Figuring Out Who To Vote For Down-Ballot-- Let's Look at PA-01, Bucks County

The New Dems don't just endorse anyone who asks them for an endorsement and they don't sell endorsements as part of a protection racket the way certain other caucuses do. They vet their candidates very carefully and if they detect any fiscal progressive streak-- BOOM!-- it's over. The New Dems are the dominant part of Congress' Republican wing of the Democratic Party. They're not as bad as Republicans but they are corporately financed and tend to vote with Republicans on economic issues. In other words-- if 2 gays want to get married, it doesn't bother them any more than a woman getting an abortion does, when when it comes to making the rich pay their fair share of taxes or regulating the banksters... that's where we have a little problem. Actually, a big problem-- of the 10 Democrats with the worst voting records in Congress, 8 of them-- all Blue Dogs Collin Peterson (MN) and Jared Golden (ME)-- are New Dems. Most of them are also Blue Dogs. Almost every Blue Dog has joined the New Dems-- makes it easier to access Wall Street bribes.

There are currently 104 New Dems in the House, making it the biggest Democratic caucus in the House. Of the 104 New Dems, only 21 do not have "F"-graded voting records-- an even dozen with "D" scores (like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Greg Schiff, Darren Soto and Juan Vargas), 5 with "C" scores, although that includes Eliot Engel who was recently dispatched by his constituents and replaced by a Democrat with real progressive values, Jamaal Bowman, and 3 with B scores and just one with an A, Lori Trahan (who is also a member of the Progressive Caucus).

When I was looking for information about Christina Finello, the hand-picked DCCC/EMILY's List candidate for the Bucks County congressional district (PA-01), I went to her website first and saw her proudly displaying the New Dems endorsement meme. She's one of the 27 candidates conservative and amenable to corruption enough to make the grade. But there was no AFL-CIO endorsement; which went to the pro-union Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick.

She's running in Pennsylvania's penultimate swing district with a PVI of R+1, but with a record of having voted for Obama both times he ran and even having given a 2 point win to Hillary over Trump-- 49.1% to 47.1%. The so-called "Blue Wave"-- and an attempt to buy the seat by a wealthy Democrat who put an obscene and offensive $12,756,892 of his own money in-- didn't take out Fitzpatrick in 2018, when he beat Scott Wallace 169,053 (51.3%) to 160,745 (48.7%). Bucks County (90% of the district) performed very strongly for Fitzpatrick, while voting even more strongly for progressive Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf (58.5%) and for Democratic Senate incumbent Bob Casey (56.2%), both of whom were running against crackpot Trumpists.

As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Fitzpatrick had raised $2,741,797, spent $1,029,695 and had $1,828,737 cash on hand. Finello raised $501,826, spent $205,703 and had $296,123 cash on hand. There hasn't been a lot of outside spending yet, but I expect there will be, for both candidates. Looks bad for the New Dem, Finello. Maybe. Why maybe? Trump. Trump may pull all down-ballot Republicans down with him. Finello is just a nothing careerist candidate with nothing to offer but she's in the right place at the right time. 92,308 Democrats voted in the primary, 71,571 of them for Finello. And just 75,895 Republicans voted on the same day-- and just 48,017 of them for Fitzpatrick. Fighting the Trump anti-red headwinds, it's going to be very hard for Fitzpatrick to stave off a defeat, although he'll easily beat Finello in a 2022 rematch when the Democrats have spent 2 years accomplishing nothing important to anyone, primarily because of status quo candidates like Finello (and Biden) getting swept into office.

Fitzpatrick's lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote score in 27.35. Only one Republican, Thomas Massie-- and by less than one percentage point-- has voted more frequently for progressive legislation. In fact, Fitzpatrick is basically tied with Utah Blue Dog Ben McAdams and has a more progressive voting record than two Blue Dog/New Dems, the detestable Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Joe Cunningham (SC). Fitzpatrick uses his score to insist he's a "moderate" and "independent," his biggest selling points back home. Will voters hear his pleas over the Trump din though? Last week, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Andrew Seidman and Chris Brennan asked if Fitzpatrick really is a moderate, which isn't how either party paints him. The right wing of the GOP dismisses him as a RINO and Democrats desperately try to tie him to the despised Trump. Fitzpatrick has a tightrope because if he is seen as too close to Trump he will lose independent voters who are the ones who decide elections in Bucks County. But if he's too unsupportive of Trump, he'll hemorrhage the Republicans who are devoted to Trump and Trumpism.

Seidman and Brennan wrote that "Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans in the district, a solidly middle-class swath of suburbia that includes part of Montgomery County. And heated debate over whether a Fitzpatrick deserves the moderate tag is familiar ground for local voters, dating back to when his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, represented the district. Whether Brian Fitzpatrick survives what’s likely to be a challenging reelection campaign while Trump continues to repel suburban voters will offer clues about if and how Republicans can hold on to power in the suburbs.

“Anybody that claims I’m not a moderate and not an independent thinker is living on another planet,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview Thursday, touting his involvement with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, said the success of moderate politicians in the region dates back to the late 1970s. Pete Kostmayer, a Democrat, served seven terms in the House, followed for six terms by Republican Jim Greenwood. They weren’t ideological warriors. The district didn’t expect-- or want-- them to be. The same could be said for the men who followed: Mike Fitzpatrick and Democrat Patrick Murphy.

The AFL-CIO this month endorsed Fitzpatrick, the only Republican the labor group backed for U.S. House in Pennsylvania and just one of eight GOP endorsements out of 189 overall. Bloomingdale cited Fitzpatrick’s support for unionized federal employees’ rights, dredging jobs on the Delaware River, and protections for union organizing.

All that made it “pretty easy to endorse” Fitzpatrick, Bloomingdale said. To do otherwise would be the act of a “fair-weather friend,” he said.

Fitzpatrick’s moderate bona fides have been a source of frustration among progressive groups eager to retake a seat held by Republicans for a decade. Fitzpatrick withstood the 2018 Democratic wave that washed out Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs.

In an interview, Finello rattled off positions taken by Fitzpatrick that she said show he’s no moderate, starting with his support for Trump’s 2017 tax cuts-- which disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans and swelled the federal budget deficit.

She condemned Fitzpatrick for voting against the Heroes Act, a second coronavirus economic relief package the House passed in May. The Republican-controlled Senate didn’t advance the bill, and negotiations between the White House and congressional Democrats have gone nowhere.

Finello said Fitzpatrick’s vote means he opposed oversight of federal aid to make sure it “went to struggling small businesses rather than corporations.” The bill also included money for state and local governments, continuing supplemental unemployment benefits, and extending moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures.

“We’re talking right now in August, the fourth straight month where roughly a third of Americans have missed a housing payment, voting against things people need,” she said.

Fitzpatrick noted that 14 Democrats voted against the bill. He said he supports more funding for state and local governments, the Postal Service, small businesses, and unemployment benefits. But he opposed a provision in the bill that aimed to reduce the prison population to fight the spread of the virus.

He also opposes Trump’s call for a payroll tax cut, saying it would “jeopardize Social Security and Medicare.” And on a day when Trump openly admitted that by withholding funding for the Postal Service, it would be unable to handle an anticipated surge of mail voting, Fitzpatrick said the USPS should be “fully funded.”

And Fitzpatrick noted that he backed “major policy initiatives” advanced by Democrats after they retook the House, including Democratic priorities like strengthening protections for voting rights, closing the gender pay gap, and expanding antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.

“That’s union rights, environmental rights, gun safety, LGBT rights,” Fitzpatrick said. “These are major, major initiatives.”

In June, he was one of just three Republicans who voted for the police reform measure passed by the House after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

It all adds up to a record the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy rank as the most bipartisan of any member of the House. The center’s index is based on “how often a member of Congress introduces bills that succeed in attracting cosponsors from members of the other party, and how often they in turn cosponsor a bill introduced from across the aisle.”

Fitzpatrick has voted with Trump 64% of the time on legislation on which the president has a clear position, according to the website FiveThirtyEight. Just two House Republicans have voted with Trump less frequently, according to the analysis.

Democrats counter that Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, has failed to deliver on a defining issue: standing up to Trump.

“You can’t deny the fact he’s been complicit with Donald Trump on his most important initiatives, and has been silent as a lamb when his own FBI directors have been attacked, when our military leaders have been attacked by this president,” said Murphy, who unseated Mike Fitzpatrick in 2006 but lost the seat back to him in 2010. (Mike Fitzpatrick died in January.)

Murphy, asked if he thought there were any moderate Republicans in Congress, pointed to Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only one who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial.

“Where was he on that vote?” Murphy said of Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick said he will wait until the election to decide whether to vote for Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The debate over Fitzpatrick’s independence is something of a redux of his 2018 campaign against Democrat Scott Wallace.

Progressives were incensed then when Everytown for Gun Safety, the antigun violence group cofounded by Mike Bloomberg, endorsed Fitzpatrick. Everytown cited Fitzpatrick’s vote against a bill backed by the National Rifle Association that would require states to recognize concealed carry permits from other states-- but progressives questioned his commitment to the issue.

The Bucks County branch of Moms Demand Action, an arm of Everytown, dissolved in protest.

Ali Glickman, of Solebury Township, cofounded Orange Wave for Gun Safety along with other former Moms Demand Action volunteers. She said that Fitzpatrick is no moderate, and that regardless, voting for Republicans won’t help on issues like gun violence. The only way to advance the cause is to elect Democrats like Finello, she said.

“If we don’t have the majority, it doesn’t really matter, period,” Glickman said.

While Finello’s campaign frequently mocks Fitzpatrick’s claims of independence, Finello said she doesn’t focus on labels.

“I’m focusing on what people are talking about right at this moment,” she said. “People are concerned right now about how they’re going to pay their rent when they’ve lost their job. They’re worried about what’s happening when they have to send their kids back to school.”

That ad didn't work-- at least not enough to flip the district-- in 2018, but that's basically the campaign again this cycle. It's all a matter of how skilled Fitzpatrick is in walking his tightrope-- distancing himself from Trump, but not so much as to offend Trump supporters enough to watch them decide to skip the vote-- or vote for the Libertarian on the ballot in November..

Still, Finello may win. If she does, her voting record will be slightly better than Fitzpatrick's. She's not for Medicare-for-All and She doesn't back a Green New Deal. Her website issues page is basically DCCC pablum-- sounds good/means nothing. Is she better than Fitzpatrick? Yes, a bit. Can she hold the seat in a bad wave year for Dems? No way. Incumbents like her always lose the seats. This is the kind of thing-- made by Republicans-- that will sweep Finello into Congress: