A week from today, there will be a special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District and the Republicans are spending like mad to win it. I could give you a long drawn out description of the candidates and the dynamics of the race but I prefer to cut right to the chase.
The #PA18 special is like the foot race at the end of Talladega Nights. Nobody technically wins anything, the district is going to disappear immediately afterwards, but it's a multi-million dollar war for bragging rights with national parties now.
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) March 6, 2018
Which makes this more than curious.
NEW: The @NRCC now reports spending a total of $3,516,844.85 on #PA18 (an increase of $619,664.37).https://t.co/vxltPCtigx pic.twitter.com/F0NaSDrR8M
— Matt Hodges (@hodgesmr) March 6, 2018
Whoever wins next Tuesday, they will only serve in Congress until early January of next year. In November, the closest thing resembling the 18th congressional district will be the newly redrawn 14th congressional district. The difference is that in the current 18th, Trump cleaned Clinton’s clock 58 percent-39 percent and in the new 14th he did even better (63 percent-34 percent). In other words, even if Conor Lamb, the Democrat running slightly ahead in a recent poll, pulls out a narrow victory in the special election, he’s unlikely to hold the seat.
This is one reason not to particularly care that Lamb has promised not to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. He’ll almost definitely never get the chance to cast a vote for Speaker. But it’s also a reason for the Republicans to save their money. Why dump an extra $619,664.37 into this race when it simply doesn’t matter who wins?
The Republicans have a handful of truly vulnerable incumbents and open seats to defend in Pennsylvania, including my Congressman Ryan Costello’s seat in the 6th District. But it appears that this is all being done, as Benjy Sarlin says, for bragging rights. The difference is that the Republicans have now dumped $3.5 million into the race and, as of late February, four conservative groups had “purchased $4.7 million in television and radio ads.” On the Democratic side, the DCCC has spent $250,100 and the House Majority PAC has purchased no ads.
Of course, Conor Lamb is upset that he hasn’t received more help, but the Democrats seem to have made an investment commensurate with the upside potential of victory. Bragging rights aren’t worth nothing, after all.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Republicans are still spending all this money even after it has become clear that the seat will cease to exist next year. They should be able to hold this seat regardless of what happens next Tuesday and I am not even sure Lamb will try to defend it. If I were him, I’d go looking for another easier seat to win, like the neighboring 17th District to the north.
To be honest, though, there’s not a lot I see the Republicans doing these days that I consider rational.
The bragging rights are pretty important here. So far, the Republicans have been able to downplay some mindblowing swings in special elections because they’ve been for statehouse races and the like. Republicans have managed to win all the House specials, and Alabama had special circumstances. If they lose this, though, the implication is that even in a nationalized election with no special circumstances like the Roy Moore allegations, the Republicans can lose even in a “very safe R” seat. It will be profoundly demoralizing to their donors and to their candidates. I could see losing this costing them well over in 8 million in lost donations so I don’t think their huge investment is crazy.
The Democrats haven’t done more because (IMO) their support is kind of a two-edged sword there and because as long as they’ve not gone all in losing can’t be spun as an indication of weakness, as it was in the Ossoff race.
Having grown up in the region, and given your average SW PA citizens utter HATRED of the Clinton’s, I don’t think 2016 is a good yardstick for measuring PA18/PA14’s “redness”.
PA18/P14 is a mix a racially diverse busted rust belt factory towns and racially homogenous, old school PGH suburbs, and booming wealthy ex-burbs. It is the type of place that fair access to the vote and a strong localized Democratic ground game and mobilization could change the dynamic.
Lamb’s performance and the GOP’s spending is probably an acknowledgement of that and, to a certain degree, evidence that the GOP’s Rust Belt ascendance is a mirage created by a bad (for that specific region) Democratic candidate.
“Whomever wins next Tuesday …”
Where does this strange grammatical anomaly come from?
It’s “whoever” wins next Tuesday. The word “whomever” exists, but it’s rarely used, because it usually sounds very stilted and pedantic. It is correct only when it is a direct or indirect object, just the same way you would use “whom”.
Here’s how an online dictionary explains it:
pronoun, formal literary
pronoun: whomever
used instead of “whoever” as the object of a verb or preposition.
“I’ll sing whatever I like to whomever I like.”
That’s an artifact of me changing what I intended to say mid-crafting of that sentence.
Originally, it would have read, “whomever wins, I don’t believe…”
I reconstructed how I was going to present that paragraph without going back and changing the grammar to fit it.
Yes, but “whomever wins, I don’t believe … ” is just as ungrammatical — for the same reason. It should be “Whoever wins, I don’t believe … ” Safe rule of thumb — just avoid using the word “whomever”, because 99% of the time it will be wrong, and the other 1% it will probably sound pedantic.
Worry not about the pedants.
I see you live near Westchester, the home of A.Duie Pyle.
I’m not a pedant, I’m a professional editor.
“Whosoever were to win…” could work instead, now with even more pedantry!
I would think that it’s mostly psychological for the Republicans. The Republicans want to prevent any further resignations due to a sense that the midterms are lost/hopeless, so they’re emptying their coffers in an attempt to create the impression that their day of reckoning has not come and that their incumbents still have a decent shot of winning in November.
Scorched Earth.
Poison the elections to achieve the result of “a pox on both their houses”.
Lower turnout = Republican wins.
Nasty campaigns = Lower turnout.
Lamb has already achieved his primary goal, which is to establish name recognition for his upcoming November election. However, for the party, defeating even a relatively weak Republican candidate in such a strongly conservative district helps candidate recruitment and forces the guys to defend even more seats.
Anyways, Saccone will be pushed out of PA-18 as well.
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2018/02/20/supreme-court-pa-congressional-map-major-
changes-Pittsburgh-Western-PA/stories/201802190158
Of course, Conor Lamb is upset that he hasn’t received more help, but the Democrats seem to have made an investment commensurate with the upside potential of victory.
LOL!! What does he expect? Why should the DCCC, who Pelosi ultimately controls since she’s the Minority Leader, spend money on someone who says they won’t vote for her as Speaker? Even though he’ll likely never get the chance, as you say.
This is actually a pretty easy call, in my opinion. The GOP passed its garbage Tax Cut bill, which mollified its collection of billionaire sociopath donors who now have opened the floodgates. The Republicans are spendthrifts on the economy and in elections too. Finding money is not ever usually a problem for them. So pissing it away for bragging rights in this Pittsburgh suburb is no problem either.
As the Party of Plutocrats, they simply have more money than they know what to do with. They spend this kind of chump change at the drive in. Scarcity of resources is unimaginable to them. As you say, the ROI is pretty favorable for the GOoP briber…er, investors.
And of course the Coaches of Team Conservative don’t want to deal with the appalling optics of even a meaningless loss to the ranks of Ryan’s Reprobates, so they demand a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
All devoted to simpleton back-benching gun-nut to boot. The Grand Old Party indeed, ha-ha.
Perhaps because they were taking no chances based on the early (January) projections Expect a tight race in special election, but PA-18 remains solidly Republican and
Perhaps it was DC Democrats that pulled back when they saw how much money the GOP was willing to dump into this one.
Or most likely, Democrat Lamb significantly outraises Republican Saccone in final stretch of Pennsylvania special election
Plus the NRCC had $7 million more in COH than the DCCC (And the RNC is fat compared to the DNC.)
Maybe they had some money that needed to be laundered…