Pa. House of Representatives results. show Democrats maintaining a slim majority

Democrats will struggle to maintain control of the Pennsylvania State House – one of the few glowing spots for the party after a red wave led by President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral successes that ushered in a GOP victory in the vote.

House Democrats will regain control of the chamber with a 102-101 majority after all officials up for re-election on Tuesday won. House Democrats believe they retained their slim majority — while Democrats higher on the list failed — because they focused on hyperlocal issues and effectively communicated their legislative victories.

Meanwhile, House Republicans will shake up their leadership in response to their failure to flip the chamber, with Minority Leader Bryan Cutler announcing he will not run for leadership next week, according to a letter sent to his colleagues Friday afternoon.

The Associated Press called the final House race and said Democrats would maintain their majority Friday morning after voting problems in Cambria County delayed results.

House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D-Philadelphia), the first woman to ever serve in that role, said House Democrats’ success in such a challenging election is “a testament to [Democrats’] provision of component services” and their reputation for solving residents’ problems.

“It was a tough week. This has been a very difficult week, and in every democratic process there are winners and losers,” McClinton said. “I am very excited to return to Harrisburg knowing that I have 101 additional Democrats with me.”

Doubling down on “bipartisanship and pragmatism”

Democrats surprised the state in 2022 when they flipped the state House by a slim majority for the first time in 12 years. Officials expected the state’s new maps with redistricting that gave Republicans a slight edge over Democrats would make the races more competitive, but they didn’t expect Democrats to reverse the House decision so quickly.

But ultimately in that election, the Democratic majority went to Republican Frank Burns (R-Cambria), who was re-elected to a ninth term to represent Johnstown in his reddened county 80 miles east of Pittsburgh. The last of the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, he is an anti-abortion Second Amendment supporter and has often blocked bills on social issues or required Democrats to find Republicans in collar counties to support them.

Burns himself ran a Trump-style campaign that included attack ads alleging that his GOP opponent wanted to bring 100 Afghan families to Johnstown and provide them with jobs filled by locals, spend more on public housing and thereby reduce security communities – a mirror to Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.

Burns remains a welcome and supported member of the Democratic caucus, said House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (R-Montgomery).

“He fights fiercely just for Cambria County and we wouldn’t ask him to do anything other than that,” Bradford said. “Pennsylvania and our club are lucky to have him.”

Burns and other Democrats across Pennsylvania were able to win — even though voters rejected Democrats everywhere else on the ballot — because they managed to separate themselves from the national narrative, said Joe Corrigan, a Democratic strategist working with House Democrats.

House Democrats emphasized election services and efforts in their own communities, whether by providing grant funding or hosting surprisingly popular events where people could shred their sensitive documents, Corrigan added. In addition to party affiliation, each Democratic member has a personal brand to build on.

“Would Philadelphia vote for someone with the profile of Frank Burns? Probably not in elementary school,” Corrigan added. – But he fits into his neighborhood.

Leaders say the top Democratic failures will help House Democrats calculate how they approach their jobs this year.

Bradford said that despite his and others’ opposition to Trump, he believes leaders must continue to focus on the issues that most concern voters, such as affordability. Democrats will go into next year’s session ready to “double down on bipartisanship and pragmatism,” he added.

“The Democratic Party has to be a very big tent, and this week was a great reminder of that,” Bradford said.

McClinton said her party will need to meet again with those who voted Democratic in 2020 and 2022 but who voted Republican in this election to understand “why they are no longer with us” and ” “work very hard to gain their support in the future.”

House Democrats currently control the lower chamber by just one vote and have at times had to rely on moderate Bucks County Republicans to pass bills when they couldn’t get support from the full house. During the two-year legislative session, lawmaking was repeatedly halted by more than a half-dozen resignations that resulted in Democrats gaining a numerical majority.

Just There were about 10 contested races across the state in this year’s election. Republicans targeted seats held by vulnerable Democrats in other parts of the state that are redder, such as Burns, which held on to its seat by about 1,000 votes in a county Trump won by 35 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Democrats hoped to capture some of the few remaining GOP-held seats in collar counties – like Republican Sen. Craig Williams’ seat as the last Republican to represent part of Delaware County, or the two Lower Bucks seats represented by Republican Reps. KC Tomlinson and Joe Hogan – as the ones which they believed they could reverse to maintain and expand their slim majority. Williams, Tomlinson and Hogan won re-election, but Bradford said he believes those seats and others across the state will still be up for grabs in a future election where Trump is not in first place.

Changes in the GOP House

Republicans also had their eye on several statewide seats they thought they could flip, including Rep. Brian Munroe (R-Bucks). House Republicans and a political action committee backed by Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, poured ads worth over $600,000 supporting GOP challenger Dan McPhillips. Munroe ultimately won re-election by a narrow margin, and Republicans failed to regain the majority.

Cutler, a Lancaster County Republican who previously served as House speaker and caucus chairman, noted in his Friday letter that national GOP support was not sufficient and that leaders “were not enough.”

“I firmly believe that we must make changes from the top to the bottom to ensure our future success, and for that reason I will not seek the position of leader of the Republican Party in the upcoming session,” Cutler wrote.

At least three members of the Republican Party are seeking the nomination to be the next Republican minority leader, including Reps. Jesse Topper (R, Bedford), Josh Kail (R, Washington) and Milou Mackenzie (R, Northampton), according to a source familiar with leadership elections.

Shapiro keeps his House Democratic

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, spent $1 million to facilitate his party maintain and expand its House majority, made 20 endorsements and campaigned statewide in districts Democrats hoped to flip or protect vulnerable incumbents.

In his endorsements earlier this fall, Shapiro pointed to Democratic priorities that he and a narrow Democratic majority in the House — in concert with the GOP-controlled state Senate — were able to pass, including an increased property tax and a rent cut for seniors, expanded child care tax credits and enormous investments in public education in response to a court ruling requiring officials to create a modern school financing system.

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“The governor has fought to protect the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and looks forward to continuing to work with leaders in both parties to get things done for all Pennsylvanians,” Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s press secretary, said in a statement.

Democrats have dominated the fast-growing counties around Philadelphia in recent years, electing Democrats to 31 of 39 districts in Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties.

Bucks remains an outlier in Philadelphia’s increasingly blue suburbs, as the only county with a GOP voter registration advantage. For this reason, many competitive House races are held in Bucks County, and Republicans represent more districts in Bucks than in any other collar county.

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.