- For the first time in 15 years, Democrats won in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District, a stunning victory. [Vox / Ella Nilsen]
- Democrat Conor Lamb beat Republican Rick Saccone in a special congressional election to replace former Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), who resigned last year after revelations that he had pressured a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair to have an abortion. [Washington Post / Mike DeBonis]
- The race was still too close to call on Tuesday night. Just 627 votes separated Saccone and Lamb with 100 percent of precincts reporting by midday Wednesday, according to CNN. [CNN / Veronica Rocha, Brian Ries, Meg Wagner, and Amanda Wills]
- In winning, Lamb did something that no Democrat was supposed to be able to. PA-18, along with the rest of the state's congressional map, was drawn in such a way that made it nearly impossible for Democrats to win. The state's new map, recently drawn by the state Supreme Court, is much friendlier to Democrats. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
- Lamb also proved something that's destabilizing to President Donald Trump's narrative: that a Democrat can win in so-called "Trump country." Pennsylvania was one of the three Rust Belt states that helped deliver Trump the presidency in 2016. The fact that a district that voted for him by 20 points also went to a Democrat is a big blow. [Vox / Ella Nilsen and Tara Golshan]
- Republicans dumped close to $10 million into the race and still lost. Democrats also spent millions but were vastly outspent by their GOP counterparts. [Vox / Tara Golshan]
- It's worth noting that Lamb has to run again in November ... in a completely different district, thanks to the new electoral map. [Philadelphia Inquirer / Jonathan Lai]
The bigger reason that the savviest GOP operatives in town are freaking out right now, though, is that the results underscore the degree to which the party has been unable to hone in on a message that can reliably win races in this environment.
Republican groups carpet bombed Lamb with commercials linking him to Nancy Pelosi, but Lamb largely defused these hits by running a response ad saying that he wouldn’t support her for leader.
Trump administration officials told reporters that they thought the tariffscould tip the race their way. Eighteen thousand members of the United Steelworkers union live in the district. But both candidates embraced the new levies, and the unions backed the Democrat because Saccone supports right-to-work legislation. So the issue was a wash.
Republicans tried to run on the tax cuts, which they’ve promised for months will be the centerpiece of their 2018 messaging. Commercials highlighted Lamb’s opposition to reform and relief for the middle class. When these spots didn’t move the needle, GOP groups stopped talking about them. Politico’s Kevin Robillard pulled the data to show what was on the airwaves: “For the weeks of Feb. 4 and Feb. 11, roughly two-thirds of the broadcast television ads from Saccone’s campaign, the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC and the National Republican Congressional Committee mentioned taxes … For the week of Feb. 18, that dropped to 36 percent, and to 14 percent the week after. … Since the beginning of March, tax ads have been essentially nonexistent.”
These groups then hammered Lamb, a Marine Corps veteran and former prosecutor, as pro-sanctuary cities. Then they accused him of letting dangerous drug dealers get off the hook for their crimes with lenient sentences. (The dark turn the ads took in the final weeks foreshadows a particularly nasty fall campaign. If you live in a battleground and have young children, you might want to keep them away from the tube.)
Something similar happened in last year’s Virginia governor’s race.Republican Ed Gillespie initially made a proposal for tax cuts the centerpiece of his campaign. When that failed to excite conservatives, he embraced divisive wedge issues. Gillespie defended Confederate monuments, attacked his opponent on sanctuary cities and called him weak on the MS-13 street gang. Democrat Ralph Northam won anyway.
If Democrats can win in a district where they didn’t even bother to field a candidate the past two election cycles, they can triumph anywhere.
Moreover, there are not many – if any -- real opportunities for Republican incumbents to score meaningful legislative achievements between now and November.
But it’s not puzzling what’s going on: Trump’s approval rating is hovering below 40 percent, and he sucks up all the oxygen. He did it again yesterday, when he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over Twitter.
Lamb ran a cautious campaign, but he offered a clear contrast to the constant chaos that has defined the past 14 months. “People are so tired of the shouting on TV and in our politics,” Lamb said during his speech early this morning, encapsulating the tack he took.
“We should be able to elect a box of hammers in this district. If we’re losing here, you can bet there is a Democratic wave coming,” said veteran Republican consultant Mike Murphy, a Trump critic, in an interview with Robert Costa.
“The reality is that plenty of mediocre, uninspiring candidates get elected to the House from typically-safe districts,” writes National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar. “The difference this year isn’t the caliber of candidates. It’s that Trump is driving the Republican party rank-and-file off the proverbial political cliff. At this point, there have been enough off-year elections, polling data and candidate recruiting successes to render a clear verdict: Democrats are solid favorites to retake the House this year.” Eight months is an eternity in politics, especially in this tumultuous era when each day feels like a week. The underlying dynamics could certainly change.