Well, the district would have been strongly Republican say, in the 80s or early 90s. The redistricters were attempting to get rid of Dem Rep. Tim Holden by drawing him into a district he couldn’t win, either the new PA-6 or the Harrisburg-area district held at the time by Republican George Gekas. Well, it backfired on them; Gekas lost to Holden, and Gerlach has only barely held on in a district that contains too much of Montgomery County, which I presume they put in there from PA-13 so they could move it into NE Philly.
And they destroyed PA-13 in so doing.
Its really very simple, even though the Republicans don’t seem to get it.
Philadelphia has 3 Democratic congressmen, but only enough population for 2.5 seats. Each seat had to have +/-646,371 people, and Philadelphia was 421,563 short. The solution was to remove all the Republican leaning areas of Northeast Philadelphia into one district with the inner parts of Bucksco, Delco, and Montco like Bristol, Bensalem, Cheltenham, Abington, Norristown, and Lower Merion, then throw Chester, Yeadon, and Darby in with the rest of Philadelphia. This gets all the Democrats in greater Philly into 3 districts, and leaves one of them marginally competitive for a RINO. Then you run a district from Scranton and Wilkes-Barre to Schuylkill County and then down to Reading. Then you make a district out of Pittsburgh and inner Allegheny County, and another out of Beaver, Greene, Lawrence, Mercer, and Washington Counties. Lastly, you put Cambria, Fayette, and Westmoreland together for Old Blowhard. The rest of the state is 12 districts that are safely and uncompetitively Republican.
Instead of concentrating the strong Democrat areas of the suburbs into the Philadelphia seats, they instead spread them out amongst PA-8 (Bucks), PA-7 (Delco), and PA-6 (the monstrosity), and added chunks of Philadelphia to PA-8. Not only didn’t we win PA-13, but we lost PA-7, PA-8,