The Pennsylvania Polka primary
An open Governorship and Senate seat brings out the weird and dangerous
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” - Hunter S. Thompson, 1974.
Hunter would have loved the 2022 campaign season thus far.
For a man who hated Nixon as much as he did, Trump would have pushed Hunter Thompson into a permanent state of bile and loathsomeness. Thompson, a realist unjaded by “politics as usual”, saw America for what is was - a twisted version of democracy where losing gets you more political clout not less.
Pennsylvania, too often, suffers from soft political analysis. Phrases like “Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, with Alabama in between.1" and nicknames like “Pennsyltucky” have been used to explain why the state produces so many conservative electoral results. It’s not that simple.
There was an old political rule of thumb that if a state’s 10 biggest cities don’t equal 25% of the population, it’s unlikely to elect any Democrats statewide. Today, one needs to look to the suburbs that surround those cities to get a better measure of things politically. Pennsylvania has a population just shy of 13 million and its 10 biggest cities are a mere 19.4% of the state’s population, but throw in the surrounding suburban sprawl and it’s about 60% of the population. That measure of things makes for close races regularly.
As a result Republican politicians veer hard Right during the primary and then rush to the political center. The Democrats shift less, but suffer in an inability to hold the political middle well. Historically, liberal Republicans and moderate Democrats did well in the Keystone State — everyone else not so much.
Then, Trump and his personality cult came along and skewed and warped the GOP to such a degree that liberals and progressive flourished electorally. The last Republican to win statewide was retiring incumbing Senator Pat Toomey and he squeaked by with a tight plurality win in 2016.
Much of the 2022 primary field in Pennsylvania was known in 2021.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro began running unofficially for governor shortly after his 2020 reelection. His vanquishment of the Texas lawsuit over the presidential results in December of that year was manna from heaven. Kudos from lots of people around the state and the Democrats made it clear that no one would oppose him in his gubernatorial quest.
Lt. Governor John Fetterman, a tattooed and freakishly tall man2 with a masters in government from Harvard, decided to run for the U.S. Senate shortly after the Republican controlled state senate stripped him of all of his legislative powers. Fetterman looks and talks like a leftist version of Donald Trump.3 He has a vibe that attracts voters to him like bees to hydrangeas. A couple of other Democrats joined the race in 2021, most notably Pittsburgh area congressmen Conor Lamb, but it was always going to be Fetterman’s race to lose.
On the Republican side, the gubernatorial race was filled with a bunch of well known GOP players plus a well known reactionary and January 6th Insurrectionist — State Senator Doug Mastriano. Former Congressman Lou Barletta was seen as the front-runner until Mastriano pushed the right-wing social policy messaging (anti-CRT, anti-trans kids, school choice). Mastriano got Donald Trump’s endorsement and surged in the polls so much that several gubernatorial candidates dropped out to help Barletta win.
When the dust settled Tuesday night, a number of Republican activists and consultants started looking toward 2026 as the conventional thinking is that Mastriano will lose badly in November to Shapiro. Mastriano’s victory party sounded more like “strip mall church service”4 than a political event. It is almost a certainty that Mastriano will continue to used the word christian to identify himself to make sure voters know Josh Shapiro is not.
The GOP Senate race is still knotted up. David McCormick, wealthy hedge fund manager, was all set to buy the nomination for himself when well-known New Jerseyan and snake-oil salesman (sorry, doctor who endorses diets and pills for everything) Mehmet Oz jumped in. Oz bought a second home in Pennsylvania and littered the airwaves along with McCormick over who was Trumpier. A reactionary political commentator named Kathy Barnette threw her hat in as well and the circus tent was fully opened with a right-wing freak show. In the final days of the campaign, the GOP primary became a pissing contest both in tenor and silliness.
One would think that the 2018 and 2020 election results in Pennsylvania would be a learning curve on how little the political balance is altered by the presence of Donald Trump on the campaign trail without Trump being on the ballot.
To be continued…
Until then, polka until it stops being weird.
James Carville quote from his halcyon days as a political consultant in the 80s and 90s.
He’s 6’9” — no need to look it up.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-primary-conor-lamb-trump-1355064/
@JoelLawsonDC on Twitter. It’s worth your time to follow this guy - he’s brilliant at political analysis