With Senate Race Too Early to Call, Pennsylvania Democrats Rack Up Wins in Quicker Decisions

In Pennsylvania, one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country, between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, remains too early to call, but Democrats are racking up victories in the state.

Democrats kept control of the governor’s mansion despite a competitive campaign run by Republican candidate Doug Mastriano. Democrats gambled on promoting the far-right candidate in the Republican primary, and the strategy paid off for Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro. Shapiro’s campaign spent just under $1 million on ads that highlighted Mastriano’s ties to Trump and extreme positions.

Democrats also held onto a congressional seat in Pittsburgh, with soon-to-be Squad member Summer Lee emerging victorious against Republican candidate Mike Doyle. The loss also represents a blow to the election efforts of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

The deep-blue seat suddenly looked shaky in the last weeks of the election when internal, private polls started to show Doyle, who shares a name with the outgoing Democratic incumbent, gaining on Lee. Democrats scrambled to fight millions of dollars spent by Republicans against Lee. The National Republican Congressional Committee attacked Lee as soft on crime, including in ads in a neighboring district that shares a media market with Pittsburgh.

Once the race tightened, AIPAC came in with a last-minute flood of cash. AIPAC’s election arm, United Democracy Project, had worked with major Democratic firms to attack Lee in the primary, and spent more than $3 million on the failed effort.

Progressive groups including Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, and SEIU Healthcare PA spent more than $1.6 million backing Lee. In a press release on Tuesday night, WFP Pennsylvania organizing director Nicolas O’Rourke called Lee’s win a victory against “right-wing and corporate forces” and said Lee would “join a growing bench of Working Families Democrats in Congress who will fight for higher wages, lower costs, safe communities, and clean air and water.”

The Republican ads against Lee in the neighboring 17th District were aiming to tie her to the Democratic candidate there, Chris Deluzio. The seat is currently held by Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa. Lamb gave up his seat to run in the Democratic Senate primary, which he lost to Fetterman by more than 30 percentage points in May.

So far in the Pennsylvania Senate race, Democrats have been cautiously optimistic, with Fetterman so far outpacing President Joe Biden’s 2020 win in several key counties.