Here’s the Pennsylvania breakdown:
Coal mine owner Tom Smith is the GOP nominee. I don’t know what he stands for, but he has a huge campaign treasury.
District 4: state Rep. Scott Perry won easily. Many conservative rooted for York Cnty. Commissioner Chris Reilly, who finished second place. Perry seems OK, though.
District 12: In an incumbent-vs.-incumbent race between Dems, Mark Critz narrowly defeated Jason Altmire with the help of Big Labor, who disliked Altmire’s opposition to ObamaCare and other Obama priorities. The general election could go either way.
District 17: Blue Dog incumbent Tim Holden was defeated by liberal Matt Cartwright, a high-ranking member of the Trial Lawyers Association who attacked Holden’s occasional dissent from his party’s progressive agenda. This is a safely ‘Rat district.
“Coal mine owner Tom Smith is the GOP nominee. I don’t know what he stands for, but he has a huge campaign treasury.”
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Smith self-financed a barrage of TV ads and was on track to spend more than three times as much as his four rivals combined.
[Steven] Welch had been endorsed by Gov. Tom Corbett and the state GOP.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/ci_20472559
Fun to see Welch lose and making Corbett look incompetent and weak for backing the worst GOP Senate candidate anywhere. This weird decision by Tom will cost him his reelection.
Fun to see that bald headed loser Tim Holden get thrown out.
Fun to see that lying, cheating POS Patrick Murphy get his @$$ handed to him. He was trying to rehabilitate his career. Luckily, it failed.
Commissioner Chris Reilly had his hindmost parts handed to him for the second time in a congressional race (first time was in 2000 when he came in dead last).
He is a self described "conservative" but was part of a county government cabal that balanced the county general fund budget through overcharging the INS about 3:1 for housing immigration detainees at the county do-right.
He and his colleagues bragged so much about their little graft at Uncle Sam's expense that the federal auditors did what they were supposed to do and demanded repayment of much of the overcharges. Result: A substantial property tax increase.
CINO!
Glad to see him given the smackdown again.
Tom Smith has the money to run campaign ads statewide and potentially be competitive against Bob Casey, Jr., which is more than you can say about the others. He was probably our best bet in a weak field.
I don’t have much of an opinion on the redrawn PA-04; maybe Reilly was more conservative than Perry, but from what I’ve read about Perry he seems solid enough, and will definitely be a more consistently conservative vote than Todd Platts.
As for the Altmire-Critz showdown in the redrawn PA-12—wow! I didn’t think Critz would stand a chance; this primary seemed to me like the Buyer-Kern primary in IN in 2002, in which the freshman Kern got trounced by Buyer, but I guess that Altmire was too “moderate” for Big Labor. Critz’s victory gives the GOP nominee, Keith Rothfus (who came very close to beating Altmire in 2010), an excellent chance of winning the general in this GOP leaning CD, since Critz is unknown in the more populous Allegheny and Lawrence areas and what sells in Johnstown won’t work in the central and western parts of the district.
In the PA-17, I would not have believed the result had I not read a column this morning predicting Holden’s defeat. Serves Holden right for staying a Democrat as the party kept going further left; had he switched to the GOP back in 2004 or so, he would still be in Congress (and Republicans could have packed even more Democrats into the PA-17 by taking out Schuylkill County and putting in Dem parts of Allentown and Bethlehem).
I take it that Tim Murphy won handily over his young conservative challenger (Feinberg?) in PA-18. I don’t think that Murphy is that bad, but that wasn’t exactly a victory for conservatism.
In summary, the GOP now has a good chance of ending up with a 13-5 GOP House delegation (two years ago, the Dems held a 12-7 edge, meaning we would have gained 6 seats and the Dems would have lost 7). And the Senate race is an uphill, but not impossible, battle for Tom” mSmith.
Tim Holden is my congressman and Schuylkill County is my home area. The district was a Republican district that Holden kept winning (he’s popular in my county). Matt Cartwright is much more liberal. I can see him losing Schuylkill but it’s an uphill battle though since it has been redistricted into a Democratic district.