PA-01 Should Be A Smoking Hot Electoral Battleground, Not This

Andrew Meehan is running as a proud Trumpist against Brian Fitzpatrick (R) in an anti-Trump district

On paper, PA-01 looks like the most likely Democratic congressional pickup of the 2020 cycle. PA-01 is, basically, the old 8th district-- all of Bucks County and a small piece of Montgomery County-- suburbs north of Philly and west of Trenton. It's a wealthy suburban district with a PVI of R+1 that doesn't reflect the disdain in the district for Trump. In 2016, Hillary won the district by 2 points-- 49.1% to 47.1%. Trump did worse than Romney had but Hillary didn't do as well as Obama.

Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick makes a point out of telling his constituents he didn't vote for Trump in 2016 and has opposed him far more than most Republicans. His Trump adhesion score in the current session of Congress is 36.2% and he's voted against Trump more than with him. His ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score is the highest of any Republican on the House-- 29.10... more progressive than 4 cowardly Blue Dog Democrap careerists-- Kendra Horn (OK- 28.89), Anthony Brindisi (NY-20.0), Joe Cunningham (SC-20.0) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ-20.0).

In 2018 Fitzpatrick was massively outspent by Democrat Scott Wallace $13,535,808 to $3,412,246. Fitzpatrick beat Wallace 169.053 (51.3%) to 160,745 (48.7%). Wallace won in the 10% of the district that is made up of Montgomery County neighborhoods but lost Bucks County-- 90% of the district. PA-01 will be a battleground again this cycle.

First, Fitzpatrick has to face a crazy right-wing Trumpist who calls him a RINO, Andrew Meehan. If Fitzpatrick beats Meehan, he'll have whichever of the 3 Democrats wins the primary. None of them look great to me from afar, but none have returned my calls. They appear to be 3 garden variety, nothing-to-offer centrist Dems looking for a career, fame and glory-- Bucks County prothonotary Judith Reiss, Pennsbury School Board member and Lower Bucks Indivisible co-founder Debbie Wachspress campaigning on Zionism, and Christina Finello, an Ivyland Borough Council member. Every word I've read from each of them sounds like canned DCCC schpiel. They all seem to think the election is about them, not about the residents of the district.

At this point, only a huge anti-red wave would sweep any of them into office. Finello's campaign web site doesn't have an issues page, which usually indicates she's a DCCC and/or EMILY"s List candidate. Debbie Wachspress does have an issues page-- which could easily be anyone's issues page except that it ends with this:

Judi Reiss also has an issues page. It's not bad. It's just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but no real stands on anything. She sounds like she might be a progressive... but is playing it coy and leaving you to guess. This is her video, exactly what a campaign intro shouldn't look like:





Ms. Finello has a video too-- the only one on her campaign video channel. Sad. Maybe good candidates are so sickened by government that they don't even want to run for Congress, at least not in Bucks County.