take a seat in Congress, an open seat was created in a very white district in the far western part of the state, parts of Allegheny (South Hills) and Washington counties, west and south of Pittsburgh. On Tuesday morning when voting began, Republicans held a 26-21 majority in the state Senate. Today that majority is 25-22, with two more red seats still to be filled.

Republicans were confident they could hold SD-39, which is 91.6% white, with German, Irish and Italian ancestry being predominant. In 2016, Reschenthaler had won it handily against Democrat Ed Eichenlaub, 90,987 (60.65%) to 59,044 (39.35%) and Trump won the district against Hillary by around 6%.

Last night Democrat Pam Iovino, a Navy veteran appointed assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs by George W. Bush, beat D. Raja, the very wealthy chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee and chief executive of an IT consulting firm. (He spent $1.2 million of his own on the race.) An immigrant from India, Raja described himself as a "pro-job, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment" candidate. He campaigned against raising the minimum wage to $15 and Iovino campaigned for raising it. Local unions backed Iovino, a former Navy captain, as did Gov. Tom Wolf, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Rep. Conor Lamb. She also campaign as a pro-Choice Democrat in favor of reasonable gun safety laws. Lines between the two parties weren't blurred and voters had a clear choice.

So why's this important? Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania against Clinton last time around because of areas like SD-39. He'll lose the state if he can't hold areas like this. He sent out a robo-call for Raja but it didn't help. Recent polling of Pennsylvania voters by Emerson shows that any Democrat would beat Trump in the state next year:

But there's more to it than that. The GOP has controlled the Pennsylvania state Senate for over 2 decades and as recently as last year, tthey held a super-majority. The 22 seats the Democrats hold with Iovino's win yesterday is the most they've had since 2014. She'll face re-election next year, along with three other competitive districts currently held by Republicans in Erie, Dauphin, and Delaware counties. If Democrats win all those races, they would have 25 seats, with Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman as the tie breaker for the final two years of Wolf’s last term. The 39th was widely considered the most difficult seat for the Democrats to win.